Twenty-seventh Sunday after Pentecost
The Healing of the Woman with a Spirit of Infirmity
Luke 13:10-17
From The Explanation of the Gospel of St. Luke
by Blessed Theophylact, Archbishop of Ochrid and Bulgaria
10-17.
And He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And,
behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years,
and was bent over, and could in no wise straighten herself. And when
Jesus saw her, He called her to Him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art
loosed from thine infirmity. And He laid His hands on her: and
immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. And the ruler of
the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the
sabbath day, and said unto the people, There are six days in which men
ought to work: in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the
sabbath day. The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth
not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the
stall, and lead it away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a
daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be
loosed from this bond on the sabbath day? And when He had said these
things, all His adversaries were ashamed: and all the people rejoiced
for all the glorious things that were done by Him. The woman suffered from this affliction as a result of demonic assault, as the Lord Himself says, This woman, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years.
Perhaps God had departed from her on account of certain sins, and as a
result Satan was punishing her. For Satan is in part the cause of all
the hardships which afflict our bodies, when God on high permits him.
From the very beginning it was Satan who brought about our fall by which
we lost the incorruptibility in which we had been created; it was Satan
who caused us to be bound to diseased bodies prone to suffering,
symbolized by the garments of dead skins in which Adam and Eve were
wrapped (Gen. 3:22). But now the Lord, with the majestic voice of the
Godhead, full of power, drives out the infirmity of this woman. He
places His hands on her, so that we might learn that His holy flesh
imparted both the power and the energy of the Logos. For His flesh was
His own, and not that of some other human person alongside Him, separate
from Him in hypostasis, as the impious Nestorius thinks. (1)
So great is the goodness of the Lord, Who in this manner took mercy on
His own creation. But Satan, who had bound the woman in the first place,
was vexed at her deliverance because he desired her continued
affliction, and so he bound the ruler of the synagogue with spite, and
through the mouth of this man, Satan reviled the miracle. This is how he
always attacks the good. Therefore the Lord uses the apt example of
irrational animals to rebuke the man who was indignant that a healing
had taken place on the Sabbath. And thus not only this man, but all the
other adversaries of Jesus as well, were put to shame by Christ's words.
For it was insane to hinder the healing of a man on the Sabbath using
as a pretext the commandment that the Sabbath be a day of rest. So it
was, that even while the people were rejoicing at the Lord's deeds, His
adversaries were put to shame by His words. For these adversaries,
instead of joining in the jubilation which followed His work of healing,
burned with rage that He had healed at all. But the multitude, because
they derived benefit from His signs, rejoiced and took pleasure in this
healing. You must also understand these miracles to refer to the inner
man. The soul is bent over in infirmity whenever it inclines to earthly
thoughts alone and imagines nothing that is heavenly and divine. It can
truly be said that such a soul has been infirm for eighteen years. For
when a man is feeble in keeping the commandments of the divine law,
which are ten in number, and is weak in his hope of the eighth age, the
age to come, it can be said that he has been bent over for ten and eight
years. (2) Is not that man indeed bent over who
is attached to the earth, and who always sins in disregard of the
commandments, and who does not look for the age to come? But the Lord
heals such a soul on the Sabbath in the assembly of the synagogue. For
when a man assembles together within himself thoughts of confession (Judah
means "confession") and keeps the Sabbath, that is, he rests from doing
evil, then Jesus heals him, not only by word when He says to him, Thou art loosed from thine infirmity, but
also by deed. For when He has placed His hands on us, He requires that
we accept the energy from His divine hands to do in collaboration with
Him the works of virtue. We must not be satisfied to receive only that
healing which comes by word and by instruction.
1.
The heretic Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople from 428 to 431
A,D., taught that the co-unoriginate Logos was not conceived and did not
take flesh in the Virgins womb, but instead was united to Christ the
man at some later time. This implied that the two natures of Christ, the
divine and the human, were not united in one hypostasis, that is, in
one person, but in two, and therefore were not truly united. If this
were so, Christ would not have accomplished the salvation of the human
race. As a result Nestorius called the Virgin Mary Christokos, that is, the Birthgiver of Christ, but refused to call her the Theotokos, the
Birthgiver of God. This false teaching was condemned as heresy at the
Third Ecumenical Council held in Ephesus in the year 431, and from that
time Nestorius and all who follow his teaching have been outside the
Church.
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