No greater love has a man that he laid down his life for his friends,
as we're told by our Lord in the Gospel.
Not today's Gospel, but I mention that because we today celebrate a vote of Mass
in honor of St. Maximilian Kolbe.
And these words of our Lord are attributed to St. Maximilian in a unique way
because St. Maximilian was the first saint to be martyred,
or to be canonized.
A martyr of charity.
Most martyrs were canonized because they died for the faith
or for some article of the faith.
St. Maximilian died for another man,
for a man he didn't even know.
Francis Kajaniczek, in the death camp of Auschwitz,
when ten men were going to be put to death,
was selected by the commandant and he cried out,
that he had a wife and a family.
And St. Maximilian stepped forward and took his place
and died not only for Francis Kajaniczek,
but also for the nine other men that were condemned to death with him.
St. Maximilian went down into the death bunker
and there he exhorted his companions and prayed with them
and prepared them for death.
And it was the last one, actually.
To die.
So the church, in her great wisdom
and in the providence of God for these times,
raised up to the altars this great saint as a martyr of charity
because more than anything else in this world,
we need supernatural charity.
That's always been true.
Never not been true.
But perhaps we could say,
it's more true today than ever
because of the culture of death in which we live
and the way in which so many souls and bodies
have been abandoned to destruction
in the culture of death that we find ourselves in today.
Today's gospel, our Lord
gives a sign of his great charity in this miracle,
which he works for.
This woman who was crippled by an evil spirit, we're told,
and she was bent over completely,
unable to stand erect.
And it's a sign of how the devil bends us over,
stoops us over, so that we can see only the ground
and not the heavens.
The evangelist today tells us that it was a spirit who crippled her,
who bent her over, made her look at the ground instead of looking up to heaven.
And it was our Lord who delivered her from this infirmity
and allowed her to look up and to praise God.
And it says as soon as she was cured by our Lord that she stood up straight and glorified God.
She looked straight to the heavens and praised God for his goodness and for what he had done for her.
And then the leader of the synagogue becomes indignant because of what our Lord has done on the Sabbath,
because he's cured on the Sabbath.
And our Lord, of course, rebukes him.
And ultimately the head of the synagogue is humiliated because people see the truth of our Lord's words.
Yes, there are.
There are our rules.
Some of them are divine law.
Some of them are human law.
But in this case, the rule that overrode everything else here was charity.
Not because we're being authorized to break rules or to break the commandments,
but our Lord always shows us, including the hypocrites,
who thought that they were very religious and very pious and very obedient.
And that's what God's law showed them, what the heart of the law must be.
The heart of the law must be our conversion to God and our complete commitment to him.
And the way that God, the way that our Lord was committed to his Father,
and by way of extension, thinking about what we said yesterday about the gospel,
the two commandments connected so closely together,
that that charity must be extended to our neighbor.
Because our Lord wants each of us to be delivered of our sinfulness
and brought into the kingdom of heaven.
Our Lord has worked for the conversion of each and every one of us.
He died, he poured out his blood as though each and every one of us individually
was the only one he was dying for.
And therefore the law of charity must always govern all of our actions.
First, the love of God.
And our willingness to serve him and never compromise with sin
or anything that offends God, even in the smallest matter.
But then by way of extension, because we are so committed to God,
we are committed to the welfare of other people.
We're committed ultimately to their conversion and their entrance into heaven.
But also to, you know, just their general welfare.
As our Lord delivers.
Why?
What did Christ break in His heart,
how
His leap
intoest
labor
and
not
Josiah
intoized
but
cherry
wreath
dancing
at
the
color
of
the
people who are blind,
kneeling,
who rejoiced and found edification in this good work that our Lord had done.
So this world needs supernatural charity more than anything else.
If we had that supernatural charity to the degree that God wants us to have it,
we would change the world.
Our Lord came to cast fire on the world.
And that fire is the fire of his divine love.
He wishes to bring healing to each and every one of us
and the grace to do his will always.
May we pray for that grace today as we come before the sacrament of our Lord's divine love,
his real presence in the Eucharist.
May we pray for that grace today as we come before the sacrament of our Lord's divine love,
may we pray for that grace today as we come before the sacrament of our Lord's divine love,