10 January 2023
Tuesday of the First Week in Ordinary Time
“You have given your Son rule over the works of your hands,” reads today’s responsorial psalm. The word “rule” can often evoke images of force, dominion, even oppression. But in today’s gospel, we see just how Jesus rules over the works of God’s hands. He teaches and liberates. Four times this short passage refers to Jesus’ teaching. It’s what he went to the synagogue to do. When his instruction is interrupted by a man possessed by an unclean spirit, his liberation of the man is praised with astonishment as “a new teaching with authority.”
Two thousand years later, his teaching and his liberation reach our very hearts. His teachings bring us freedom. Likewise, the freedom he has brought to us allows us to receive his teaching, and to freely put it into action in our world. Far from being a rule of force and dominion, it is a rule of teaching and of freedom. Upon reflecting on this truth, may we in grateful praise and recognition from the depths of our hearts proclaim, “You have given your Son rule over the works of your hands!”