Kaitha 1stS,July 11,10

Kaitha 1^st S,July11,10

(Lk.14:1-14)

Jesus uses always the occasion of meals for teaching. He is present at the meals not just for dining alone but for teaching too. Most of the meals described in the Gospels are occasions for Jesus to reveal some thing about Himself or about His Father or about His mission. In today’s Gospel, we find Jesus at the house of a prominent Pharisee who invites him for meals. But the reputation of Jesus as a healer goes before him and there is a man afflicted with dropsy, waiting to be healed by Jesus. The dropsy was thought to be incurable. But it is not compassion for the man suffering from an incurable sickness but suspicion and anger that fill the hearts of the Pharisees. They were waiting how Jesus would be responding to the appeal of the sick man. In their narrow minds, they think that Jesus should not cure the man on the Sabbath but,instead, should ask him to come on another day.

For Jesus, the man was too precious to be ignored. He reads the thoughts of the bystanders and questions the rightness of their thoughts. He asks them whether they would not pull their oxen or asses right away from the well if they fall into it on a Sabbath day. He is very critical of their hypocritical behavior. He lets them know that the sick man was too precious to be ignored. He is a son of God and is as important to him as anyone who is present there for the meals. Jesus uses the occasion to broaden their minds on a real understanding of religious life and spirituality.

In the eyes of Jesus, every human being is precious. Every one is brother or sister to us. All are important for us. A true religious attitude should make us available for the needs of the helpless and the needy around us.

It would be a strange twisting of the teaching of Christ, if we restrict our help only to those who belong to our race or caste. Jesus was always breaking the bonds of caste and ethnicity. Through the parable of the good Samaritan and through the dialogue with the Samaritan woman Jesus was breaking these bonds of narrow-mindedness and was trying to broaden our spiritual vision to become more inclusive. Christ’s love knows no boundaries. So should be our love for others.

There was the famous story of Peter Reddy, the great lay apostle in Southern India, who once asserted the dignity of the human person before a doctor who did not assign a bed to him when he was admitted to the hospital. When the doctor saw him reading an English newspaper and found out that he was a person with an M.A. degree, he came to help him because he had an M.A. degree. To the surprise o the doctor, Peter Reddy refused the help and told him that he was not an M.A. but a MAN.

That is what Christian faith asks us to do---to the help those who are in need.

Today’s Gospel also speaks about the need to have humility in our life as well as the care we should have for the poor. Jesus always appreciates when we assume our real self before others. It is when we exalt ourselves before others that we become humbled. If we make ourselves lower than others, then there is no way we will be humiliated. Humility is truth. Before the august majesty of God, before his mercy and kindness, we are nothing and we have nothing. That is why St. Teresa of Avila has said that humility is truth. She further says: “I was wondering once why our Lord so dearly loved this virtue of humility….it is because God is sovereign truth and to be humble is to walk in truth, for it is absolutely true to say that we have no good thing in ourselves.”

“Humility means to live as Jesus lived—not for ourselves, but for others. It means to use our talents as Jesus used his—not for ourselves and our glory, but for others and their needs.”(Mark Link)

We are asked to take the low road, the road of humility, of service and charity. Jesus emphasizes again how necessary it is to take care of the poor and the disabled in our society.

“Who has given you rain and land, food and home, art and law and society, a pleasant life and the family? Was it not God, who now asks you to be kind and generous in and above all the things he has given you?”(St. Gregory the Great)

What a beautiful vision and way of life our Lord gives us in today’s Gospel!

Let us be more gentle and compassionate in our attitudes and avoid all kinds of thoughts and conduct that smack of fundamentalism and hypocrisy.