Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?

6 SEPTEMBER (Lk 6,1-5)

Sole interpreter of the Word of God is its Author. It was written through the work of the Holy Spirit, it must be read and interpreted through the work of the same Holy Spirit. In the Word all of God is contained in his holiness, grace, truth, faithfulness, mercy, justice, compassion and love for his creature. When the mind of man gets possession of the Word of his Lord and interprets it without the light of wisdom and intelligence of the Holy Spirit, always gives it human, wrong and false interpretations. Thus, the Word given for the greater good of a man becomes the Word against a man. It is no longer the Word of life, but of death. It does not resurrected, but kills.

In the mind of God the Sabbath was a sign of himself. He had created heaven and earth in six days. The seventh he had rested. He had lived it in the contemplation of the work performed. He had seen, observed, studied and examined it in its entirety and had found it very good. On the day Sabbath, a man is also invited to abstain from servile work to devote himself to the contemplation of the beauty of God which is all in his Law, in his requirements and in his statutes. Nothing is better, more beautiful and more holy than the Law. All the knowledge, intelligence and wisdom of God who gave it, is contained in it. Men must become a party of this beauty.

Only if a man will become a part of this divine beauty, transforming his life into this beauty not only through contemplation, but also through the way of his compliance with every one of its requirements, he will truly and holily be in the image of this beauty and in its likeness. He will have attained the end of his life which is only one: reaching the divine perfection according to which he was created. But man also lives on Sabbath. On the Sabbath he must also eat and feed himself. Even animals need to be cared for and fed on the Sabbath. Life comes before everything else. On the contrary, the Jews had placed the Sabbath before life itself. They had made the Sabbath without the man, destroying the Sabbath for man.

Again Jesus cannot explain the Jews the true meaning of the Sabbath. He must confine himself to justifying the apparent transgression made ​​by his disciples. He must save them and not the Sabbath. The Sabbath will be saved in other ways. What to do? He uses an event of Ancient Scripture. He appeals to David who consumed by hunger obtains from the priest to eat the bread of the offering, a most holy thing that only priests could eat. If before the hunger of David the priest abolishes a ritual law, even for the disciples the ritual law of the Sabbath can be considered repealed. Always must life prevail over death. Never the contrary, death over life.

While he was going through a field of grain on a Sabbath, his disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them. Some Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” Jesus said to them in reply, “Have you not read what David did when he and those (who were) with him were hungry? (How) he went into the house of God, took the bread of offering, which only the priests could lawfully eat, ate of it, and shared it with his companions.” Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

Jesus claims for himself the lordship of the Sabbath. Of course, he must not have uttered these words publicly. They would have sounded like a blasphemy. For the Jews, only their God was the lord of the Sabbath. It was up to them the task of observing it in the most scrupulous, possible way. Proclaiming himself Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus reveals that He is the intelligence, the wisdom and the knowledge of its true meaning. The Holy Spirit that lives in Him is the only one empowered to interpret it according to truth. First, He abolishes the Sabbath. It is substituted by Sunday, the first day of the week. On this day a man no longer contemplates the works of the old creation, but of the new one that is fulfilled in Jesus. On this day He raises and creates the new man. In it he carries out a great work of restoration to the faith of his disciples. For Him it is a day of spiritual work.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints give us the intelligence of the Spirit.