Set Free from our Infirmities

In today's responsorial psalm, Psalm 68, we pray: "God is a saving God for us," and proclaim that "God arises; his enemies are scattered, and those who  hate him flee before him. But the just rejoice and exult before God; they are glad and rejoice."  Our response to the psalm is: Our God is the God of salvation."  Jesus, who is God, reveals God's saving nature to us in today's Gospel, Luke 13: 10-17.  A woman crippled for 18 years enters the synagogue. She "was  bent over, completely incapable of standing erect." As soon as Jesus sees her, he calls her over to Him, lays His hands on her and says:  "Woman, you are set free of your infirmity."

That is our God: compassionate, tender, caring, ready to heal us of our infirmities, wanting to set us free, even before we ask.   We are that woman! We are also servants of Jesus, entrusted with the same healing powers with which Jesus set this woman free! Crippling spirits, that of others and our own, can be healed by our gentleness, our caring words, our forgiving words, our words of compassion, our understanding.

Jesus went about doing good. And as He did so, there were, many times, persons in the crowd who challenged him, as in this case with the leader of the synagogue:  Indignant that Jesus healed this woman on the sabbath, the man said to the crowd: "There are six days when work should be done.
Come on those days to be cured, not on the sabbath day." At that moment, I suspect, "cold water" was thrown on the rejoicing crowd.  Has there ever been a time when you or I made some disapproving comment and the entire exciting crowd became silent, as though hit with a bomb!

Jesus, though was not silenced. He recognizes hypocrisy in us when He sees it. He said to the leader of the synagogue and to the crowd colluding with him:  "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 from this bondage?  

Are there times when you and I object to the good done by another, times when we apply the letter of the law to others and miss the spirit's call to be compassionate, understanding and act out of love?  Have we been hypocritical in our demands on others when we, too, have done exactly what we object in another?  You and I need to remember that, before God, we are not any better than anyone else. Like everyone else, we need God's salvation.  May God, in Christ Jesus,  set us free of whatever binds us from standing tall in God's love and mercy!

An Attending, Caring, Rescuing God

Today’s first reading, Ez. 34: 11-16, opens with the Lord saying to us: “I myself will look after and tend my sheep….”  I am touched by the humility, the love, the caring, and the commitment of our God.  Unlike so many parents today who turn their children over to guardians or nanny’s while they go off to do whatever, not even around to prepare meals for their children, to offer a shoulder to cry on, to provide guidance in the midst of overwhelming confusion,  or, simply, to  tuck them in bed at night, God says “No, I am going to tend my sheep. I’m not turning them over to anyone else.” 

When I personalize that message, the Lord God says to me:  “Dorothy Ann, I am taking care of you. I am tending to your needs. I am going to be at your side when disaster strikes.  Your safety is my safety. Your well-being is my well-being. Your healing is my healing.  Your daily needs are my daily needs.  That you are safe from the Evil One is my concern.  I am in charge of your safety and I will never leave you at anytime on your life’s journey.”

I encourage you to personalize this message as well. What is God saying to you?

What a humble, awesome, caring and faithful God!  There is no other God!  Safety  exists only in God and no other!  We have men and women,  young and old, children, adolescents and adults who reflect this trait of God but no one equals our God! Any rescue accomplished by humankind is God working through those courageous persons!  We see God at work through human beings rescuing persons trapped in collapsed buildings, pinned by fallen debris from fires, tornadic and hurricane winds, drowning in flood waters, or in danger anywhere in the world from whatever threatening force. God is there tending His sheep!

Where do you find God tending His sheep?