7 March 2027 · Syro-Malankara Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Latin Rite · Syro-Malabar Rite · മലയാളം
“Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” Luke 13:12
In a synagogue on the sabbath there is a woman who “had a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.” For eighteen years she has looked only at the ground. Jesus sees her, calls her, and says: “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” He lays his hands on her, “and immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.”
The leader of the synagogue is indignant: healing is work, and work is forbidden on the sabbath. Jesus answers: you untie your ox and donkey on the sabbath to give them water; “ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” The sabbath is the day of God's rest, and God's rest is our freedom.
Many of us are bent: by guilt, by worry, by addiction, by years of carrying burdens alone, by sins we have stopped noticing. We get used to looking at the ground. The Fast is the time when Jesus calls us, lays his hands on us, and lets us stand straight again and look up to God.
The evening Gospel, the Good Samaritan, shows us how to be Christ's hands for others: “moved with pity”, he bound up the wounded man's wounds. St Paul says: “present your bodies as a living sacrifice… Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds… Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” Healed ourselves, we become healers: “Go and do likewise.”
Theme: “Woman, you are set free.”
For eighteen years a woman had been bent over, unable to look up. Jesus sees her, calls her, lays his hands on her, and she stands straight and praises God. The evening Gospel adds the Good Samaritan: we too must stoop to lift others.
“I cried out, “Lord, you are my Father; do not forsake me in the days of trouble, when there is no help against the proud.”” Sirach 51:10
“Just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.” Luke 13:11
Apply: Name the burden that bends you, and bring it to Christ in prayer and confession.
“The LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous.” Psalm 146:8
“When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.” Luke 13:12–13
Apply: Thank God for a time he lifted you up; tell someone about it.
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.” Leviticus 19:18
“He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”” Luke 10:37
Apply: Help one person this week who is “bent over”: sick, elderly, poor or discouraged.
Christ lifts up the bowed down and sends us to do the same.
This Great Fast, let him straighten us, and let us become good Samaritans.
Take-home resolution: Visit or call one person who has been suffering for a long time.
Dear brothers and sisters, today Jesus sees a woman in the synagogue who has been bent over for eighteen years. For eighteen years she has looked only at the ground. Jesus calls her and says: “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” He lays his hands on her, and immediately she stands up straight and praises God.
The leader of the synagogue is angry: healing is work, and the sabbath is for rest. Jesus replies: you untie your ox and your donkey on the sabbath to lead them to water. Should not this daughter of Abraham, bound for eighteen years, be set free on the sabbath? God's day is the day of freedom.
Many of us are bent in some way: by guilt, by worry, by an addiction, by grief, by carrying everything alone. We get used to looking at the ground. In this Fast Jesus calls us by name, lays his hands on us in Confession and in the Holy Qurbono, and says: stand up, look up, you are free.
And the evening Gospel tells us what to do once we are healed. The Good Samaritan saw a wounded man, was moved with pity, and bound up his wounds. Jesus says: “Go and do likewise.” This week, stop for someone you would usually pass by. Let us be healed, and become healers. Amen.
Children, try bending over and looking only at the floor. Not nice, is it? A woman in the Bible had to walk like that for eighteen years!
Jesus saw her, called her, and touched her. And she stood up straight and praised God!
Jesus also told a story about a man who stopped to help someone hurt on the road. Let's help others too. Let's say: “Jesus, help me to help others!”
Lord Jesus, you saw the bent woman, called her, and set her free. Lay your hands on us in this Fast: lift what bends us down, let us stand straight and praise you, and make us Good Samaritans for the wounded on our road. Amen.
K'piphtho Sunday, the fifth of the Great Fast, takes its name from the woman who was bent over for eighteen years. The Sunday's many readings stand around her. The Evening Gospel (Luke 10:25–37) tells of a Samaritan who stops for a wounded man, and ends, “Go and do likewise.” Genesis 9:1–7 blesses Noah and insists on the worth of human life, “for in his own image God made humankind”. In Sirach 51:1–10 a person rescued from distress cries out, “Lord, you are my Father”. Jeremiah 51:1–9 sees the fall of proud Babylon. First Peter 3:8–17 tells us not to repay evil for evil. We study here the three that speak most directly to the Gospel.
In Isaiah, a servant of God receives a word “to sustain the weary”, and God asks, “Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem?” In Romans, Paul tells believers to offer their very bodies to God as a living sacrifice. In Luke, Jesus speaks a word to a weary woman, lays his hands on her, and she stands and praises God. The key words are weary, body and set free. God's mercy reaches the body as well as the soul, and it sets us upright so that we can worship.
Setting.
Most scholars place chapters 40–55 of Isaiah among the people exiled in Babylon in the sixth century before Christ. The exiles felt that God had thrown them off. Jerusalem is pictured here as a mother and wife, and her children as people sold into slavery. The first three verses answer their complaint. God asks them to produce the proof that he has divorced her, or sold them to pay a debt. No such document exists. Their own sin brought the exile, not any lack of love or power in God.
Then, at verse 4, a new voice speaks: a servant of God who has been taught to listen. Verses 4–9 are usually counted as the third of the Servant Songs, and today's reading gives us their beginning.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Where is your mother’s bill of divorce with which I put her away?” (50:1)
A question that can have no answer, and it is meant to be so. In the exile's darkest hour, God still speaks as one who has not let go of his people.
“Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem?” (50:2)
A short hand is a Hebrew image for lack of power. Isaiah 59:1 will say the same. The bent woman of the Gospel will show what this hand can do.
“The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.” (50:4)
The gift of speech is given for the sake of the tired. The verse goes on to say that this ear is wakened “morning by morning”. The servant says nothing that he has not first heard.
“The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward.” (50:5)
Listening leads to obedience, and the next verse (50:6) shows the cost: he gives his back to those who strike him.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says that the Messiah's characteristics are revealed above all in the Servant Songs, and that these songs proclaim the meaning of Jesus' Passion (CCC 713). The Church therefore reads this passage of Jesus, the listening Son. In the Gospel of John he says: “I do as the Father has commanded me” (14:31). He teaches in the synagogue today and restores a tired woman with a word, as one who has been wakened morning by morning to the Father's will.
Setting.
For eleven chapters Paul has spoken of God's mercy in Christ, for Jews and Gentiles alike, and has ended in wonder (11:33–36). Now, with the word “therefore”, he turns to how to live. So Christian conduct is the answer to mercy already received. It is not the way of earning that mercy, and by God's grace our good works truly please him.
Many scholars think that the Roman community was made up of Christians from a Jewish background and from a Gentile background, and that the advice on humility and mutual honour has this in view.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” (12:1)
The language is taken from the altar. A sacrifice that is alive keeps on being offered, day by day. This does not replace the Holy Qurbono; it flows from it, and returns to it.
“but be transformed by the renewing of your minds” (12:2)
Fasting works on the body and the mind together. Paul expects a real change in how we see.
“so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.” (12:5)
Having just spoken of each one's body, Paul now speaks of the one body. Each of us belongs to the others, not just to the same organization.
“Let love be genuine” (12:9)
The Greek word is literally “not hypocritical”. This is the same word family that Jesus uses in today's Gospel: “You hypocrites!” Love is not an act one puts on.
“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.” (12:14)
Paul echoes the teaching of Jesus (Matthew 5:44). The Catholic Epistle of the day says the same thing (1 Peter 3:9). Verse 15 then asks us to share the joy and the grief of others.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says: “The moral life is spiritual worship”, and quotes this verse, adding that we offer our bodies within the Body of Christ that we form and in communion with the offering of his Eucharist (CCC 2031). It also teaches that by prayer we can discern what is the will of God (CCC 2826). St John Chrysostom asks how the body can become a sacrifice, and answers: let the eye look on no evil, let the tongue say nothing shameful, let the hand do nothing unlawful, and more than that, let them do good (Homilies on Romans 20, in substance).
Setting.
Luke places this story on Jesus' long journey to Jerusalem, which starts at 9:51. It is the last time in this Gospel that we see him teaching in a synagogue. Just before it he has told of a barren fig tree given one more year (13:6–9), and just after it he compares the kingdom to a mustard seed and to yeast (13:18–21). Only Luke tells this story.
A leader of the synagogue was a respected local man who took care of its order and worship. His concern for the Sabbath is sincere. The Sabbath was God's gift, a sign of creation and of the release from Egypt (Exodus 20:8–11; Deuteronomy 5:12–15), and Jews of Jesus' day discussed in good faith which works were allowed on it. The woman's condition was not an emergency, so his objection is not absurd. Jesus answers within that discussion.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight.” (13:11)
For eighteen years she could see only the ground, and she could not look others in the face. She does not ask for anything. In this story every first step is his.
“When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.”” (13:12)
He notices her first. In the middle of his teaching he calls her forward to where others can see, and the one who was hidden stands at the centre.
“When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.” (13:13)
A word and a touch: this is how the sick are still cared for in the Church. Her first act when she is upright is to praise God, and this is what her straightened body is for.
“There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” (13:14)
He does not speak to Jesus directly. Nor does he speak to the woman. He seems unable to see in her the sign of what the Sabbath means.
“And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” (13:16)
If an animal may be loosed to drink, how much more this daughter of Abraham? Luke's account does not set Jesus against the Sabbath. It claims that the Sabbath, the day of release, is the very day for this.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism says that Jesus never fails to respect the holiness of the Sabbath, and that he gives this law its authentic and authoritative interpretation (CCC 2173). It calls his compassion toward the sick and his many healings a resplendent sign that God has visited his people (CCC 1503). St Gregory the Great takes the bent woman as a picture of the person whose mind is turned only to the things of earth and cannot look up to what is above, until the Lord's word and hand restore her (Homilies on the Gospels 31, in substance). The Great Fast asks us each to look at what has bent us over.
What does K'piphtho mean?
It is a Syriac word that means “the bent one”, from a root meaning to bend or stoop. Our Church names the Sundays of the Great Fast after their Gospels, many of them after healings: this Sunday is named after this woman, who has no name of her own in the Gospel but is called a daughter of Abraham.
Did Jesus break the Sabbath?
Jesus honoured the Sabbath. He was in the synagogue that day to teach. He disputes one reading of what may be done on it, with an argument that those present could follow, and the argument is from their own custom of watering animals. Later Jewish teachers also taught that the saving of life overrides the Sabbath. Luke does not show a contest between Jesus and the Jewish people. The crowd in the synagogue, also Jewish, rejoices (13:17), and the woman is a daughter of Abraham. The issue is who can be set free today.
Does Satan cause illness? Was she being punished for sin?
Luke says that a spirit had crippled her and that Satan had bound her. This expresses the biblical sense that sickness and death belong to a world that is not yet as God wants it, and that Christ's healings are a sign of the defeat of evil. It does not mean that any sick person is possessed or being punished. Earlier in this same chapter Jesus rejects the idea that those who suffer are worse sinners than others (13:1–5). Doctors and medicine are not excluded by this; Sirach 38 honours them, and the Church has always prayed for the sick and cared for them, as in the anointing of the sick (CCC 1499).
The Sundays of our Great Fast form a kind of road, and many of them show by a healing what Christ does for those who come to him. On K'piphtho Sunday we think of all whose lives have been bent by long illness, by age, by heavy labour, or by wrong done to them, and of those who cannot lift their eyes for shame. As we stand for the Holy Qurbono, we can remember that standing upright before God is itself a gift. In the Antiochene tradition, we stand and turn toward the East at prayer, and the body prays along with the heart. Today let us look around our parish for those who are overlooked, and do what Jesus did: see them, and call them over.