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. ...
My deepest vocation is to be a witness of the glimpses of God I have been allowed to catch. HENRI JOHN M NOUWEN [Thanks to my friend Albert Aballe for providing this quote]