WOMAN, YOU ARE SET FREE OF YOUR INFIRMITY

Eph 4,32-5,8; Ps 1; Lk 13,10-17
29 OCTOBER

It is right to ask oneself: why only for the third commandment do we have such great terror for its transgression as to reach even to limit or prohibit also the most legitimate and holy things? The answer comes to us from the Second Book of Chronicles.

Early and often did the Lord, the God of their fathers, send his messengers to them, for he had compassion on his people and his dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God, despised his warnings, and scoffed at his prophets, until the anger of the Lord against his people was so inflamed that there was no remedy. Then he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who slew their young men in their own sanctuary building, sparing neither young man nor maiden, neither the aged nor the decrepit; he delivered all of them over into his grip. All the utensils of the house of God, the large and the small, and the treasures of the Lord’s house and of the king and his princes, all these he brought to Babylon. They burnt the house of God, tore down the walls of Jerusalem, set all its palaces afire, and destroyed all its precious objects. Those who escaped the sword he carried captive to Babylon, where they became his and his sons’ servants until the kingdom of the Persians came to power. All this was to fulfil the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah: “Until the land has retrieved its lost Sabbaths, during all the time it lies waste it shall have rest while seventy years are fulfilled” (2Chr 26: 15-22).

It is as if exile had been caused by the non-observance of the Sabbath. Nehemiah does not want a second exile and makes a commitment so that the Sabbath is kept holy.

In those days I perceived that men in Judah were treading the winepresses on the Sabbath; that they were bringing in sheaves of grain, loading them on their asses, together with wine, grapes, figs, and every other kind of burden, and bringing them to Jerusalem on the sabbath day. I warned them to sell none of these victuals. In Jerusalem itself the Tyrians who were resident there were importing fish and every other kind of merchandise and selling it to the Judahites on the Sabbath. I took the nobles of Judah to task, demanding of them: “What is this evil thing that you are doing, profaning the Sabbath day? Did not your fathers act in this same way, with the result that our God has brought all this evil upon us and upon this city? Would you add to the wrath against Israel by once more profaning the Sabbath?” When the shadows were falling on the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I ordered the doors to be closed and forbade them to be reopened till after the Sabbath. I posted some of my own men at the gates so that no burden might enter on the Sabbath day. The merchants and sellers of various kinds of merchandise spent the night once or twice outside Jerusalem, but then I warned them, saying to them: “Why do you spend the night alongside the wall? If you keep this up, I will lay hands on you!” From that time on, they did not return on the Sabbath. Then I ordered the Levites to purify themselves and to go and watch the gates, so that the Sabbath day might be kept holy (Ne 13,15-22).

The terror of exile caused the truth of the Sabbath to be entirely falsified. Jesus came to give his divine truth to the whole Law. He knows what the Father wants from men. For this he proclaims himself Lord of the Sabbath. On Sabbaths one can love.

He 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 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 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.

The full heart of God lives the Law according to the heart of God. The heart of sin lives the Law from its falsity. Jesus with a very pure heart gives most pure truth to the Law.

Mother of the Lord, Angels and Saints, make us a pure heart to live the Law in truth.