September 07, 2015
Monday, 23rd
Week in Ordinary Time
1st reading: Col 1:24 – 2.3
Gospel: Luke 6:6-11
On a Sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue and began teaching. There was a man with a paralyzed right hand and the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees watched him: Would Jesus heal the man on the Sabbath? If he did, they could accuse him.
But Jesus knew their thoughts and said to the man, “Get up and stand in the middle.” Then he spoke to them, “I want to ask you: what is allowed by the Law on the Sabbath, to do good or to do harm, to save life or destroy it?” And Jesus looked around at them all.
Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out and his hand was restored, becoming as whole as the other. But they were furious and began to discuss with one another how they could deal with Jesus.
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
When the welfare of humans and the fulfillment of the law to the letter clash, Jesus is ready to sacrifice the latter. This is what today’s Gospel reading is all about. The Law of Moses prohibited work on a Sabbath. The Pharisees were there to see to it that people observed this law to the letter. This resulted to virtual paralysis because people could no longer perform their normal activities on a Sabbath.
The Pharisees monitored Jesus’ activities too. However, it wasn’t really zeal for God’s commands that motivated them in limiting Jesus’ activities to those that didn’t come close to work, at least in their own judgment. One Sabbath, Jesus encountered a man with a paralyzed right hand in the Synagogue. The Pharisees were interested in finding out what Jesus would do to this man. If he’d heal him, they’d accuse him of violating the Sabbath prohibition of work.
Jesus outwitted them by asking, “What is allowed by the Sabbath Law: to do good or to do bad?” Any answer would have exposed the Pharisees’ narrow-mindedness. They couldn’t say the Sabbath allowed the doing of good works without giving Jesus tacit permission to heal the man. Neither could they say the Sabbath allowed the doing of bad things without desecrating its nature as the Lord’s Day. Finding themselves at the firing line they refused to answer Jesus. This gave Jesus the chance to answer his own question by curing the man. Then he drove the last nail to the coffins of his adversaries by saying, “The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath”.
Jesus’ preferential option for the welfare of people is very clear in today’s Gospel episode. To him, laws are moral only when they redound to the welfare of human beings. – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website: www.frdan.org.
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