Woman Unbent

The gospel today strikes me as a powerful contrast with the Church's patriarchal position on the role of women. Jesus defies religious conventions by healing on the Sabbath, and beyond this, it is hard not to see the symbolic meaning of this gesture as he heals the bent woman.

Gospel
Lk 13:10-17

Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on the sabbath.
And a woman was there who for eighteen years
had been crippled by a spirit;
she was bent over, completely incapable of standing erect.
When Jesus saw her, he called to her and said,
“Woman, you are set free of your infirmity.”
He laid his hands on her,
and she at once stood up straight and glorified God.
But the leader of the synagogue,
indignant that Jesus had cured on the sabbath,
said to the crowd in reply,
“There are six days when work should be done.
Come on those days to be cured, not on the sabbath day.”
The Lord said to him in reply, “Hypocrites!
Does not each one of you on the sabbath
untie his ox or his ass from the manger
and lead it out for watering?
This daughter of Abraham,
whom Satan has bound for eighteen years now,
ought she not to have been set free on the sabbath day
from this bondage?”
When he said this, all his adversaries were humiliated;
and the whole crowd rejoiced at all the splendid deeds done by him.


Irene Zimmerman, OFM writes a lovely and powerful poem inspired by this liberating and healing encounter:

Woman Un-Bent

That Sabbath day as always
she went to the synagogue
and took the place assigned her
right behind the grill where,
the elders had concurred,
she would block no one's view,
she would lean her heavy head,
and (though this was not said)
she'd give a good example to those who stood behind her.

That day, intent as always
on the Word (for eighteen years
she'd listened thus), she heard
Authority when Jesus spoke.

Though long stripped
of forwardness,
she came forward, nonetheless,
when Jesus summoned her.

"Woman, you are free
of your infirmity," he said.

The leader of the synagogue
worked himself into a sweat
as he tried to bend the Sabbath
and the woman back in place.

But she stood up straight and let
God's glory touch her face.