A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. On a Sabbath day notice that. Sabbath day. You're not supposed to do any work. Our lord was teaching in one of the synagogues.
There was a woman there who, for eighteen years, had been possessed by a spirit which drained her strength. She was badly stooped, quite incapable of standing up straight. When our lord saw this lady, he called her to himself. Notice, no one asked to do anything. He called him called her to himself and said to her, woman, you are free of your infirmity.
Notice he didn't say free of a spirit. He said you're free of whatever is ailing you. He laid his hands on her, and at once she stood up straight and began thanking God. Now that's him. Notice not him, God.
She recognized the hand of God. Well, when the chief of the synagogue, the good man that he was, saw this, that Christ did a miracle on the Sabbath day and that's worked. He was very indignant that Jesus should have healed on the Sabbath. It was not a word about the woman being cured. And so he said to his congregation, there are six days for working.
Come on those days to be cured, not on the Sabbath. I like that. I hope they laughed him to scorn. Anyway, the lord said in reply, oh, you hypocrites, liars, which of you does not let his ox or his ass out the stall on the Sabbath to give it some water? Should not this daughter of Abraham hear who has been in bondage of Satan, we're back to that idea of spirit, for eighteen years have been released from her shackles on the Sabbath?
At these words, his opponents were covered with confusion, and meanwhile, everybody else rejoiced at the marvels that Jesus was accomplishing. The gospel, the good news of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. This is a very dramatic incident in our lord's life, and there's a great deal here that doesn't meet the eye. We don't know the whole story.
Of all now, let me let let's be very straight about this. There's nothing wrong in the head of the synagogue defending the rights of the lord to one day a week. Let's get that perfectly straight. See, it's very easy to ridicule him, but the point is what he was doing on principle was right, perfectly right. God said after he had made creation that he's gonna have a day of rest.
And he says, remember to keep holy the Sabbath day. Well, that's a Saturday, but after the resurrection, it was changed to a Sunday. So the rights of of God to have one day out of the seven especially dedicated to him and faithfully faithfully kept for him, there's nothing wrong with that principle at all. That out of the three hundred and sixty five days of a year, that god should be especially remembered on 52 of them. So let's set that perfectly straight.
Today, there's a tendency to eliminate the Sabbath, to look upon now I'm talking about work for hire. In many people's lives, the seven days of the week are equal. Stores are open, everything. I remember the blue laws. I'm no I'm no defender of blue laws.
I remember distinctly over in Chestertown where a young man from Baltimore went to visit friends over in Chestertown. And on Sunday morning, a very quiet, peaceful Sunday, nothing happening. This young man who didn't go to church was sitting out on the front porch of his friend's house. A policeman came along and said, what are you doing sitting out here? Aren't you why aren't you in church?
He says, I don't go to church. The guy the policeman pulled his gun and killed him because there was a blue law over there that said if you don't go to church, you have to stay indoors. I read that that happened in my lifetime. Baltimore had blue laws. No baseball on Sunday.
Well, you see, from that extreme crazy attitude, we have now come to the attitude where suddenly it doesn't make any difference. Just go to church for fifty five or sixty minutes and that takes care of it. Then you go to your job. You go to the stores. And some people have a very sensitive conscience about this.
So standing up for the right of god to at least one day of the week, there's nothing wrong in that in principle. But, here comes the old bunch, you know, but any principle, any principle at all carried to an extreme is the worst of errors. Worst. Worst. Worst.
Example, you say, what's the first commandment? To love god with your whole heart, your whole soul, and all of that. First commandment. Supposing you stop there and forget loving loving your your neighbor. Neighbor.
Forget loving yourself because you gotta love yourself before you love your neighbor. You see what I mean? The worst schisms, the worst the worst heresies in the Catholic church, they came from within, remember. All the great heresies didn't come from outside from enemies of the church. They came from within, from the loyal sons and daughters just as they are today.
The worst heresies simply pick up one truth, nibble at it, take off a chunk of it, and then run with it. They're the worst ones. If they were all see, there's nothing in this world that's all wrong or all false or all in error. When people say, well, you know, there's something to be said for that. That makes me feel nauseated.
It's so commonplace. Everything has something about it. If it is, it is. If it is, it's a creature of God. Therefore, there's some good in it.
That goes from my old friend the devil. He's not all bad. There's no principle of evil in the world. As CS Lewis says, the devil can't create anything, not even a single pleasure. So what's so what's the big issue here?
The big issue that this poor this man who's running the synagogue, who's standing up for god's rights even at the expense of being unpopular, let's give him a couple stars for it. But let's also fault him for not having a human heart, for not having some common sense, plain common sense. Think of a woman who's been an invalid of some sort. I think of my old friend, a jeweler up on 12th Street in Brooklyn. The man was so bent over that all he ever could see was the ground.
He was bent almost at a 90 degree. Now imagine a man who was take this woman for eighteen years, was bent over and then suddenly, without a word on her part, she didn't ask for anything. She just came to the synagogue. Jesus signals her out. Jesus says, come on over here.
Jesus puts his hand on her. She straightens up immediately. Immediately straightens up. Imagine what that woman must have it's like a blind man having his eyes open and he sees the world in an instant. Can you imagine the joy, the exaltation, the inexpressible feelings of that person?
And then to said, look, when you wanna be cured, please come around here seven six days of the week. Don't come on the Sabbath. It's a joke. They should have laughed him to score. He was so dumb.
See, I mean, plain dumb. And we all are more or less dumb because so seldom in life do we have a clear view of Jesus Christ. God. God. We are you know, you can get so busy doing things for Christ that you forget Christ.
You can be so faithful, a parent or a son or a daughter or a wage earner or what have you, so embroiled as you have to be that you forget why you're doing it. Why? If there's a law which says I have to give thee one day a week to god, which we call the Sabbath, why does that law exist? What's the source of the law? What makes me obligated?
Why am I obligated? See, people don't ask these questions. They just do things blindly. By we, I mean all of us. That's we we like to do things without worrying about them.
Just tell me what you wanna do. Don't tell me the whys and the wherefores. How many people will read the new encyclical? It's terribly hard reading and it's long. It's involved.
How many will read it? How many will even see it? And it's all about law. It's all about God and man's relationship to God, not man's relationship to other men but to God. You see, you you've got to main thing about being a Christian is to realize, first of all, that Christ is God and him alone do you serve God.
In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen.