When Jesus saw her, He called to her and said, “Woman, you are set free of your infirmity.” – Luke 13:12

       I was already wide awake but couldn’t get up because my husband’s embrace caught me. To savor that embrace and so as not to wake him, I said my morning prayers while lying in bed.

       During the supplication part, the Holy Spirit impressed upon me to pray for my family and friends who are married and have been praying for years to have children. I know exactly how they feel because my husband and I prayed and waited for almost seven years before we had our only son.

       I pleaded to God to grant them their most fervent desire to have their own kids. Then I prayed for those who were seriously ill — with cancer, trouble in major organs of their bodies, MS, lupus, those needing organ transplants, etc. Then, as if on a screen, a list of people in the Bible that Jesus instantly healed flashed before me: the woman with hemorrhage, the cripple at Bethesda, the paralytic, the blind man, the lepers, the centurion’s servant and this woman who bled for 18 years. God assured me that whatever He had done before, He would still do today. With faith, He can set us free from whatever kind of infirmities we have. Sol M. Saura (sol_saura@yahoo.com)

Reflection: Are you praying for the healing of any disability, illness or weakness? Trust in the Lord with all your heart that He shall grant your most fervent prayers.

Lord, remove fear and doubt in our minds and hearts and grant us the grace to believe that You have the ultimate power to heal us.

Blessed Bartholomew of Vicenza, pray for us.

This text is clear about the seriousness of tolerating sin in our lives — we become unfit for the Kingdom of God. One of the challenges in life is maintaining a desire to move forward in our faith in God. It can become very difficult if we allow sin to get a hold in our lives. We should seek to repent often, particularly when temptations are many.

32 Brothers and sisters: Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ. 5: 1 Be imitators of God, as beloved children, 2 and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma. 3 Immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be mentioned among you, as is fitting among holy ones, 4 no obscenity or silly or suggestive talk, which is out of place, but instead, thanksgiving. 5 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. 6 Let no one deceive you with empty arguments, for because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the disobedient. 7 So do not be associated with them. 8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.

R: Behave like God as his very dear children.

1 Blessed the man who follows not the counsel of the wicked nor walks in the way of sinners, nor sits in the company of the insolent, 2 but delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on his law day and night. (R) 3 He is like a tree planted near running water, that yields its fruit in due season, and whose leaves never fade. Whatever he does, prospers. (R) 4 Not so the wicked, not so; they are like chaff which the wind drives away. 6 For the Lord watches over the way of the just, but the way of the wicked vanishes. (R)

Hypocrisy is an abhorrent reality. There is little worse than a hypocrite when it comes to destroying a community. Hypocrisy strikes at the very heart of our responsibility to love and serve one another. The hypocrite is one who thinks he is above the law. This idea can only lead to disaster and sin.

Your word, O Lord, is truth; consecrate us in the truth.

10 Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the sabbath. 11 And a woman was there who for eighteen years had been crippled by a spirit; she was bent over, completely incapable of standing erect. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called to her and said, “Woman, you are set free of your infirmity.” 13 He laid his hands on her, and she at once stood up straight and glorified God. 14 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.” 15 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? 16 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?” 17 When he said this, all his adversaries were humiliated; and the whole crowd rejoiced at all the splendid deeds done by him.

think:  One of the challenges in life is maintaining a desire to move forward in our faith in God.

READ THE BIBLE IN ONE YEAR Isaiah 17-20

LIKE A TREE PLANTED NEAR RUNNING WATER

The First Reading today is full of spiritual insights. Paul gives a list of virtues as well as vices. He paints a situation marked by light as well as darkness.

       To be realistic, life in the world as we know it now is precisely this — a situation of lights and shadows. Every day, we see people who show kindness, compassion and forgiveness. Time and again, one chances upon very courteous drivers who don’t act like they owned the thoroughfares, or that the world owes them the courtesy of always giving way to them. A number of times, honest taxi drivers turn up unexpectedly, giving back something valuable that some harried passenger left in their cabs. Every day, I see young men and children pushing carts, eking out an honest living through back-breaking jobs.

       We hear, too, of things we’d rather not talk about — the proclivities of the flesh, that even men of the cloth are never immune to, which Paul referred to as “immorality and impurity, or obscenity, or silly or suggestive talk.”

       The list on both ends is long. But it is not the list that is of paramount importance. What matters most in the end is the one who can motivate us either to heighten those virtues, or play down those vices. And according to Paul, all this is possible.

       Yes — and here, we revert back to yesterday’s big word, mimetes or model. So how can we be kind, compassionate and forgiving? Do as Christ did, Paul says. How are we to deal with the shadowy and dark elements that keep on surfacing in our lives? Focus on God and work on becoming imitators of Him, living in love as “Christ loved us.”

       A solid tradition of spirituality teaches us how to remain focused on the Lord. It is called meditation or contemplation, or at the very least, a habit of spiritual reading. The saints counseled it. Today’s spiritual gurus harp on it. With constant nourishment such as this, we’d be like a tree planted near running water. Fr. Chito Dimaranan, SDB

REFLECTION QUESTION: Do you nourish yourself with God’s Word every day?

Lord, help me to build up Your virtues in my life and to turn away from any vices that I have.