Please read the passage before the homily.
Why do we celebrate Sabbath or Sunday? On Sabbath, God rested from the labor of creating the world. God rested and so invites us to share this divine rest. The Sabbath is a celebration of freedom so much so that even slaves had a free day on the Sabbath.
The woman was incapable of standing erect. This had gone on, not from birth but for eighteen years, and so supposedly as a result of the devil’s work.
The leader of the synagogue was overly concerned with the Sabbath rest; Jesus was concerned with freeing people from the grasp of the devil and evil. Jesus, accordingly, gave her her freedom and counted her among the number of God’s people, calling her a daughter of Abraham.
We live in a culture now when work happens seven days a week and even night and day where we have to struggle to celebrate our day of rest. We have become slaves to a concept that our value depends more on what we do than on who we are. We are not made to work 168 hours a week with no breaks.
Our resting from labor puts us in God’s family because God rested on that primal Sabbath. Our relationships and our support for others, even when done on our day of rest, recalls the Lord’s work of healing the woman in today’s Scripture passage. Our resting, as also or working, should benefit, help, and heal others.