Monday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
The feast of the seventh day
He was teaching in a synagogue on the sabbath. And a woman was there who for eighteen years had been crippled by a spirit; she was bent over, completely incapable of standing erect. When Jesus saw her, he called to her and said, “Woman, you are set free of your infirmity.” He laid his hands on her, and she at once stood up straight and glorified God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant that Jesus had cured on the sabbath, said to the crowd in reply, “There are six days when work should be done. Come on those days to be cured, not on the sabbath day.” The Lord said to him in reply, “Hypocrites! Does not each one of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his ass from the manger and lead it out for watering? This daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now, ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day from this bondage?” When he said this, all his adversaries were humiliated; and the whole crowd rejoiced at all the splendid deeds done by him. Lk 13,10-17
Once again, the liturgy invites us to meditate on the sabbath which is made for the man and not the man for the sabbath. It means that we need it. But we, who are christians and not jews, celebrate the sunday, the day of the resurrection of the Lord, in which, from the childhood, we have been taught that we must rest. It is the rest of the weekend which has origins more ancient of the day of the feast: it dates back to the beginning of the book of the Genesis, which speaks of God’s rest on the seventh day, at the end of the world’s creation. The sunday, as a feast day, is therefore the sacred time of God, in whom the profane time of the week stops at that rest and it rejoins that original rest at the start of the times. The sunday gives meaning and fulfillment to all other days and it gives us strenght for the next coming ones, in a continuous loop which is portending to the great final feast, when, at the end of our days, we will reach the eternity. The book of the Leviticus says: “For six days work may be done; but the seventh day is the sabbath rest, a day for sacred assembly, on which you shall do no work. The sabbath shall belong to the Lord wherever you dwell” (Lv 23,3). According to the christian tradition to rest and to celebrate on the sunday means to participate to the eucharist and not to “do any work” aimed to gain, given the fact that someone has to be expected to prepare for the festivity. So the Church in the sense of the celebration also includes those activities which, given the participation to the mass as a firm reference moment, are dedicated to the rest and to the festivities of the God’s people: preparing dinner, shows and entertainments. We would need a speech about the shows which are acceptable to God, but it does not matter, because we already know what they are.