Posted by The WORD in other words (2018) by Fr Jun de Ocampo SVD (Filipino Community in Berlin, Germany)
Monday 23rd Week in Ordinary Time
Our Christian religion is all about life and opposes everything else that does not support and nourish life. So when Jesus in the Gospel saw that the law of Sabbath was restricting the life of the man with a withered hand, he did not hesitate to cure him. “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?”
The very purpose for which Christ came to earth was for us to have “life in its fullness” (Jn. 10:10). Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Theology calls this the “culture of life.”
Culture of life states that the life of each human being is important because we are God’s creation and we are sacred right from conception to natural death. Culture of life is the perspective through which we Christians make our choices regarding our own life, the life of other people, and the environment in which we live.
Killing people outright simply because they are suspected of crimes is absolutely unacceptable, even if the motive is to bring more security to the majority of innocent people. More than just an occasion to condemn, culture of life is actually an attitude and a lifestyle expected of every follower of Christ.
In the Gospel, Jesus did not mean to condemn. True to himself, he meant to improve the life of another person by restoring his withered hand. Ironically, the scribes and the Pharisees who were “watching” Jesus used the occasion to destroy him. Even by the way one looks and thinks of another person, one can either destroy life or promote life.
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