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Today's Gospel
Take Back Your Sabbath
4 min
Gospel
Lk 14:1-6
One sabbath when he went to dine at the house of a ruler who belonged to the Pharisees, they were watching him. And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy. And Jesus spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath, or not?” But they were silent. Then he took him and healed him, and let him go. And he said to them, “Which of you, having an ass or an ox that has fallen into a well, will not immediately pull him out on a sabbath day?” And they could not reply to this.
Readings are from Dynamic Catholic’s New Testament Bible: RSV Catholic Edition
It’s time to take back your life.
It’s time to slow down to the speed of joy.
All revolutions have a moment when they begin. This is your moment.
Transcript
Take Back Your Sabbath
So we're back to the Sabbath. Obviously, it is central to the Jewish faith, even to this day. It is central to the Christian faith. And the Jews, they took very seriously what was permitted on the Sabbath and what was offensive to God on the Sabbath. The thing that jumps out at me today is, yeah, this is nuts. This is insanity. This is like, okay, yeah, it's Sunday or the Sabbath, Saturday in their case. And yeah, you're not meant to work. And yeah, you might consider healing work, but how is it possible in any conception of a human worldview that healing somebody has a horrific condition on the Sabbath is offensive to God? And you've got to then ask the question, what is your image of God? What do you think of God that God would say, "Yeah, no, that person's in massive pain, but let's leave that until tomorrow." It makes no sense, right? It's clear, it makes no sense. And we might say, well, they're going too far, too far with the rules, too far with the rigidity, too far with this. And what strikes me today is that we're going too far in the other direction right now. It's like Sabbath, people do anything and everything, and not the things that God is very clear that He wants us to be doing on the Sabbath.
And so, yes, we might look at this and say, "Insanity," but I think we also need to learn to look at the Sabbath of the world today and say, "Well, that's also insanity." It might be a different type of insanity, but it's still insanity. And so how, out of all of this insanity, do we draw a new life-giving vision of the Sabbath for you, for me, for your family, for my family, for your parish, for my parish. How do we do that? I spoke a lot about the Sabbath in Slowing Down to the Speed of Joy. And the idea of, okay, yeah, you might have to work your shift as a nurse on a Sunday night. Okay, I get that. Make your Sabbath from Saturday night to Sunday night. But let's get more intentional about the Sabbath. Let's really start to dial in on what kind of Sabbath is God calling us to.
Have a great day. And remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.
