This article was written by Fr. Isidore Ndagizimana,
Pastor of St. Thomas More Catholic Church
While controversy rages as to how big an audience attended President Trump’s inauguration on January 20 a little over a week ago, no one will deny the fact that one of the most watched TV broadcasts is the presidential inauguration. People want to know the president’s intentions and purpose for his term. His inaugural address sets the tone and charts the course for the next four years. Experts make special notes of his words and remember them. In the case of Abraham Lincoln’s two inaugural addresses, his words have been etched in stone and placed in his perpetual memorial.
Another inaugural address was presented in St. Luke in 4:18. According to Luke, this is Jesus’ first public address in his public mission.
He is in a formal setting in a house of worship. He is observing the Sabbath custom and has accepted the invitation to read from the scriptures to the assembly. The assembly has already heard about his preaching and miracles from the surrounding country-side. Now they want to hear from the Man himself. To set the tone and chart the course for his public ministry, he does two things: First, he selects the text and secondly, he interprets it.
He selects a passage well known to his listeners, a prophecy about the Messiah. He chooses Isaiah 61:1. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me.”
Having read the passage, he interprets it for them authoritatively and definitively. His authority is shown with a little detail: he rolls up the scroll, hands it to the attendant and sits down. It was customary for the scribe or teacher to sit down to preach.
Until now, the passage from Isaiah was an unfulfilled prophecy. It was provisional, incomplete, pointing to someone, something that would eventually occur, to someone who would come. Today, says Jesus, “this passage, this prophecy is fulfilled in your sight and in your hearing.” They now have seen the Messiah, the anointed one IN PERSON. He proclaims who he is and his agenda: To bring good tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, to bring recovery of sight to the blind, to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. He has come to bring a revolution of mercy and love.
Blessed is the nation whose policies are in line with the Lord’s agenda for his people. Though they were not expressed in this year’s inauguration, I sincerely believe that America has won universal admiration in as far as it applied these principles in its political system. On a smaller scale, the most admirable and respected institutions or individuals are those that exemplify the Messiah’s values hereby spelled out, in some form or manner. God blesses all who make it their life’s goal to reach out to God’s most deprived, vulnerable “little ones”. As Christians, we must be guided by Proverbs 14:34 which says; “Godliness makes a nation great”.
My prayer is that our political leaders will collectively define what it means to make our country great. May they be guided by the God whose blessings they invoked the day after the Presidential inauguration in the National Cathedral of Washington, January 21, 2017. If they so guided, then God will truly bless America.
