Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 13, 10-17
Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the sabbath.
And a woman was there who for eighteen years
had been crippled by a spirit;
she was bent over, completely incapable of standing erect.
When Jesus saw her, he called to her and said,
“Woman, you are set free of your infirmity.”
He laid his hands on her,
and she at once stood up straight and glorified God.
But the leader of the synagogue,
indignant that Jesus had cured on the sabbath,
said to the crowd in reply,
“There are six days when work should be done.
Come on those days to be cured, not on the sabbath day.”
The Lord said to him in reply, “Hypocrites!
Does not each one of you on the sabbath
untie his ox or his ass from the manger
and lead it out for watering?
This daughter of Abraham,
whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now,
ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day
from this bondage?”
When he said this, all his adversaries were humiliated;
and the whole crowd rejoiced at all the splendid deeds done by him.
Don’t judge your brethren, be a healer
1) Years had gone by. This woman had spent many years in a critical situation. This can happen to you and me. We may not be able to find the right path in life. We look for a way, but years go by, and everything seems to remain the same. We have to look for Jesus.
It is true that time helps, but it also makes us despair because we want to solve things once and for all. The key is not to despair. Keep trying to get on the right path with the Lord.
2) Stooping. This woman can’t look straight ahead, she cannot look up, she can only look down. There are people who do not look towards their future or towards Heaven, they constantly look down and at one thing only. This represents people who have no hope and in time, become so negative that they waste their time focused on one thing: their wounds. They can’t look straight ahead and do not dare to look into other people’s eyes. They do not look at Heaven and therefore cannot understand how much God loves them. Life may make us stoop but we must look up, look up to God.
3) Hypocrites. That is Jesus’s complaint against those legalists who do not see their sister’s pain, just the rituals and rules they live by. Today, you and I should beware of behaving like that. Let us learn to be merciful and look at things from the point of view of those who are suffering. Today, we have lost the capacity for compassion. We cling to structures and laws instead of looking at others’ suffering. Let us learn to look at our brothers or sisters’ pain in order to ease it, and not be hypocritical by relying on laws.
Today I invite you to pray the rosary for someone who needs relief and comfort.
God bless you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Remember, Heaven is our goal!
