The Common Good
Memorial of Saint Anthony, Abbot
My dear encountered couples:
How ridiculous can we humans get! Today’s short gospel reading shows us. There were so many laws restricting activity on the Sabbath that a person was afraid of breaking one if he even did a charitable act. Jesus restores the man’s hand to health and gets accused of breaking the Sabbath law forbidding work. Can you imagine such stupidity on the part of the leaders of the Jews of that time? It isn’t easy.
But there are age-old laws in nations, religions, and organizations that are just as ridiculous today. A law, as is the Sabbath or Sunday, is supposed to be for the good of the people. When the lives of people are to be suppressed and smothered for the preservation of the institution or law, it is time to review and revamp the entire situation.
We are told that in Russia the people are to live for the growth of the state towards the perfection of a communistic society. In the United States the government is supposed to be run for the growth towards the fulfillment of every person.
Let us never allow our Church to forget that it, like the Lord’s Day, exists for the good of the people and not the other way around. Many of the Jewish leaders at the time of Jesus forgot that. May such blindness never take root in our own Catholic Faith!
