Friday, October 30, 2015
30th Week in
Ordinary Time
1st reading: Romans 9.1-5
Gospel: Lk 14:1-6
One Sabbath Jesus had gone to eat a meal in the house of a leading Pharisee, and he was carefully watched. In front of him was a man suffering from dropsy; so Jesus asked the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” But no one answered. Jesus then took the man, healed him and sent him away. And he addressed them, “If your lamb or your ox falls into a well on a Sabbath day, who among you doesn’t hurry to pull it out?” And they could not answer.
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
Between law and life, the latter should enjoy higher respect. Today’s Gospel calls our attention to how one can end up sacrificing the essentials by strictly interpreting the Law. When life is sacrificed in the process, it becomes unchristian. The Christian way is the way of Jesus who interpreted the Law in relation to the higher value of life.
Jesus disregarded interpretations disadvantageous to the life of a person. In today’s Gospel, for example, Jesus cured a sick person over and above the objection of the Pharisees that it was a Sabbath. The Sabbath Law prohibited work. In their narrow interpretation, the Pharisees classified miracles as work and therefore prohibited on a Sabbath. On one occasion the Synagogue leader exclaimed: “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath” (Luke 13:14). Between strictly complying with the Sabbath Law and saving a sick person, Jesus chose the latter.
A long time ago in my priesthood, I was heading towards a private hospital but couldn’t park. I pulled over to call from my mobile phone the relatives of the sick person. Suddenly a traffic officer apprehended me; I was on a ‘no stopping’ zone. “Someone is dying in that hospital and I have nowhere to park,” I explained. The traffic enforcer must have taken me for a doctor, perhaps because I was wearing white. He said, “It’s okay, Doctor, I can even keep an eye on your car”. He left before I could explain any further.
The way that traffic enforcer interpreted the law, doctors should be exempted from street parking regulations because matters of life are higher than any law. The survival of any decent society hangs on how sacred people consider life to be. Any law that jeopardizes life is oppressive and should not find support. The life we sacrifice because of our penchant for the details of the law may be our very own life.
We may not be in a position to interpret the law for others but we must understand that life must be given highest respect. – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email:[email protected]. Website:www.frdan.org.
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