October 26, 2026
Monday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time
Gospel: Lk 13:10-17

Today is Monday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time. The passage from the Holy Gospel of Luke presents the narrative of Jesus healing a woman who had been afflicted by a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years in the synagogue on the Sabbath day. Let us try to understand.

We often encounter in hospitals and in family life those who suffer from illness, rushing from place to place and enduring the pain brought by their diseases. Like the woman in the Gospel who had been afflicted for eighteen years (cf. Lk 13:10-11), they urgently need healing and long for consolation, yet few comfort them or provide the necessary help within their means. Some even think that they suffer such torment because they have done something wrong and thus brought this calamity upon themselves. Fearing that they might be implicated if they help them, they choose to distance themselves and no longer associate with them.

In fact, before we came to know God, we were like this woman. Because of the disobedience of our first parents, we lived under the power of the devil—the source of all evil—and were bound by him. Even though we receive in this world the light of the sun that illuminates the heavens, the earth, and all that is under the earth, we still lived in the darkness brought by sin. Our souls thus contracted a deadly disease and urgently needed God’s healing. God, who is rich in mercy, just as Christ did for that woman today, invites us to come to Him when we face afflictions. He desires that through receiving the Baptism of Christ, we may die with Christ, that is, to nail the old self subject to death “to the cross with Christ, so that the sinful self may perish, and we may no longer be slaves to sin” (cf. Rom 8:6-7), freeing us from the bonds of sin and restoring us to the freedom of the children of God. He further desires that we receive the Holy Spirit, consubstantial with the Father and the Son, “and by His leading, put to death the deeds of the flesh” (cf. Rom 8:13), so that we may live in His infinite love and become His children, and so that we may be co-heirs with Christ, thereby sharing in the eternal divine life of Christ.

Almighty ever-living God,
increase our faith, hope and charity,
and make us love what you command,
so that we may merit what you promise.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever

©Totus Tuus 2026
Cum Approbatione Ecclesiastica