OUR NEMESIS

Monday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time

Lk 6:6-11

The scribes and the Pharisees are watching Jesus to see if he will cure the man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. There they go again! They seem to have gone crazy about finding something to use against Jesus. How can they see the Law so clearly and yet be blind to the immediate need of the handicapped right before their eyes?

The scribes and the Pharisees know that it is not unlawful to do good and save life even on a Sabbath. They are not against the doing good and the saving of life on Sabbath. They are simply against Jesus. His mere presence confronts them with their own hypocrisy. Even without any word for them from Jesus, they are deeply disturbed by the convicting message of His own lifestyle. He is their nemesis.

What happens to the scribes and the Pharisees may happen to us too. Or perhaps it is already happening to us. When someone makes us see our own self righteousness, we can invest all our energies in finding fault in him. No matter what good he does, we can always have something to criticize in him. For every convicting message he tells us, we can have a rebuttal. Our hatred for him eats us up.

Please, let us not allow hatred to eat us up. Let us not permit anger, envy, jealousy, and prejudice destroy us. When we harbor grudges against someone, we suffer, not him. When we envy and are jealous, we look foolish like the scribes and Pharisees. When we hate, we die. We were not created to hate, to be angry, to envy, to be jealous, or to be prejudice against someone. We were created to love.

Jesus is not our nemesis. The devil is.