Today in our gospel, a Pharisee invited Jesus to his home for a Sabbath dinner, and the Lord accepted the invitation. As we are aware, Jesus had a difficult relationship with the Pharisees. In today’s gospel, however, a Pharisee invited Jesus to dinner at his house, and the Lord accepted the invitation. As expected, there were other Pharisees at the dinner, and the gospel says “they were watching him” – every word Jesus said or every action he performed. The “watching” being described here can be translated as a “sinister spying” on someone. In other words, the Lord was under scrutiny.
Compassion cannot be limited to any day!
On a Sabbath and in the home of a Pharisee, a man in need of help because of sickness was healed by Jesus. That gesture according to the Pharisees was performance of work on a Sabbath which was forbidden. The Lord’s response to the Pharisees’ mindset about the healing was that it is always important to prioritize human life in all circumstances.
There are a couple of small lessons for our everyday use that we can pick from this encounter between the Lord and the Pharisees:
The first is a question to ourselves: Have you ever been in circumstances where you felt you were under constant watch, constant scrutiny, and constant criticism? This can be in a family setting, in a place of work, or a faith community. It is the experience the Lord went through with the Pharisees! However, He managed these situations with calm, serenity, and composure. Some of us struggle with constant scrutiny. It gets on our nerves; we lose our temper or become irritable! The invitation we have right there is to stay close to Christ. The invitation is to ask the Lord for grace to be like Him especially under intense pressure or uncharitable or uncalled for scrutiny. That is how He carried Himself when it came to the Pharisees.
Second, even though the Lord did not enjoy an easy relationship with the Pharisees, when a Pharisee invited him to dinner, he honored the invitation! He looked at such encounters as opportunities to appeal and to invite such individuals to a different worldview or a lifestyle. He never turned down their invitations to their homes. The lesson here is that we will never turn our enemies into friends if we refuse to meet them, engage them, or understand where they come from with their kinds of attitudes. Encounters with people we disagree with can help us to find some common ground. Avoiding them simply makes matters worse.
There Is No Limit to Extending Compassion
The last one is an important lesson about compassion. The Lord healed someone on a Sabbath, and he powerfully dramatized the lesson that showing compassion or Mercy cannot be limited to some days or some seasons as the Pharisees preferred. To Jesus,
Compassion is something that cannot wait and it has to be extended to anyone who needs it, every time they are need of it.
May the Lord in this Mass teach us to learn and take after his example. May we learn to reach out to people we have differences with. May He give us the grace we need to extend limitless compassion to all no matter the day and no matter the season. Amen.
- Today’s Readings
- Father Fred's inspirational homily was recorded live during Mass at the Father Peyton Center this morning. You can view the Mass (and the Rosary at the 30-minute mark) on the Family Rosary YouTube page.
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