In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
When God created man, He did so out of love, He also instructed him how to live but gave him free will as well.
The base of those intructions is love.
Love for one another and love for our Creator.
Unfortunately, many people, excercising free will, forget about love or, better said, they forget to love others and only focus on themselves.
To love one’s self more than anything else is vanity.
But even that, would be okay because every man carries God’s image within themselves. So loving one’s self is also, in a way, loving God.
But unfortunately what most people love, is the idea of themselves and the projection of themselves in society rather than their real selves.
When they lead that kind of life, they get further and further away from the important things in life, they lose perspective of life, and start filling it with superficial man-made rules.
When this happens, they stop seeing man as God’s creation, or as their brother in Christ, but rather, they look at man as someone who fits or does not fit in the rules they made in their society.
Today’s parable talks about that. A woman who was crippled for 18 years was healed by Jesus Christ on a Saturday and those with crippled hearts, authorities from temple, weren’t able to see a healed peson, but only the broken rules. Instead of rejoicing with the woman, vanity got the best of them and they argued with the Son of God for healing on a Saturday.
These things happen in eveyday life, just on a smaller scale, of course.
I got asked so many times whether it was okay to wash clothing on Sunday or some other kind of houshold chores. Instead of answering, I ask them back: Do you go to Holy Liturgy in the morning? Sunday is a holiday and we should devote it and any other holiday to God. But when you come home from Church and you have some work to finish, finish it- because that’s not the point. The point is: God, and our thinking about Him or singing and praying to Him on that day.
If we live that way, God will always enlighten our minds to know what’s important in our lives and what isn’t.
AMEN!
Source: St. George – Serbian Orthodox Church, Midland, PA, USA
