Luke 4:18

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me: because He hath anointed me. The Holy Spirit, who was in Me from the beginning, descending upon Me here in the baptism which I have now received from John the Baptist, descending visibly in the form of a dove, while the voice of God the Father spoke forth in thunder, "This is My beloved Son; hear ye Him," has by this sign, as by a visible anointing, publicly declared, authorised, and, as it were, consecrated Me as the Teacher, Prophet, Saviour, and Lawgiver of the world, and especially of the Jews to whom I was promised, and therefore

He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor, for the rich Scribes and Pharisees despise My lowliness and My poverty.

Observe the words "hath anointed me;" for in Hebrew "Messiah," and in Greek Χζιστὸς, mean "anointed." This anointing of Christ was accomplished secretly in the Incarnation

(1.) By the grace of the hypostatic union, which made Him in the highest degree holy and divine nay, made Him God.

(2.) By the plenitude of graces which flowed from this union. For other saints are said to be anointed with the grace and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, but Christ was anointed with the Holy Ghost Himself, as though with the very fountain and plenitude of all graces, that the Man Christ might become a superabundant fountain pouring forth its grace into all the apostles, martyrs, virgins, and confessors, so says Basil (de Spiritu Sancto, ch. xxvi.). Christ was, as I have said, publicly anointed in His baptism, to heal them that are brokenhearted heal and console those who, by reason of their sins, and the burden of the law of Moses, as well as their ignorance of the things of God, are afflicted in spirit, and pant for the knowledge of God, His pardon, His grace, and His salvation, and who, therefore, look for the Messiah. Hence Symmachus and Theodotus render it; so S. Jerome tells us in his Commentary on Isa. lxi., "to bind up the wounds of sinners."

To preach deliverance to the captives that I may preach, announce, and bring freedom, through penance and My grace, to those who are held captive by sin and the devil.

And recovering of sight to the blind. The Hebrew and Chaldee versions of Isaiah give " open to those bound," i.e., as Symmachus has it, " loosening of those bound." But the Septuagint, and S. Luke following them, render it in the Greek άνάβλεψιν, " looking again," that they may see again. For the Hebrews call those that are blind bound, or shut, like the Latin idiom, "Moses seized in their eyes," and consequently they call the illumination by which the eyes of the blind are opened "opening." The meaning, therefore, is, Christ shall both restore sight to those who are physically, and illumine those who are spiritually, blind, and are ignorant of God and of the way of salvation. He shall teach them the knowledge of God and the way to save their souls. This was what Isaiah (Isa 42:7) clearly foretold that the Messiah should do: "I will give Thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles, to open the eyes of the blind." And hence it is plain that Isaiah in ch. xlii., is not speaking literally of the deliverance from the Babylonian captivity wrought by Cyrus, as Toletus would have it, but of the deliverance from the captivity of sin and of the devil wrought by Christ; for Cyrus restored sight to no one, but Christ to many. I confess, however, that there is an allusion to Cyrus, he being a type of Christ. To the Hebrews in Babylon who were "bound" he gave "opening and loosening," as the Hebrew version has it, when he freed them from captivity and sent them back into Judæa.

To set at liberty them that are bruised intoliberty and health. The Arabic has "to send thee bound into remission." Pagninus, "that I may send forth the broken by remission." So also Vatablus. These words are not in Isaiah lxi 1. in the Hebrew; they have been added paraphrastically by S. Luke or his interpreter, and seem to form another explanation of "to heal them that are brokenhearted." So Forerius on Isaiah lxi., and Francis Lucas on this passage. Origen omits "to heal them that are brokenhearted," and reads instead, "to send forth the broken into liberty;" and he adds, "What was so broken or shattered as the man who, when sent away by Jesus, was healed?"

For "broken" the Greek has τετζανσμένους, which Vatablus and others translate "broken."