October 24, 2022 – Monday 30th Week in Ordinary Time
Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102422.cfm)
We constantly hear that God is love and that through love we are all created in God’s image and likeness. Also through love, God sent His only Son to redeem the world. Though we often read or listen about this fundamental grace of love in our faith to the point that it is somehow treated like a cliché, the grace of love and the act of loving remain constant call for us.
This is what Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians, reminding and calling the believers in that city to “be imitators of God and to live in love.” What Paul means about imitating God is not in the way of becoming “like god” or “being god” which may connote “domination, overpowering and subjugating” others.
Rather, what we are all called to imitate is the way of LOVING, hence, Paul said, “live in love.” What kind of love is this then?
This is love that sacrifices one’s life for the sake of others. Such love never corrupts others or brings others to danger or to evil. This love has the capacity to offer life so that others may also have life.
This is love that generates life and does not suppress the life of others. This means that this way of loving brings inspiration and motivation for others to live fully because of the love they receive.
This is love that frees or unburdens others because such love only desires freedom, peace, reconciliation and the fullness of life. This also means that this way of loving forgives and heals.
These are all God’s way of loving of which the Responsorial Psalm also calls us today, to behave like God and that is to be able to learn love-sacrificing, love-generating and love-freeing ways of God.
In fact, in today’s Gospel, Jesus showed this to us as he healed a woman. Thus, Jesus showed kindness and compassion to the woman who was suffering for 18 long years. Jesus’ kindness and compassion went beyond the restrictions of human law. Though, the local leader of the synagogue was indignant to Jesus’ way of loving, yet, this did not stop Jesus to truly express his love so that the woman may have life.
With that, Jesus freed her from that suffering by touching her. Through his touch, an expression of his way of loving, he freed the woman from the spirit that crippled her over those many years.
By this way of loving of Jesus, the Lord restored her hope to live by giving her the fullness of life expressed in the way the woman responded to Jesus. The woman got up, stoop up straight and was glorifying God. This was an act of thanksgiving from a heart filled with so much love.
However, the people who were indignant to Jesus and furious over his actions of loving, never understood how love works and manifests in the life of those who love and in need of love.
Therefore, this is how we are called today, and that is by concretely expressing our way of loving, by not being afraid and not hesitating to love. In this way, we may truly imitate God who is all love. Kabay pa.
A DOSE OF GOD TODAY 