Readings: Eph 4:32 and Lk. 13:10-17
The Jewish Sabbath required the people to worship and rest. Often they objected to the way Jesus observed it – not about his lack of worship, but his refusal to rest. It seems that there was more emphasis on resting than on worshipping! In fact, the word “Sabbath” comes from the Hebrew, meaning “to rest,” and throughout the centuries the Jewish people had adhered to a very orthodox interpretation. In his attempt to update the old laws, and especially to help people, Jesus often irritated those who favoured the traditional observance. Whether we are worshipping, resting or doing good deeds, we are fulfilling our “Sabbath observance” in a very exemplary manner. Jesus said we are not made for the Sabbath, but that the Sabbath was made for us.
When a person has a problem which weighs heavily on the mind, the body can also be adversely affected, especially if the problem remains for a long time. Mental worries, we know, will often publicly announce their presence in the form of bleeding ulcers. Prolonged sadness can cause acute depression and be clearly visible in downcast eyes and the diminution of strength and ambition. On the positive side, it is good to know that a person who has suffered mentally and physically for many years can have hope for a cure. In this Gospel, Jesus meets a woman who is heavily burdened with a problem. Luke, the physician, notes that it first had bent her mind and then her body. This had gone on for eighteen years, but now came the cure because she had faith to be healed. Jesus freed her mind and straightened her spine. Luke, the doctor, was impressed nearly as much as the lady herself.
In her social context she was crippled, dysfunctional, and worthless. She had accepted that debilitating status as her place in life. She is surrounded by men, the maintainers of “order” in which she was “as” she was. Jesus refuses to accept the way the woman is, bent over and locked up in the mentality and judgement of her time. He frees her before her oppressor’s very eyes, making her again the one she really is, a daughter of Abraham, a fact that was drowned and hindered in the society in which she lived. What Jesus shows us in this miracle is not that he is the Lord over sickness and over the Sabbath: He came to bring freedom and joy: freedom from the burden of the law that considered law more important than human beings. The law is for us, and we are not for the law; joy: at being made whole. She burst into a song for the glory of God, who gives joy to humanity.
Do I become an obstacle and hindrance for the freedom, well-being and joy of others? Do I try to enslave others in the name of laws and regulations? Do I make the rule take precedence over being humane?
(By Fr. T. C. Joseph SDB, former Principal of Bosco College of Teacher Education)