Daily Gospel Reflection – Monday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
October 25, 2021
Monday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
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.
Source: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Bishop Robert Barron
Friends, today’s Gospel gives us a wonderful story of Jesus performing a miracle, something he still does today. I want to draw your attention to an extraordinary book by Protestant scholar Craig Keener titled Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts. The most surprising section of the book contains his reports of some of the millions of miracles that come, even today, from all over the world.
I’ll relay to you just one case from Keener’s book. Ed Wilkinson’s eight-year-old son was found to have two holes in his heart. Surgery was scheduled and, while he was waiting, Ed prayed, but he was struggling with doubts. When his son asked whether he was going to die, his father was honest with him.
Ed’s pastor decided to hold a prayer service for the boy, during which hundreds gathered to pray for his recovery. The day of the surgery arrived, and Ed was told the surgery would take four to six hours. After about a half hour, the surgeon entered the waiting area, and Ed feared for the worst. Instead, the doctor had inexplicable news: there were no holes in the boy’s heart. They had simply closed up.
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