Daily Mass Gospel Reflection- Executinv The Law

Word on Fire Ministry ^ | 9.11.23 | Bishop Robert Barron

[MurphsLaw]

Luke 6:6-11

Friends, in today’s Gospel,
the Pharisees plot against Jesus
because he healed a man on the sabbath.

Christians know something of God from sources philosophical,
mythological, historical, and poetic,
but their deepest grasp of the nature of God comes from
Jesus of Nazareth, the Logos,
the spoken Word of the Father.
This Jesus was the friend of the marginalized,
the healer of the disabled and the sick,
the advocate of the forgotten, the forgiver of sins.
His mission was to carry the fire of divine mercy
to all those who were cut off from it.

In doing so, he excited the wrath and opposition of the powerful,
all those whose status depended upon an ideology
of violence, differentiation, and exclusion.
When he was born, Herod trembled,
and when he came on the public scene,
Pharisees schemed and protectors of the establishment
plotted to do away with him.

In the end,
he was put to death by a conspiracy of the secular
and religious authorities, and,
in his moment of greatest danger,
he was betrayed, denied, and abandoned by even his dearest friends.
Jesus did not simply die; he was executed, eliminated.
And he died precisely because of the way he lived.

[MurphsLaw]

+++ On a certain sabbath Jesus went
into the synagogue and taught,
and there was a man there whose
right hand was withered.
The scribes and the Pharisees
watched him closely
to see if he would cure on the sabbath
so that they might discover a reason to accuse him.
But he realized their intentions
and said to the man with the
withered hand,
"Come up and stand before us."
And he rose and stood there.
Then Jesus said to them,
"I ask you, is it lawful to do
good on the sabbath
rather than to do evil,
to save life rather than to destroy it?"
Looking around at them all,
he then said to him,
"Stretch out your hand."
He did so and his hand was restored.
But they became enraged
and discussed together
what they might do to Jesus.+++