23rd Week, Monday, Sept 11

 23rd Week, Monday, Sept 11

Colossians 1:24 - 2:3 / Luke 6:6-11

Paul suffers for the Colossians; I suffer gladly

Author W. O. Saunders has these childhood memories of his father: “Thad seen him mend his shoes and toil for an hour drawing rusty nails out of old boards to get nails to patch the woodshed or garden fence... that I might wear better shoes than he, and have the leisure that never was his.” Many of us can recall similar sacrifices that our own parents made for us. Yet they endured these sacrifices gladly. In a similar way, Paul suffered gladly for the Christian people to whom he ministered.

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How willingly do we suffer to help others? Every family should prominently display in their home a plaque that says, “Love entails suffering.”

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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.

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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!

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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