Monday, October 24 - Memorial St Anthony Claret

 Gospel Lk 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.

Reflection: 

When we do our daily activities with an attitude attuned to our heartstrings and the voice of the Spirit, there is hardly an fear of doing the wrong thing. The Pharisees were living by the law, but without the spirit of the  law. The healing of the woman who was bent, was what the law had prescribed, as an expression of God's love towards humankind, which Jesus was expressing. The Pharisees found it an unrighteous act, because the Law had also prescribed that such a thing should not be done on the sabbath. Do we fall into the category of the Pharisaical behaviour or that of Jesus? A good deed can never have any evil in it, nor can an evil deed possess any good in it, says Peter Kreeft implying that we need to purify our intentions and always reflect before proposing a way of action involving another person.

Activity: 

Are you deciding something about another person? Wait before being too strict....