Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time [I]
Colossians 1:24—2:3  +  Luke 6:6-11

In God is my safety and my glory.

We might want to reflect at today’s Mass on our nation commemorating the anniversary of terrorist attacks against our country.  It’s astonishing that religion was a driving force in the hearts of those who committed mass murder.  We ask ourselves how the murder of innocent people could be carried out in the name of God.  It seems like religion turned completely inside out.

This seems to be what Jesus faced in today’s Gospel (and many other occasions during his earthly life, leading to the Cross).  Jesus heals the man with the withered hand, and the response of the Scribes and Pharisees is to become enraged:  they discussed together what they might do to Jesus.

And so we see a similarity between Jesus’ day, and our day:  a similarity between the world of Jesus, and the world in which we live.  The world in which we live today may be much larger than Jesus’ world:  there may be more countries, and more peoples, who have to speak with each other, and work to get along.  But there are today people, just as in Jesus’ day, who return evil for good, whose actions make no sense.  The question we have to ask is:  how did Jesus respond to those who hated Him, and nailed Him to the Cross?  Can we be like our Lord Jesus, even in a situation like this?