Monday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

If this is what salvation is, then it should characterize our whole experience of religion. This is what should set the tone, determine the spirit of everything we feel, think, and do in living the Christian life. 

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!” 

If we let this realization fall out of focus, for ourselves or others, we are failing in stewardship. We are failing to preserve, use, and activate in the Church a priceless gift of God. 

We “manage” this gift as faithful stewards by using it. We foster awareness of being sons and daughters of God by consciously praying for, expecting, discerning, and following the inspirations of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.  “For those who are led by the Spirit of God are” — and are conscious of being — “sons and daughters of God.”  

In this way, “the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” This is when we experience authentically that “Our God is the God of salvation.” 

In Luke 13: 10-17, we encounter the greatest obstacle to the experience of salvation in the Church. It is the spirit of legalism. When Jesus cured a “daughter of Abraham” who “for eighteen years had been crippled,” all that the leader of the synagogue saw was that he had cured on a Sabbath, which he saw as a violation of God’s law. And the Pharisee party in the Church today would prefer to see people crippled in their Christian life for years, unable to experience the acceptance and compassion of God and of the Church, rather than interpret and apply the laws of the Church according to the heart of God, the loving Father of all his children. 

Those who are “led by the Spirit” are focused on healing, not condemning. They judge by the heart of the Father, who is “the God of salvation.” 

Initiative: Live aware of the “family love” of God. 

— Fr. David M. Knight

View today’s Mass readings, Lectionary #479, on the USCCB website here

Fr. David M. Knight (1931-2021) was a priest of the Diocese of Memphis in Tennessee, a prolific writer, and a highly sought after confessor, spiritual director, and retreat master. He authored more than 40 books and hundreds of articles that focus primarily on lay spirituality and life-long spiritual growth.