We celebrated my youngest son’s 40th birthday last week. His wife gave him some reading glasses, and his oldest son gave him a wool sock cap to keep his balding head warm. He needed and appreciated both gifts. We ate and laughed and shared memories and cracked jokes like families do.
My gift to him was enclosed in an “I’m glad you were born” card we gave out at our parish on Respect Life Sunday earlier this month. On the front the card says, “I’m glad you were born.” On the inside the message continues, “And I’m glad God put you in my life.” The idea of the card was to send or give it to someone who is a gift of God in your life. Yes, indeed, this son is a gift of God to me—as is each person in our family.
Today’s Readings
Perhaps the card and the birthday influenced how I prayed with the readings for today, but the words that jumped from the page to me in the Gospel were, “When Jesus saw her, he called to her.”
This is not one of Jesus’ best-known cures. It is not included in other Gospels, as the story of Bartimaeus we had on Sunday. This woman was known only as a “daughter of Abraham.”
Daughter. Daughter that her brother Jesus saw.
There is another great contrast between her and Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus called to Jesus, “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.” This woman said nothing. She asked nothing.
She did not call to Jesus. She did not touch the hem of his garment. There is no indication that she came to synagogue that day for any purpose other than it was the Sabbath, so she came to worship. She came—with no expectations of receiving any special favor.
Yet God did her a special favor. She was healed simply because Jesus saw her and could do it.
The Generosity of God
Many years ago, a priest told me, “The Lord is never outdone in generosity.” Again and again, I have found that to be true. Even more relevantly true today: the Lord STARTS with generosity. God reaches out to us with goodness—beginning with the goodness of life itself.
God forms us from conception with plans for goodness: goodness within us and goodness to us and goodness from us to the world. We each have a purpose and a meaning to our life. I think of another quote, “A baby is God’s opinion that life should go on.”
So, what about the long-term generosity of God for the woman today in the Gospel—what about God’s generosity for those 18 years she was crippled by a spirit? I have a 94 year old friend who is “bent over, completely incapable of standing erect.” It is no fun. It throws everything off balance. My friend is legally blind, too. Where is God’s goodness there?
Notice what the Gospel says: the woman in the story had been “crippled by a spirit.” The suffering was not God’s doing—yet, as Paul notes in his letter to the Romans today, it was important to God.
Sons and Daughters
The woman was suffering, but when Jesus called to her, saying, “Woman, you are set free of your infirmity,” and laid hands on her, “she at once stood up straight and glorified God.” Her suffering was ended.
Jesus got into one of his common discussions, then, with the leader of the synagogue who complained because Jesus healed on the Sabbath. That’s when Jesus could name the rest of the story. “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?”
The rest of the story (or maybe the roots of the story): God the Father, through the intercession of God the Son, reached out to help his daughter.
St. Paul speaks beautifully about our being sons and daughters of God in Romans today:
For those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,
but you received a spirit of adoption,
through which we cry, “Abba, Father!”
The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit
that we are children of God,
and if children, then heirs,
heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ,
if only we suffer with him
so that we may also be glorified with him.
We are adopted children of God—led by the Holy Spirit, who is God Himself, as much as Jesus is God and the Father is God. God dwelling in us does not make us slaves; God does not hold us bound. God frees us, whether our being bent double is from a not-of-God spirit or from our fears or prejudices or evils done by others or our own sins.
Back to Suffering—And Triumph
St. Pope John Paul II said in Evangelium Vitae (the Gospel of Life) that it is suffering which causes the most distrust in God. I read recently in some forgotten source that it is the Resurrection which causes the greatest doubts.
Today, I might make a case that the biggest source of doubt is our failure to believe that God really did create us to be his children. That means we are made in God’s image—sons and daughters of God. If we saw that as our true identity, we would understand that suffering is a part of how God saves. We would believe we are meant for resurrection. It would also mean we follow God’s family’s rules of life—the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, the Catechism, Catholic Social Teaching. It means we participate in God’s family life—prayer, practical virtues, reaching out to those on the outside—in our families, at work, at church. It means we “suffer with Christ” as we battle evil without giving in to it.
And it means we accept the goodness of God. For even a terrible day can end with a beautiful sunset–a reminder we belong beyond the sky with God, our Father.
Prayer:
Lord, today let me live with awareness of your generosity, your goodness. Let me express that goodness as your daughter. Heal me of any spirits that have me bent over, unable to stand erect. Show me how to glorify you in all I think, say, and do, as I say, “Abba, Father.”
