Friday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
“Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern,
would not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day?”
St. Paul gives us something of a commentary on our Lord’s approach to the Pharisees in this passage in this text: “theirs the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever.”
In his controversy with these Jewish leaders, Jesus is very much one of the Jewish people but the Messiah sent among them to show them the real meaning of God’s revelation. He wants them to understand the depth of the fidelity involved in the covenant relationship with God, his Father. Christ lives the heart of his Jewish faith – the marriage of God with his People!
God wants this of us. Not a blind observance but understanding the why of the Sabbath for our relationship with Him. In the Sabbath becoming the Sunday, St. John Paul II, in his letter on the Sunday observance, Dies Domini (#46), recalls how seriously the early Christians took this observance:
When, during the persecution of Diocletian, their assemblies were banned with the greatest severity, many were courageous enough to defy the imperial decree and accepted death rather than miss the Sunday Eucharist. This was the case of the martyrs of Abitina, in Proconsular Africa, who replied to their accusers: “Without fear of any kind we have celebrated the Lord’s Supper, because it cannot be missed; that is our law”; “We cannot live without the Lord’s Supper.”
Reflection by Fr. Xavier Nacke, OSB
Posted in Articles for Ordinary Time, Daily Reflections