MONDAY 25th OCTOBER 2021
Luke 13, 10-17:
“One Sabbath Jesus was teaching in a synagogue. There was a woman who had been sick with a spirit for eighteen years, and she was bent over and could not straighten up in any way. When Jesus saw her, he called her to him and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your sickness. And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she stood upright. And she glorified God”.
The synagogue and the Sabbath are the symbol of Jewish legalism and ritualism, which had become such a burden that it oppressed the person, bending him or her and making him or her look down and not towards God and others.
With their intransigence, the Jewish laws had become an end in themselves.
Jesus gives them back their true meaning, because for Jesus people come first: “the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath”.
Above any rule or any law is the rule and the law of love.
The human being, who is the image of God, comes first. That is why Jesus does not hesitate to heal on the Sabbath, a holy day for a Jew and a day on which no work could be done.
He restores dignity to the stooped woman and frees her from her bonds by placing her in the presence of God and others.
May the supreme standard of your life also be the supreme standard of love.
Good day.
Antonio Sanjuán Marín, cmf
