Monday October 25

Thirtieth Week In Ordinary Time

FOLLOW THE WAY OF LOVE 

 

Introduction

We are sons and daughters of God because the Spirit of Christ, the perfect Son, is alive in us. With Christ and through his Spirit, we can call God our Father. He is a father with a love warm and tender as that of a mother. God is not a paternalistic Father. He respects our freedom. He wants us to be responsible and mature and to give him a free answer of love. He wants us to serve him as spiritual people, that is, people moved by the Spirit, without any slavish attitude.

The stooped woman whom Jesus cured is just one sample of his love. Again, the legalists protest because Jesus cured a sick person on the Sabbath. Jesus appeals to their common sense. The Sabbath is a day of God, a day on which we remember the goodness of God and thank him for his love. Isn’t the day of the Lord the best day on which we can pass on the love of the Lord to one another and create one another anew?

 

Opening Prayer

God our Father,
we come to you in all humility
as we acknowledge to you that we have failed
and now seek your forgiveness.
Straighten us Lord, lift us up,
recreate us anew,
and fill us with your love.
Make us lift up one another
and give thanks to you,

our merciful and living God,
through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

 

Reading 1: ROM 8:12-17

Brothers and sisters,
we are not debtors to the flesh,
to live according to the flesh.
For if you live according to the flesh, you will die,
but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body,
you will live.

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,
but you received a spirit of adoption,
through which we cry, “Abba, Father!”
The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit
that we are children of God,
and if children, then heirs,
heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ,
if only we suffer with him
so that we may also be glorified with him.

 

Responsorial Psalm: Ps 68:2 AND 4, 6-7AB, 20-21

(21a) Our God is the God of salvation.
God arises; his enemies are scattered,
and those who hate him flee before him.
But the just rejoice and exult before God;
they are glad and rejoice.
R. Our God is the God of salvation.
The father of orphans and the defender of widows
is God in his holy dwelling.
God gives a home to the forsaken;
he leads forth prisoners to prosperity.
R. Our God is the God of salvation.
Blessed day by day be the Lord,
who bears our burdens; God, who is our salvation.
God is a saving God for us;
the LORD, my Lord, controls the passageways of death.
R. Our God is the God of salvation.

 

Alleluia: JN 17:17B, 17A

Alleluia, alleluia.
Your word, O Lord, is truth;
consecrate us in the truth.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

 

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.

 

Intercessions

– That Christians everywhere may not be men and women of legalisms and outward observances, but people with a heart who do what they can for one another because they are God’s children, we pray:

– That we may be reliable friends to those marked by suffering in any form; that we may lighten their burdens and help them trust in God and in people, we pray:

– That the Eucharistic celebration on Sundays may be to all our Christian communities a source of great joy as we deeply encounter the Lord as a spring of strength to follow, we pray:

 

Prayer over the Gifts

God our Father,
in these signs of bread and wine,
we offer you our grateful and admiring love
as a gift of pleasing fragrance.
Free us from our infirmities,
help us to stand up in your presence
as your sons and daughters,
who know that you love us
and who communicate that love
to all whom we meet.
We ask this in the name of Jesus, the Lord.

 

Prayer after Communion

God our Father,
through the presence of your Son,
you have doubled our happiness
and lessened our miseries.
Let him give us in this Eucharist
the joy of sharing with one another
your own joy and goodness.
May we be present to one another,
as you are present to us
in Jesus Christ, our Lord.

 

Blessing

On the day of the Lord, we intercede as mediators for the great needs of the Church, of the world, and of people in need. It is nice to pray for these intentions, but may the Lord inspire and empower us to do something effective to relieve these needs, whether on the Lord’s day or any day, with the blessing of Almighty God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

 

Commentary

The Pharisees are being trounced again in today’s reading; they are the whipping-boys of the New Testament! Why does the Church keep putting them before us, day after day? Because, I presume, they (or we) are still here! 

A crippled woman attended the synagogue. Let’s watch people’s eyes. Jesus “saw her.” He had eyes for the poor, for people who were suffering—unlike the rich man to whom Lazarus was invisible. The Pharisees had eyes too: but only for breaches of their rules. The ruler of the synagogue was furious that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath (technically it was “work”, and work was forbidden on the Sabbath). He couldn’t look at Jesus, he couldn’t meet his eyes; he addressed the people with words meant for Jesus, for he lacked courage to speak to him face to face. But Jesus certainly looked at him when he said, or perhaps shouted, “You hypocrites!” And then his reasoning was so compelling that I can’t imagine that synagogue ruler looking anywhere but at the ground in shame. The absence of compassion in their religion was never so clear. It’s no wonder they came to fear and hate him. And it’s no wonder they encompassed his death. Violence is the reaction of people who can’t look you in the eye.