Why did Christ provoke His enemies with miracles on the Sabbath?
Our Lord is watched closely as He enters the house of a leading Pharisee on the Sabbath. A man with dropsy stands before Him—perhaps placed there as a trap. What will he do?
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Our Lord is watched closely as He enters the house of a leading Pharisee on the Sabbath. A man with dropsy stands before Him—perhaps placed there as a trap. What will he do?
Editor’s Notes
The Gospel on the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost takes us back to the house of a Pharisee on the Sabbath, returning to the episode recounted in part on the Second Sunday after Pentecost.
In this Gospel, we see Christ healing a man with dropsy, and then teaching the guests about the Sabbath and humility.
Dropsy, also known as oedema, is a disease which causes the fluid retention and swelling in the body’s tissue.
Immediately following the text read at this Mass, Christ tells the Parable of the Greater Supper, and warns his guests that Israel was in the process of rejecting their Covenant with God, and calls them to embrace the cost of being his disciples.
This incident comes towards the end of Christ’s ministry, following his controversies with the Pharisees and Scribes and his many warnings against worldliness and carelessness.
In this part, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How Christ reveals the true spirit of the Sabbath by healing and teaching at a Pharisee’s table.
That the works of mercy and miracles are themselves a homage to the Father’s glory.
Why the silence of the Pharisees shows the weakness of hypocrisy before truth.
He shows us that the Sabbath is not an obstacle to love, but a chosen time for its greatest expression.
Our Lord in the Pharisee’s House
The Preaching of the Cross, Part II
Chapter VIII
St. Luke xiv. 1-35.
Story of the Gospels, § 111-3
Burns and Oates, London, 1887
Why did Christ provoke His enemies with miracles on the Sabbath?
Christ’s warning: The Banquet will go on—with or without you
How the call to the Church passed from Israel to the Gentiles
A sabbath in Peraea
St. Luke next gives us an account of what passed on a certain Sabbath, when our Lord was invited to a meal in the house of one of the chief among the Pharisees.
The place in which this occurred is not specified. It may perhaps have been in Peraea, and the miracle which St. Luke relates may have been chosen by him because it was in a different part of the country from that on the woman ‘with a spirit of infirmity.’
St. Luke may have gathered this and other anecdotes during his sojourn in the Holy Land, and may have added it to the former miracle because it would show him that our Lord’s doctrine concerning the question of the Sabbath had so much importance in His eyes that He repeated it everywhere, in Jerusalem, in Galilee, in Judaea, and in Peraea also.
On this occasion our Lord seems to have been invited with something of a purpose on the part of His entertainer, who may have heard complaints against Him on the score of the observance of the Sabbath, and have desired to see for himself how matters really were. For the Evangelist adds that they were on the watch. All the incidents of this day are described with a fulness which makes us very grateful to the persons from whom he received his information.
The dropsical man
‘And it came to pass, when Jesus went unto the house of one of the chief of the Pharisees on the Sabbath-day, that they watched Him. And behold there was a certain man before Him who had the dropsy.’
It is not said that the man was brought there, as some have supposed, that a kind of trap might be purposely set for our Lord. Still, it is clear that there were persons present who wished to see how He would act.
‘And Jesus answering,’ as One Who knew their thoughts and intentions, ‘spoke to the lawyers,’ or Scribes, ‘and Pharisees saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath-day? But they held their peace.’
Thus, if a trap was laid, He turned it as it were against His critics, and put the question plainly to them that He might drive them to giving an opinion. It was one of the devices of His enemies to get Him to pledge Himself on certain questions of the day, on which they themselves wished to remain unpledged.
Their whole conduct showed that they objected to His healing on the Sabbath. But to lay down a positive doctrine against such works of mercy might have brought on them a loss of popularity. This was the reason why they did not deny the Divine mission of St. John Baptist, while at the same time they did not avail themselves of it. Now again they take refuge in silence, whereas it was their business, as the authorized teachers of the people, to have an answer ready for all such questions.
His miracles on the Sabbath—Our Lord’s argument
Having asked the question, and obtained no answer, our Lord gave His own answer by the miracle which followed.
‘But He taking him, healed him, and sent him away.’
The Greek word seems to imply that our Lord took hold of the poor sufferer, and healed him by His touch.
‘And answering them He said, Which of you shall have an ox or an ass fall into a pit, and will not immediately draw him out on the Sabbath-day? And they could not answer Him to these things.’
Thus the argument which He used was an appeal of the same kind to plain reason and common practice as He had employed before. A necessary act, whether of charity or of any other virtue, did not cost them a moment’s hesitation on the Sabbath-day. Why then should they make it a cause of scandal that He worked this miracle at such a time?
We must consider what His miracles were to our Lord, as well as His desire and commission to set up the true and perfect doctrine concerning the Sabbath. The miracles were a part of His Mission in the world. For it belonged to that mission that it should be attested by a chain of evidence of which the miracles, which showed His power over diseases and corporal afflictions of every kind, as well as His empire over the evil spirits, were a part.
He was therefore sent, as He implies in this passage, to work miracles as well as to teach. When His miracles were wrought on the Sabbath-day, they became evidences of His office in the world, and moreover they became a part of the special homage and worship of God for which that day had been instituted, a service of praise and thanksgiving, giving God great honour by testifying to His supreme dominion over the physical and spiritual world, such as was not given by ordinary good actions, testifying also to His goodness and mercy and compassion for the miseries of men, both physical and spiritual, and thus setting forth the loving character of the new dispensation committed to our Lord.
Instead of being forbidden by the law of the Sabbath, they were, of all works which our Lord could do, except acts of direct adoration and of spiritual mercy in teaching the people, the most fit and congenial to the great boon of the Sabbath, which was given to men not simply as a day of rest, but as a day in which they might devote themselves to the special honouring of God and the study of His Law and of Divine things in general.
Why he wrought them
For our Lord to forbear working in this way for the glory of the Father, would have been to check Himself in the work and service which He had undertaken, as well as to deny the strong impulses of His Sacred Heart, which always urged Him on, at the sight of any human affliction, to relieve it according to His power.
Perhaps He never forebore to work a miracle when He had the opportunity, that is, ordinarily, when there was faith enough on the part of the recipient or suppliant. And we find that many of His miracles were wrought on the Sabbath, probably for another reason, that is for the very purpose of attracting attention and setting forth the true doctrine as to the observance of that sacred day.
Moreover the Sabbath was a very convenient day for such works, being designed by God as evidences of our Lord’s Mission. For that day brought the people together into the synagogues or Temple, and thus secured for the miracle, as an evidence, a greater publicity and notoriety, and this at a time when the minds of those present were more or less prepared by good thoughts about God, and holy dispositions, for the exercise of faith. And the miracles were also, in this regard, the best preparation and introduction for His holy teaching, which was connected thereby with the wonderful works of old of which the people could hear in the passages of Scripture then read to them.
This miracle, indeed, was not wrought in the synagogue, but probably after the synagogue service. And it was a habit with our Lord, as it seems, to confer some blessing, external or internal, on the occasions when He was invited to a feast. This He now proceeded to do on this occasion, giving both the guests and the host who had invited Him a banquet of heavenly doctrine and true wisdom, far more precious than the entertainment which He was receiving. For the Sacred Heart was full of love, and on fire to benefit men in every way that was open to Him.
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Our Lord in the Pharisee’s House
Why did Christ provoke His enemies with miracles on the Sabbath?
Christ’s warning: The Banquet will go on—with or without you
How the call to the Church passed from Israel to the Gentiles
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