No one likes or wants to suffer but the fact is that throughout the centuries we are and always will be a suffering Church! For this it what it means to take up our cross and follow Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour who suffered, died and was buried for our sins and on the third day rose again so that we might have eternal life with Him. And so uniting our suffering with His redemptive suffering we are renewed and proclaim by our actions that we have chosen to remain in humble servitude of Him and one another. For our suffering if and when we must suffer is, for Love of Him and for His Holy Church made up of the Children of God.
In Today’s Gospel despite knowing he will face opposition, objections, rejection and even plots of death , Jesus chooses love above everything. He heals the man out of love and teaches by example that the choice to love must come first above all else.
Lord Jesus teach me to love above all. Amen
First reading
Colossians 1:24-2:3
God’s message was a mystery hidden for generations
It makes me happy to suffer for you, as I am suffering now, and in my own body to do what I can to make up all that has still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of his body, the Church. I became the servant of the Church when God made me responsible for delivering God’s message to you, the message which was a mystery hidden for generations and centuries and has now been revealed to his saints. It was God’s purpose to reveal it to them and to show all the rich glory of this mystery to pagans. The mystery is Christ among you, your hope of glory: this is the Christ we proclaim, this is the wisdom in which we thoroughly train everyone and instruct everyone, to make them all perfect in Christ. It is for this I struggle wearily on, helped only by his power driving me irresistibly.
Yes, I want you to know that I do have to struggle hard for you, and for those in Laodicea, and for so many others who have never seen me face to face. It is all to bind you together in love and to stir your minds, so that your understanding may come to full development, until you really know God’s secret in which all the jewels of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.
Gospel
Luke 6:6-11
Is it against the law on the sabbath to save life?
On the sabbath Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees were watching him to see if he would cure a man on the sabbath, hoping to find something to use against him. But he knew their thoughts; and he said to the man with the withered hand, ‘Stand up! Come out into the middle.’ And he came out and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, ‘I put it to you: is it against the law on the sabbath to do good, or to do evil; to save life, or to destroy it?’ Then he looked round at them all and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He did so, and his hand was better. But they were furious, and began to discuss the best way of dealing with Jesus.
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