Daily Gospel Reflection - Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time

Daily Gospel Reflection - Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time

Daily Gospel Reflection - Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time 

September 6, 2021 

Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time

Gospel: Lk 6:6-11 

On a certain sabbath Jesus went into the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right hand was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees watched him closely to see if he would cure on the sabbath so that they might discover a reason to accuse him. But he realized their intentions and said to the man with the withered hand, “Come up and stand before us.” And he rose and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?” Looking around at them all, he then said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so and his hand was restored. But they became enraged and discussed together what they might do to Jesus. 

Source: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops 

Bishop Robert Barron 

Friends, in our Gospel today, Jesus heals a man with a withered hand. As I’ve said many times before, we tend to domesticate Christ, reducing him to a guru or a teacher, one spiritual guide among many. But this is to do violence to the Gospel, which presents him not simply as teacher but as savior. 

I realize that the culture militates against Christianity at this point, for it steadily teaches the ideology of self-esteem and self-assertion: “I’m okay and you’re okay”; “Who are you to tell me how to behave?” 

But this sort of thing—whatever value it might have politically or psychologically—is simply inimical to a biblical Christianity. The biblical view is that we have, through the abuse of our freedom, gotten ourselves into an impossible bind. Sin has wrecked us in such a fundamental way that we have become dysfunctional. Until we truly feel what it means to be lost and helpless, we will not appreciate who Jesus is and what he means. 

Jesus is someone who has rescued us, saved us, done something that we could never, even in principle, do for ourselves.