Category: Uncategorized

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Gospel: Luke 6: 12-16

Jesus went up to the mountain to pray,
and he spent the night in prayer to God.
When day came, he called his disciples to himself,
and from them he chose Twelve, whom he also named Apostles:
Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew,
James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew,
Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus,
Simon who was called a Zealot,
and Judas the son of James,
and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

The Gospel of the Lord.

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Immediately before electing the Twelve Apostles, Jesus spent the entire night in prayer to his Father. I don’t imagine it took very long for the Lord to know who his Father had chosen; I can recite all of the Apostles’ names in less than a minute.

So, why did Jesus have to pray all night about it?

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I wonder if he struggled to accept that these were the men his Father wanted. 

Peter, the one who will sink into the Sea of Galilee; the one who will try to stop Jesus from entering Jerusalem; the one who will deny Jesus three times before abandoning him at the cross; the same one who will be entrusted with the keys to the kingdom.

Simon and Jude, whose feast day we celebrate today. Like Peter, they will abandon the Lord in his hour of greatest need. And well before that, they’ll will struggle with their faith, argue over who is the “greatest,” and fail to understand the paradoxes of Christ’s teachings. 

None of the Twelve are educated; none are wealthy, influential, or scholars of their religion. Many will struggle to get along.

And, of course, there’s Judas Iscariot, who will help to bring Christ’s life and ministry to a bloody end. 

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No wonder it took Jesus all night to pray – and, perhaps, to accept – what his Father wanted. But this will not be the last time he struggles in his prayer.

In Gethsemane, Jesus will plead with his Father again, “Let this cup pass from me.”

But his prayer ends with, “Not my will, but Thine be done.” 

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Sometimes we all struggle to understand or accept God’s will for our lives. (Some may also feel this way about our Church as our Archdiocese undergoes the restructuring called for in We Are His Witnesses). 

But Christ shows us that long periods spent in prayer strengthen us, lead us to acceptance, and fill us with peace.

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Image credits: (1) Learn Relgions (2) Drive Thur History (3) Catholic Virginian

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Gospel: Luke 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.

The Gospel of the Lord.

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This is the last time we see Jesus in a synagogue. He knows he has captured the ire of the religious authorities. They are now starting to plot his death. Breaking the Sabbath by healing a crippled woman only adds fuel to the fire.

As Christians – or simply people of good will – we can imagine the pain this woman endured. For 18 years, some 6,500 days of her life, she was unable to straighten her bent body.

The curvature of her spine produced tight knots in her shoulders and sharp pain in her neck, making simple tasks like getting dressed or looking up to see who’s in front of her torturous. 

No wonder Christ was moved with compassion.

I’m sure the leader of the synagogue also felt bad for this woman, but there was something he valued more than her health: sticking to the rules. For Jews, no work – not even a work of compassion – was permitted on the Sabbath.

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Jesus heals her intentionally on this sacred day of rest in order to teach his people a lesson. There are times when the laws that define our lives, even religious ones, need to be stretched, re-interpreted, or updated.

There is no rule higher than charity. If we find our neighbor hunched over, weighed down by the pressures of life, then we are obligated to help them. Suffering should never last a second longer than necessary. 

Yet how much human misery continues in our world because people are either blind, indifferent, or paralyzed by politics, culture, civic, even religious institutions?

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Beneath it all, we are human. 

We share the common dignity of being made in God’s image and likeness. May we do something to reflect this truth today.

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Image credits: (1) Pointing the Way by Arrow (2) Bent Woman, Milos Todorovic (3) Facebook

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Romans: 7: 18-25

Brothers and sisters:
I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh.
The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not.
For I do not do the good I want,
but I do the evil I do not want.
Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it,
but sin that dwells in me.
So, then, I discover the principle
that when I want to do right, evil is at hand.
For I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self,
but I see in my members another principle
at war with the law of my mind,
taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
Miserable one that I am!
Who will deliver me from this mortal body?
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Word of the Lord.

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I was once a pen pal with a young man serving a prison sentence. In his heart of hearts, he was a good man. I knew him long before he got into trouble. But one thing led to another, and eventually he found himself behind bars.

While there, he started reading the bible and was overcome when he came across Saint Paul’s confession from our first reading, his Letter to the Romans: “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want.”

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Paul, a man we revere as a Saint, was torn between his flesh and his spirit. He knew what was right and wanted to do it always; yet, at times, he failed. He knew what was wrong and longed to avoid it; but, at times, he gave in.

Whatever his struggle was, it haunted him. Paul experienced what we all experience – attraction to and hatred for our sins. 

If knowledge of the truth alone were strong enough to guide our actions, then life would be easy. We’d all be saints! But we need more than knowledge; we also need grace. 

We will only experience true and lasting freedom when Christ has full command of our heart.

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So, where do I experience this tension in my life? When do I do what I “hate”?

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Jesus does not come to judge or condemn us. Rather, he comes to forgive, to heal, to inspire, and to change us.

May we be patient with ourselves – and others – as we merge evermore with Christ. As Paul himself prayed, “May God who has begun this good work within you bring it to fulfillment.” 

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Image credits: (1) Saylorville Church (2) Borivali Assembly (3) FreePik