23rd Week, Monday, Sept 6
Colossians 1:24 - 2:3 / Luke 6:6-11
Paul suffers for the Colossians; I suffer gladly
***
How willingly do we suffer to help others? Every family
should prominently display in their home a plaque that says, “Love entails
suffering.”
***
In the first reading of today, we hear Paul speak with
conviction and enthusiasm about his mission of preaching the gospel. It is a
glorious task. We can feel how the gospel fills him and has become the sole
meaning of his life. Let Christ also be the meaning of our lives. If so, we
cannot but preach to him by our words and our way of life.
***
It is strange how, as we read in the gospel, faithful,
practicing religious people, like the scribes and Pharisees – the regular
churchgoers of their day – were a big obstacle to the work of Jesus. They are
upset and angry because Jesus cures a man with a withered hand on the day of
the Lord. Jesus came to do good and to preserve life, as he said, to carry out
a mission of love and life, and these cannot be adequately expressed in laws
and commands. We may and should do good also on Sundays!
***
It would be strange to hear people say that they like to suffer. We might think that they are a bit masochistic or something. Because suffering is synonymous with pain, and whether it is suffering or pain, it is a physical evil that afflicts the beauty of humanity. Yet in the 1st reading, St. Paul makes an astonishing statement: It makes me happy to suffer for you.
And he gives the reason for this - in his sufferings, he makes up all that has still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of His body, the Church. But St. Paul struggled on, even though wearily because he was helped by the power of Christ which drives him irresistibly. In other words, it was the power of Christ's love that made St. Paul accept suffering gladly and lovingly for the sake of the Church.
Even for Jesus, when He did the good and right deed, what He got in return was indifference to say the least, and on the extreme end, a murderous plot against Him. Yet Jesus accepted that persecution and suffering because He came to do good and to save what was lost.
***
When Jesus entered the synagogue that sabbath, he knew it
was not going to be a meeting for prayer to fill their minds with God’s word to
guide them in the coming week. He knew he entered a trap and he entered it
fearlessly. Ostentatiously, they had placed a cripple in the first row as a
bait. Would he cure on a sabbath? Jesus did not flinch. When it is the question
of truth, there can be no compromise. In teaching the truth, there can be no
escape. He knew the danger. He could without any difficulty have waited till
the next day. When the truth is challenged, Jesus acts. Luke shows himself
again as the Physician. Matthew and Mark also have this story. Luke alone
mentions it was the right hand. This matters to the physician. The right hand is
the hand that is the most important to the skillful worker. It is the ability to
earn his daily bread that Jesus restored. The right arm had till now just been
limply hanging down. Jesus asked him to stretch it out. He did and was cured.
Teaching in life situations was the favorite educational method of Jesus.
***
Today's readings remind us that when we do the good and right thing, not only may we not be thanked and rewarded, we may even find ourselves being criticized and ridiculed. Yet we must keep doing the good and right thing, even when we face opposition and suffering because the power of Christ's love will drive us on, just as it was for St. Paul. We must remember that suffering and pain, and even evil, is not going to be eternal.
What is eternal is the power of Christ's love that will
drive us to do the good and right thing on earth, so as to reach the glory that
is waiting for us above.
***
Opening Prayer
Lord our God, in your Son Jesus Christ you have revealed to
us your treasures of wisdom and love. His life and his gospel are so full and
rich that we can never exhaust their wisdom. Let it be a life and wisdom in
which we grow day after day. Make us complete in Christ, that we may hasten the
coming of his kingdom in ourselves and among people far and near. We ask you
this through Christ our Lord. Amen