The Spirit Of The Lord Has Been Given To Me

(By Fr. Dexter Brereton)

In 1989, Stephen Covey wrote the Book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” a self-help manual for those in business and an international best seller. The book proposes a pathway of personal growth and achievement grounded on the bedrock of one’s character as opposed to more superficial approaches which involve changing one’s outward behaviour. His spiritual doctrine is condensed into seven habits or insights, the second of which is “begin with the end in mind.” According to Covey, beginning with the end in mind means to “start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you are going so that you better understand where you are now and so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.” To further illustrate his point he draws an important distinction between a “leader” and a “manager.” Says Covey: “Management is a bottom line focus. How can I best accomplish certain things? Leadership deals with the top line: what are the things I wish to accomplish?”  In other words, the true leader, is one who is always motivated and living out of some vision of life for herself or himself and for others. It is quite clear in this Sunday’s Gospel which begins our continuous reading or lectio continua from Luke, that Jesus himself lives out of such a vision:

The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me, for he has anointed me.
He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor,
To proclaim liberty to captives
And to the blind new sight.
To set the downtrodden free,
To proclaim the Lord’s year of favour.

This is a quote from Isa 61: 1-2 and Isa 58: 6. Here Jesus invokes a number of rich themes from Israel’s religious heritage including the notion of the Jubilee Year, which in Jewish law was a time, observed every 50 years, reserved for liberation of slaves, restoration of persons to their homes, and forgiveness of debt.

From time to time one encounters leaders of various kinds (parish priests, lay leaders, supervisors, teachers, police officers) who seem discouraged and complain that their work is “stressful” or better yet: “Fadda, my work real haaard!” While undoubtedly there is much that is valid in these complaints one often wonders whether they have not gotten bogged down in the “nitty-gritty” of everyday life without being inspired and nourished in their work by some wider vision of life.

What made Jesus so compelling to his hearers, what inspired their love and trust in him no doubt had something to do with the fact that Jesus was such a “dreamer”, that he had this grand vision of life as it should be lived and this vision guided all his words and his deeds. Every Christian leader is invited by the Lord to come to that place, where they “open the scroll” and proclaim: “The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me for he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring the Good News…” Jesus, by his example on this the third Sunday of the year invites us to enter into this grand sense of “mission”. He invites us to share in his extraordinary vision of life which leads us to see how beautiful life can be, and all the wondrous possibilities that exist all around us. He invites us all to become visionaries.

Let us ask ourselves: How do I invest most of my time? Am I preoccupied with the practical details of life, or do I invest my time thinking of my life and the life of my community, they way it could be?