YOU HAVE BEEN FREED

 

YOU HAVE BEEN FREED

They say there are a thousand and one ways to skin a cat. There are not that many ways to say something important, but there are so many important and startling realities that cannot be adequately put into words. Sometimes, all we could do is to open our mouths and sigh or gasp, or mutter unintelligible words.

The story about the bent woman was certainly designed to surprise. First, it opens with an expression meant to call the hearers’ attention: idou! (behold!) Look you, here! There is something startling I’d like everyone to know—a woman, bent and curved upon herself for eighteen years, “completely unable to straighten up.”

“He placed his hands on her.” But this is not what was so startling. What was supposed to be more dumbfounding was what the Lord said: “You have been freed!” It was a case of Jesus uttering those words, but it was more of a case of the divine working and manifesting Himself, in and through Jesus.

I do not mean to bore you, dear readers, but biblical scholars refer to this as the “divine passive.” It means that God is actively at work in Jesus Christ, but the Lord couched that reality in human words that are not adequate to fully express that reality—at least as of yet.

The ruler of the synagogue misread the signs. He was “irritated because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath.” He condemned the event and missed the hand of God at such a momentous occasion. He was sore that Jesus did a miracle but he had no human empathy whatsoever to be at least superficially happy for the woman who, all of a sudden, got freed from her lifetime malady.

This is what we are—callous and indifferent most times. We are loved, but we see only hate and cruelty around us. We are saved, but we see only listlessness and lostness in ourselves and in others. We have been freed, but we rant on and on about our unfreedoms. Like the synagogue leader, we see the fault in the act but miss the saving act of God. Fr. Chito Dimaranan, SDB

---------- REFLECTION QUESTION ----------

How do you react when faced with a mighty work of God in your or your loved one’s life?

Your work, Lord, deserves all our praises. Forgive me if sometimes I do not recognize it. Amen.

Today, I pray for: __________________________