On this day, for the Church new year, the appointed gospel passage is Christ reading the scriptures in the local synagogue. What does he read?
The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to summon the acceptable year of the Lord.
“Acceptable year of the Lord”. This passage was not picked by the Fathers just because it says the word “year” in this passage. Rather: this is the idea of Christ establishing and ordering all things as they should be.
There should not be “the poor “. There should not be captives. There should not be the blind. No one should be oppressed. Christ came to set all things right. And yet, we find ourselves in this world, this world full of troubles…but this reordering work of Christ is ongoing. This is not something we sit back and watch Christ do. No, he is working in us and through us.
The Church calls this day, this new year, the “Indiction”. This day is understood to be the day the earth was created. The idea of Indiction on this day should call our minds back to the beginning, and it is there that we understand more of what it means for Christ to work in us, and also how to join in with this calling.
Man must struggle and toil to tend the earth, that is…the soil, the dirt. This is not “earth”, as in the planet, but rather in the sense of dirt or soil. In the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground from which you were taken. Earth you are, and to earth you shall return. And just a few verses later: Therefore, the Lord God sent him out of the garden of pleasure to cultivate the ground from which he was taken.
Very clearly here, we see that Adam was made from dirt. “Dirt you are, and to dirt you shall return.” And St. Sophrony, St. Silouan’s disciple, teaches the connection between this and the Lord’s Prayer: Our Father who art in heaven: hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done—on earth as it is in heaven.
This earth—us, me, this body, my life—is what I have been given to till and cultivate. Often obscured in English, there are three phrases here that all point toward “on earth as it is in heaven”. Here they are reordered to help us see what the Lord’s Prayer is really saying: “Here in this earth, may thy name be hallowed, may thy kingdom be established, may thy will be accomplished.”
This earth, me, myself…is what I have been given to till and cultivate. And it is this cultivation, bringing life out of mere dirt, that is the proper fulfilling of the year of the Lord. When we are reordering, when we are cultivating, were are bringing in the acceptable year of the Lord, and all things are being set right here in this earth, within us.