Msgr. Roger J. Landry
TPMS Office, St. Petersburg, Florida
Monday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Votive Mass for those Suffering
October 27, 2025
Rom 8:12-17, Ps 16, Lk 13:10-17
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/10.27.25_Homily_1.mp3
The following points were attempted in the homily:
* To understand the contrast between Jesus and the leader of the synagogue with regard to the crippled woman in the Gospel, it is worthwhile to grasp the categories given to us by St. Paul in the first reading. And to do that, it’s important to understand it in context with what has come before in the first two weeks of this biennial month-long gift of the Letter to the Romans at daily Mass.
* We have already seen the distinction between those who view justification by grace received in faith working through love from those who depend fundamentally on their own works. On Saturday, we had the beginning of Chapter 8 of the Letter to the Romans, which is the fulcrum not only of this letter but in my opinion of the Christian life, the distinction between life according to the flesh and life according to the Holy Spirit. St. Paul advanced the same distinction we have had in previous chapters, between living according to ourselves in our fallenness or living by God and the power of his life. In today’s passage, St. Paul advanced the argument even more, saying there is a difference between a spirit of slavery and one of adoption, between fear of God and filiation. The chief of the synagogue in the Gospel, like many of the scribes the Pharisees, basically approached the covenant as a bunch of laws rather than a relationship with a Legislator. The scribes and Pharisees scrupulously wanted to keep to the letter of every prescription, but in doing so they missed the weightier aspects and put the focus on themselves. Even though they knew that they couldn’t take the Sabbath off from caring for their animals, they failed to exercise similar charity toward a sick woman, criticizing Jesus for caring for her on the Sabbath. They so lacked a spirit of filiation that they failed to see in her a sister rather than a stranger, as someone far more valuable than all the oxen and donkeys in the world. They also failed to grasp the mind and heart of the Legislator, who happens to be God the Father, blind to how he would never want us to give up acts of charity in order to honor him. We heard yesterday at Sunday Mass that we’re called to love God with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and, sharing God’s love, love our neighbor with all our mind, heart, soul and strength. Such acts of love are not only permitted on the Sabbath, but they are particularly made for the Sabbath!
* This woman was crippled for 18 years and could not look up. Not only did she have a serious physical malady, but she also had a spiritual problem, as the Fathers of the Church commented: she just couldn’t look up toward God. Her eyes were constantly toward the ground, to earthly difficulties. She came into the synagogue because she still wanted God. She still knew she needed Him. It was on that Sabbath that Jesus, seeing her completely incapable of standing erect, said to her, “Woman, you are liberated from your infirmity.” Jesus didn’t use her name. He used a vocative that recalled the beginning of creation, one that foretold how we would call his mother on Calvary. He was going to treat this woman with the care and compassion with which he wanted to treat every woman: “be free of your infirmity.” He laid his hands on her head, at once she stood up straight, and began to glorify God, not just because she was cured, but because she was now able to raise up her heart,
