NOTES for Luk 4:37-44

The people of Capernaum, who had listened to Christ's preaching and been healed of many of their ailments, very much wanted Him to stay. ‘The people sought Him and found Him, and tried to keep Him from leaving them,’ the evangelist writes. Perhaps He Himself did not want to leave either. But He had to, as He Himself says, in order to bring the good news to other towns. To go to some, the Saviour had to leave others. That was how it was when He walked the earth.

And now? We need only pause to consider how everything has changed: now the Lord is everywhere. And this is something more than the primordial omnipresence of God the Father, for Christ is everywhere, since every day on earth bread is broken in the sacrament of the Eucharist. In those days people thought, ‘What a pity He is leaving for another town; how shall we manage without Him?’ But now we know: in the town to the east, the liturgy has already taken place; now it will be celebrated where we are, and then among those farther west. And a kind of enduring, continuous unity of His presence everywhere comes into being.

Perhaps we can understand this change since those days by reflecting on today's reading from the Epistle. ‘Participation in the good news’—these are the words that become the key to understanding. When Jesus says, ‘I must go and proclaim the good news to other towns,’ He is still alone. But already the apostle speaks of participation. Jesus came like a Candle giving light, and now one candle has become a sea of lights across the whole world.