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"Faith is believing He, the miracle worker, can turn my stone-cold indifference into a fire of love toward certain "unlovables".
- Pamela Reeve (Who might these "unlovables" be for you at this time in your life? Ask the Spirit to direct your heart in love.) |
Col 1:24–2:3; Ps 62:6-7, 9
Lk 6:6-11 On a certain sabbath Jesus went into the synagogue and taught,
and there was a man there whose right hand was withered.
The scribes and the Pharisees watched him closely
to see if he would cure on the sabbath
so that they might discover a reason to accuse him.
But he realized their intentions
and said to the man with the withered hand,
"Come up and stand before us."
And he rose and stood there.
Then Jesus said to them,
"I ask you, is it lawful to do good on the sabbath
rather than to do evil,
to save life rather than to destroy it?"
Looking around at them all, he then said to him,
"Stretch out your hand."
He did so and
his hand was restored.
But they became enraged
and discussed together what they might do to Jesus.
Praying the Daily Gospels: A Guide to Meditation, by Philip St. Romain, 2018 (3rd ed.) Luke 6. 6-11 (Healing on the Sabbath) At times Jesus is intentionally provocative, contrary to popular notions that he was always diplomatic and mild. Today Luke describes a significant encounter between Jesus and the Jewish authorities. By healing the man with the withered hand, Jesus is responding to something that is not an emergency. On the Sabbath, according to Jewish law, intervention is permitted only in emergencies. Jesus is proving a point.
• Why do you believe Jesus chose to provoke the authorities? What did he hope to gain? What did he stand to lose? • Have you ever found it necessary to be prophetically provocative? Are there issues requiring such a stance from you? How will you respond?
• Pray for the grace to be courageous for Christ.
Treatise on the Love of God, by St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) ____________ BOOK IV: OF THE DECAY AND RUIN OF CHARITY Chapter 2: How the soul grows cold in holy love.
The affection to great sins did so make truth prisoner to injustice amongst the pagan philosophers, that, as the great Apostle says: Knowing God they honoured him not according to that knowledge; so that though this affection did not banish natural light, yet it made it profitless. So the affection to venial sin does not abolish charity, but it holds it as a slave, tied hand and foot, hindering its freedom and action. This affection, attaching us too closely to the
enjoyment of creatures, deprives us of the spiritual intimacy between God and us, to which charity, as true friendship, excites us; consequently this affection makes us lose the interior helps and assistances which are as it were the vital and animating spirits of the soul, in default of which there follows a certain spiritual palsy, which in the end, if it be not remedied, brings us to death. For, after all, charity being an active quality cannot be long without either acting or dying: it is,
say our Ancients, of the nature of Rachel, who also represented it. Give me, said she to her husband, children, otherwise I shall die; and charity urges the heart which she has espoused to make her fertile of good works; otherwise she will perish.
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