“The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” We have heard this so many times. But what is the gospel actually saying? Is he relativizing the law to human decisions. Does Jesus mean that laws were meant to be broken as David broke the law in the example of today’s gospel?
Anthony de Mello tells the story of a monk who used to tie his cat to a chair when he was meditating to avoid being distracted by the cat. After the monk died, the monks continued to tie a cat to a chair during meditation. Some useful customs degenerate in overburdening laws.
The Dominicans tried to avoid this and we call our laws, customs (consuetudine), with the power to incorporate or abandon them according to use and convenience to ensure they were always free to fulfill the law and not be enslaved by it.
Actually, the law of the sabbath rest was for the benefit of workers (Dt 5:14-15) and it was received as a blessing, a ‘delight’ (Is 58:13) and not a burden. Do we grasp the liberating and protecting factor of the laws we zealously fulfill?
January 22, 2008 at 1:27 am
I remember this story! After the old cat died, the other monks didn’t know what to do. They figured that the first monk must have had a reason to tie a cat up, so they went out and bought a new cat to tie up when they meditated!
January 22, 2008 at 8:19 am
Yap, certainly your memory is better than mine at 12 midnight! Point is at times we are still buying cats!