Lift Up Your Hearts

At every Mass, just before the Eucharistic Prayer, the priest says, “Lift up your hearts,” and we answer almost without thinking, “We lift them up to the Lord.” Plenty of us say it while never actually doing it. Our hearts are pointed somewhere else entirely: down at a grudge we’ve been nursing since spring, at the phone buzzing in our pocket, at a habitual sin we stopped bothering to confess years ago. The body stands up straight in the pew, and the heart stays folded over, eyes on the floor. Saint Augustine saw this in today’s Gospel. The woman Jesus heals in the synagogue had been bent double for eighteen years, and Augustine says she “could not look up, for in vain she heard the words, lift up your hearts.”¹ What was wrong with her spine is what’s wrong with a lot of our souls. We know which way is up, but for some reason we can’t get there on our own.

Today’s Gospel shows what Jesus does about it. He sees the woman, calls her over before she asks for anything, lays his hands on her, and she straightens up and glorifies God. The ruler of the synagogue is furious that this happened on the sabbath, and Jesus answers him with an ox and a donkey. If you untie your animals on the sabbath and lead them to water, shouldn’t this daughter of Abraham be untied from what Satan has bound?

Paul describes what a life looks like once it’s been set free. “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.” Then he reminds the Ephesians who they used to be: “once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light.”

Franciscan Media remembers Saint Peter of Alcantara today, a sixteenth-century Spanish friar who reformed his own life before he tried to reform anyone else’s. Here’s the question these readings put to you and me: What has bent our hearts toward the ground, and will we let Christ untie them?

The Readings

First Reading: Ephesians 4:32–5:8

And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

But immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is fitting among saints. Let there be no filthiness, nor silly talk, nor levity, which are not fitting; but instead let there be thanksgiving. Be sure of this, that no immoral or impure man, or one who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for it is because of these things that the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not associate with them, for once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light.

Gospel: Luke 13:10-17

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And there was a woman who had had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years; she was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. And when Jesus saw her, he called her and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your infirmity.” And he laid his hands upon her, and immediately she was made straight, and she praised God. But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the sabbath, said to the people, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be healed, and not on the sabbath day.” Then the Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his ass from the manger, and lead it away to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?” As he said this, all his adversaries were put to shame; and all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him.

Scriptural Analysis

Today’s first reading starts in the middle of a contrast. Paul has just listed what has to go: “bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander” (Ephesians 4:31). Now he names what replaces it. “Be kind to one another.” Peter Williamson, in the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, notes a possible pun. The Greek for “kind” is chrēstos (KHRAY-stos), which some scholars think was pronounced in Paul’s day exactly like christos (khree-STOS), “Christ.” So, in Williamson’s words, “be Christ to one another.” And the reason we forgive is that God already has. Williamson puts it this way: “Our hearts are meant to be softened, overwhelmed by the kindness God has shown us, in a way that impacts all our relationships.”²

“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.” Margaret MacDonald, in the Sacra Pagina commentary, notes that this is the only call to imitate God in the whole New Testament. The word is mimētai (mee-may-TIE), and MacDonald thinks the closest background is the ancient moral teaching that a son should copy his father’s virtues. Williamson spells out what that can and can’t mean: “We cannot imitate God’s omnipotence and omniscience, but we can imitate his forgiveness and generous love toward those who wrong us.” Saint Thomas Aquinas says we imitate God “insofar as it is possible for us to do so,” because “a son must imitate his father.”³

“And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.” Aquinas says Paul chooses the verb “walk” to signify “you must always advance,” because love is a debt we never finish paying (Romans 13:8). Christ’s self-gift on the cross, Williamson says, “provides the pattern for how we are to offer ourselves to God, making our time, talents, and treasure available to God and others in self-giving love.”⁴

Then Paul names what has no place among “saints”: immorality, impurity, and covetousness. Why is the covetous man “an idolater”? Williamson answers: “People who are greedy, whose desires are insatiable, have made a god of the object of their desire.” Aquinas agrees that such a person “fixes his end in a created reality as well as putting all his trust in it.” Williamson notes that the warning falls on “those who remain immoral, impure, or greedy,” and that Paul pointedly leaves out “those who struggle and sometimes fall but repent.” In place of foul talk Paul asks for thanksgiving, and MacDonald notes that the word is eucharistia (yoo-khah-ree-STEE-ah).⁵

“Therefore do not associate with them.” Williamson says the Greek means “do not be partners with them,” since Paul elsewhere refuses to ask Christians to leave the world (1 Corinthians 5:9-11). Then comes the reason: “for once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” Aquinas notices how strong the noun is. Paul calls them darkness itself, because “when sin dominates a man the entire person is referred to as sin and darkness.” Now they are light, Aquinas adds, “through participation” in Christ, who is the light. MacDonald hears in the then-and-now contrast “a remembrance of conversion” with a baptismal setting, and the Catechism teaches that the Holy Spirit “enlightens and strengthens us to live as ‘children of light’ through ‘all that is good and right and true.’”⁶

We turn now to the Gospel. Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem, and he has just told the parable of the barren fig tree (Luke 13:6-9). Luke Timothy Johnson notes that the story of this woman appears only in Luke. Luke’s Greek describes her precisely: she was synkyptousa (soong-KOOP-too-sah), bent together, and could not anakypsai (ah-nah-KOOP-sai), straighten up, at all. Verse 16 tells us what this “spirit of infirmity” was: Satan had bound her. Pablo Gadenz sets her beside the woman who bled for twelve years (Luke 8:43).⁷ And she doesn’t ask for anything. Jesus sees her and calls her.

“Woman, you are freed from your infirmity.” Gadenz explains that the verb is passive, implying that God is the one acting, and the next verb is passive too: literally, “she was made straight.” Johnson notes that the form, apolelysai (ah-poh-LEH-loo-sai), is a passive perfect, the tense Jesus uses when he forgives sins (Luke 5:20; 7:47). Gadenz sees a glimpse of the new creation. Earlier Jesus rescued the paralyzed “Man” from his sins (Luke 5:20), and now he heals the “Woman” oppressed by Satan: Adam, then Eve.⁸

The ruler of the synagogue aims his complaint at the crowd. Johnson calls it “a classic ploy of deflected anger.” “There are six days on which work ought to be done.” The Greek word is dei (DAY), “it is necessary.” Gadenz notes that Jesus answers with the same word, “ought not this woman … be loosed” (edei, EH-day), so two kinds of necessity face each other: the leader’s rule and God’s plan. Gadenz puts it neatly: the ruler “thinks that God is on his side, but the irony is that God is the one who has ‘worked’ to heal the woman.”⁹

Then the ox and the donkey for the core of Jesus’ retort. Deuteronomy forbade putting them to work on the sabbath (Deuteronomy 5:14), yet everyone untied them to lead them to water. Jesus argues from the lesser to the greater, and Luke uses one verb for both: you untie (lyei, LOO-ay) your ox, so shouldn’t she be loosed (lythēnai, loo-THAY-nai)? Saint Basil the Great, in the Catena Aurea (kah-TAY-nah OW-ray-ah) of Saint Thomas, explains why Jesus calls this hypocrisy: “The hypocrite is one who on the stage assumes a different character from his own.” Saint Cyril of Alexandria names what the ruler was really protecting: he “preferred that this woman should be like the beasts, rather look upon the earth than receive her natural stature, provided that Christ was not magnified.”¹⁰

Gadenz says the opponents fixed on the external observance of the sabbath and missed “its inner, twofold meaning.” The sabbath remembered creation (Exodus 20:11) and the exodus from slavery (Deuteronomy 5:15). So a sabbath healing of a woman Satan had bound is a new exodus. The Catechism says it in one line: “With compassion, Christ declares the sabbath for doing good rather than harm, for saving life rather than killing.”¹¹

The Fathers saw in her posture the posture of the soul. Basil observes that animals look down at the earth, “but the head of man was made erect towards the heaven, his eyes tending upward. For it becomes us to seek what is above.” Saint Gregory the Great applies it to sin: “every sinner who thinketh earthly things, not seeking those that are in heaven, is unable to look up,” because “habitual sin binds down the mind, so that it cannot rise to uprightness.” Gregory adds a hard truth. The Lord “sometimes calls but does not make upright,” because grace often lets us see what should be done while sin keeps us from doing it.¹² Seeing the light and standing in it are two different things.

Johnson notices a last detail. The verb for straightening up returns near the end of Luke, when Jesus speaks of his return. In Johnson’s translation: “stand up straight, lift up your heads, for the time of your liberation has come” (Luke 21:28). The Greek is anakypsate (ah-nah-KOOP-sah-teh), the same verb this woman could not manage for eighteen years.¹³ Her healing is a small preview of the last day.

Put the two readings side by side, and they tell one story from two ends. Luke shows the moment of release: a bound woman untied by a word, bent toward the earth one minute and praising God the next. Paul shows the life that follows: a person who was darkness and is now light, walking in love and loosing others the way God loosed him. The verb links them. Christ unties us, and the first sign that it worked is that we start untying other people.

Daily Application

The interior movement these readings ask for is to let Christ straighten what’s bent in us, and then to stop keeping other people bent. Start with the second part, because it’s usually where the trouble hides. A grudge has a posture. A man who refuses to forgive walks around bent over the injury, eyes fixed on it, replaying it, unable to look up. He may stand straight in church, like the ruler of the synagogue. Inside, he’s folded in half.

The Catechism describes the way out in language that sounds like today’s Gospel. “It is impossible to keep the Lord’s commandment by imitating the divine model from outside; there has to be a vital participation, coming from the depths of the heart, in the holiness and the mercy and the love of our God.” Then it adds, “It is there, in fact, ‘in the depths of the heart,’ that everything is bound and loosed. It is not in our power not to feel or to forget an offense; but the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion and purifies the memory in transforming the hurt into intercession.”¹⁴ That’s realistic. The Catechism admits the hurt will still be felt, and it asks you to hand your heart to the Spirit, who turns the hurt into prayer.

Try going today. Name the person in your life whom you haven’t forgiven, and pray for that person by name: one Our Father said slowly. Really mean those words, “as we forgive those who trespass against us.” If what bends you is a habit rather than a grudge, Gregory says habitual sin binds the mind so it can’t rise, and the place Christ loosens that bond is the confessional. Go this week. The words of absolution are the Church’s version of “Woman, you are freed.” Then, the next time the priest says “Lift up your hearts,” mean it, and look up.

Saint Peter of Alcantara knew where reform starts. Franciscan Media tells how this son of a Spanish governor studied law at Salamanca, joined the Franciscans at 16, and became provincial at 39, and how he still washed dishes and cut wood for the friars. “While others talked about Church reform, Peter’s reform began with himself.” He served as confessor and spiritual director to Saint Teresa of Avila, and his patience became proverbial: “To bear such an insult one must have the patience of Peter of Alcantara.” Franciscan Media’s reflection says that for him “the goal was following Christ in ever greater purity of heart.”¹⁵ A purified heart is a heart that can look up.

Christ has already called you by name. Let him lay his hands on what’s bent so that you may stand up straight and go and forgive those to whom you have still not extended forgiveness.

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Notes

1. ↑ Saint Augustine, Sermon 110, quoted in Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers, vol. 3, St. Luke (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1843), on Luke 13:10-17.
2. ↑ Peter S. Williamson, Ephesians, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), 136.
3. ↑ Margaret Y. MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, Sacra Pagina 17 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 310; Williamson, Ephesians, 136; Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, trans. Matthew L. Lamb (Albany, NY: Magi Books, 1966), chap. 5, lect. 1, at isidore.co.
4. ↑ Aquinas, Commentary on Ephesians, chap. 5, lect. 1; Williamson, Ephesians, 136.
5. ↑ Williamson, Ephesians, 141; Aquinas, Commentary on Ephesians, chap. 5, lect. 3; MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 312.
6. ↑ Williamson, Ephesians, 143; Aquinas, Commentary on Ephesians, chap. 5, lect. 4; MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, 313; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), no. 1695.
7. ↑ Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina 3 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 212, 214; Pablo T. Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), 252.
8. ↑ Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 252-253; Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 212.
9. ↑ Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 212; Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 253.
10. ↑ Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 253; Saint Basil the Great, Homily 1 on Fasting, and Saint Cyril of Alexandria, quoted in Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 3, St. Luke, on Luke 13:10-17.
11. ↑ Gadenz, Gospel of Luke, 253; Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2173.
12. ↑ Saint Basil the Great, Homily 9 on the Hexaemeron, and Saint Gregory the Great, Homily 31 on the Gospels, quoted in Aquinas, Catena Aurea, vol. 3, St. Luke, on Luke 13:10-17.
13. ↑ Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 215.
14. ↑ Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 2842-2843.
15. ↑ “Saint Peter of Alcantara,” Saint of the Day, Franciscan Media, accessed October 21, 2026, franciscanmedia.org.

Books Cited

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• Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels
• Peter S. Williamson, Ephesians, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2009)
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997)
• Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina 3 (Liturgical Press, 1991)
• Pablo T. Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Baker Academic, 2018)