oct 29 taken 2006

 

oct 29 taken

 

oct 30 2006

 

Oct 30 2006

Eph 4:32–5:8 Brothers and sisters: Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ. Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma. Immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be mentioned among you, as is fitting among holy ones, no obscenity or silly or suggestive talk, which is out of place, but instead, thanksgiving. Be sure of this, that no immoral or impure or greedy person, that is, an idolater, has any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty arguments, for because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the disobedient. So do not be associated with them. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.

Ps 1:1-2, 3, 4 and 6 R. (see Eph. 5:1) Behave like God as his very dear children.
Blessed the man who follows notthe counsel of the wickedNor walks in the way of sinners,nor sits in the company of the insolent,But delights in the law of the LORDand meditates on his law day and night.
R. Behave like God as his very dear children.
He is like a treeplanted near running water,That yields its fruit in due season,and whose leaves never fade.Whatever he does, prospers.
R. Behave like God as his very dear children.
Not so the wicked, not so;they are like chaff which the wind drives away.For the LORD watches over the way of the just,but the way of the wicked vanishes.
R. Behave like God as his very dear children.

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 mangerand 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.

Jesus cured the crippled woman in the temple on the sabbath. Was she crippled by her sins? Whatever the cause of her infirmity, Jesus had compassion for her suffering and wished to relieve her suffering on the spot and not wait until the sabbath was over. The leaders of the synagogue were indignant that Jesus had done this healing act on the sabbath. The goodness of the act was not as important to them as the following of the law. When Jesus explained the compassion and reason for healing and setting this woman free from suffering the crowd rejoiced but his adversaries were humiliated. Embarrassment can be a social emotion, a cue to me that there is something that I have done that is wrong. I pray that if I have that sense when being taught by someone who is doing God's will that I will accept the correction with love and continue on God's path and not reject it and live as the hypocrites of the temple did.

The first reading is about the way of life of the Christian community. There is to be no talk of immorality. This is for me the way of chastity which is in all ways not making light of anything that is off the path of God's way and will. Our culture and times are filled with ways to joke about the immoral and this only lowers those involved and in my opinion pulls them from God's way. I do not consider myself anything other than equal to others but very determined to remain on God's path to eternal life and love and peace in this world and the next as a daily way.