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A Love That Conquers Darkness

13th Monday in Ordinary Time


IN TODAY'S GOSPEL (Luke 13:10-17) the Lord has made manifest to us another glimpse of his boundless love. Despite the darkness in the heart of the woman bound to Satan for 18 years, he looked unflinchingly in that darkened heart, and dispel it from there. And did it from the overflowing love he had for the woman. In the heart of the woman, his love conquered the darkness finding its home there.
 
The scene also tells how legalism can be a serious obstacle in the free expression of love. The heart that serves justice and upholds what is right has the tendency to harden in the process because justice and right will find compassion unacceptable, weak, and unstable. Of all the sense of justice and rightness in the heart of the Pharisees watching Jesus deliver the woman from hands of darkness, they failed to understand the compassion streaming from the Lord's heart. They can only see what made the action wrong; not what made the action-loving.
 
And the Lord preferred to love more than to fight for justice of what is intellectually or doctrinally right. So must we.
 
FATHER, thank you for sending to us your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,
Who became to us a shining example of your love for us.
Grant that we to may share the grace of love,
A heart overflowing with your love,
That we too might see each other as brothers and sisters longing for home,
Not strangers who fight against us for rights and justice.
Let us be your loving children,
Even in a world full of injustice and a cradle of lies. Amen. 
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