Daily Gospel Reflection – Monday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
October 30, 2023
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.
*United States Conference of Catholic
Bishop Robert Barron
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus heals a woman who had been crippled for eighteen years. Can we see the power that flows from faith in rather obvious and spectacular ways?
Going back to Jesus himself, of course, and up through so many of the saints in the tradition, you will see the power of faith manifested in healing. It’s as though a Christian becomes a conduit of the divine power, as though God’s power, which creates and sustains the cosmos, can flow through the person of faith for healing.
We can also experience spiritual healing of the soul. Its source is the energy, the power, the Spirit, the new being, that appeared in and through Jesus Christ. We heal the soul by bringing to bear the salvator, the healer, the one who in his person reconciled God and us, who opened the soul to the divine power. Where is this new being available? In Scripture, the liturgy, and the sacraments.
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