Back to back – Monday, 30^th week in ordinary time – Lk 13:10-17

Jesus, we are told, is teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath; however we are not told what He teaches. By doing this St Luke wants us to focus on the matter of importance at hand. So he glides over many details to settle on the woman in the narrative and then places a microscope over her.

She is a woman and this should not be taken for granted simply because we live in this century. She has a spirit in her, quite obviously an evil one. She is a cripple for eighteen years, bent over and unable to stand up straight. That’s a lot of detail considering how sketchy the Bible can be! Interestingly we are not told her name.  

Just for a moment read this text bent over (like the woman) and in a flash your every action will be tedious challenge. Yet the woman has no complaint about her disability, in fact she did not even ask for a healing. It seems that she has accepted her suffering.  Nothing, they say, misses the Lord’s eye; He noticed her, He noticed her fidelity to synagogue worship and that despite her disability she was there.

It is the Lord who seeks to set her free from her ailment and she accepting His gracious healing touch stood up in faith. If there was any doubt that still lingers in the reader’s mind about the woman’s fidelity to God it should be put to rest by the Biblical evidence that is given to us. Her first reaction to her healing was “to praise God.”