First Reading - Romans 9:1-5
Gospel - Luke 14:1-6
The first reading is charged with deep sympathy of Paul for his people. He feels the failure of Israel to recognize the Messiah in Jesus. He expresses his desire to do anything for his people to save them from condemnation, even he expresses his willingness to suffer condemnation for them. This is the extent of sympathy of Paul for his people. However, Paul also acknowledges the preeminence of Israel that God has shown right from the beginning through the law, prophets and the patriarchs. They all reveal and guide them to recognize Christ in Jesus, but still they failed to do so. In fact, Paul stresses that Jesus was one of their race. Nevertheless the failure of Israel to see the Messiah in Jesus comes as a surprise to him. All the same, the failure to recognize the Messiah in Jesus, as Paul mentions, is a great failure on the part of Israel because Jesus is God.
In the gospel, we see Jesus was invited to a Pharisee’s house, and since it was the Sabbath, the food had been cooked the day before the Sabbath (because cooking was also counted as work), and kept hot till the Sabbath. During the meal in a Pharisees’ house Jesus felt sympathy for a man suffering from dropsy (distension of abdomen with water, usually the result of liver and kidney infection from recurrent attacks of malarial fever, common in Palestine)and, after asking the lawyers and Pharisees whether it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath, and getting silence for an answer, healed him. For the Pharisees, this was a gross violation of Sabbath law. No wonder, they considered Jesus as a reckless Sabbath-breaker for doing seven healings on Sabbath! Jesus challenged them, asking if they would not save their son or ox on a Sabbath if the child or the animal had an accidental fall into a well, a rhetorical question for which the answer was - yes. They remained silent.
The Sabbath was intended by God to be: 1) a day of worship and of praising and thanking God for His goodness, providence, mercy, and blessings; 2) a day for teaching God’s law to the children; 3) a day of rest from normal work, 4) a day for socializing with the members of the family and neighbors and 5), a day for doing works of charity in the community.
Jesus transcends the external observance of the law of Sabbath and gives applied meaning to it in relation to one another. The law of Sabbath invited people to grow in the love of God and neighbour simultaneously but it got deviated from the right implications. Jesus redirects people to live it in their relationship with one another. As a matter of fact, he stresses that our love for one another should not be confined to mere sympathy for one another but must be expressed in empathy or loving care of one another.
Dear friends, we need to observe Sunday as the Lord’s Day by actively participating in the Eucharistic celebration and various ministries in the parish, by sending the children to Sunday schools, and by instructing them in the Catholic Faith and by socializing with the members of our family and neighbors.
We are also encouraged to engage in active works of charity in our parish and community – visiting the sick and praying for their recovery, comforting them, and encouraging them with words and deeds and, if possible and needed, with financial help.
Let our Christian love be expressed in loving and caring service of one another.
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