Breaking the Word

30^th Week in Ord. Time, Monday – 25^th October 2021 — Gospel:    Lk 13,10-17

Inheritress Faithfulness

Jesus spoke of the crippled woman as “a daughter of Abraham.” Therefore, she was more precious in His eyes than the ox or ass about which He chided with the Pharisees.  This title by which Jesus called her suggests that she was one of the inner circle of pious Israelites like Simeon, Anna (Lk 2,25-38) and Zacchaeus (Lk 19,9). Being a descendant of Abraham, she possessed his faith, and because of it, she was in the Lord’s house (synagogue) on the Lord’s day (Sabbath). As an inheritress of Abraham, she was in the right place to be healed. Although a firm believer of Yahweh, she was afflicted for a long time. However, her painful malady did not keep her from attending the synagogue. She hoped for ordinary blessings that will sustain her through daily struggles and so chose to remain in the synagogue for eighteen years. She kept moving on week by week, finding difficult to walk, difficult in finding a place to sit. However, her daily fidelity turned out to be an unexpected blessing on this sabbath. It is because, she accepted her sufferings and offered it to the Lord as sacrifice in this holy place.  If she would have missed this Sabbath to come to God’s house, we would never remember her fidelity and the reward of blessings.

30^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B – 24^th October 2021 — Gospel: Mark 10,46-52

The Obvious Question

This blind man was brought to Jesus, and Jesus asks him a question: What do you want me to do for you? Was Jesus serious? Wasn’t it obvious what this man wanted? He had heard about Jesus’s miracles, and he wanted a miracle for himself; he wanted to regain his sight. So why did Jesus ask the question? Maybe it was just a conversation starter. But maybe it was a sincere query. Maybe Jesus respected this man so much that he was actually giving him a chance to exercise his own human dignity by making a free, explicit request of the Lord.

God wants to be involved in our lives, but he also wants us to live our lives to the full, and that means taking responsibility for ourselves, our actions, our desires, our decisions. Certainly, he knows what we need even better than we know ourselves. But he didn’t create us to be robots, programmed by our Creator down to the slightest behavior. He created us to be co-creators, to be creative, to take ownership of the gifts and opportunities we have been given. Without Christ and his grace, we can do nothing (John 15:5), but without exercising our own freedom and choosing to enter into friendship with him, no matter the cost, we cannot access that grace: If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me (Matthew 19:21).

Our Lord’s interaction with Bartimaeus is a pattern of his interaction with each one of us: Jesus hears the cry of our hearts that suffer in this fallen world; he arranges for us to come to him, to encounter him, and he invites us into his grace; but then he patiently and respectfully awaits our faith-filled response. Will he wait in vain?