Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time

What is Daily Mass Readings with Homily and Saint of the Day?

Hear the Mass readings of the day, followed by a homily grounded in the writings of the Church Fathers, Doctors, and master theologians. Every episode concludes with a brief reflection on the heroic virtue of the Saint of the Day and a practical spiritual resolution to carry into your daily life.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is September the seventh, Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time. The Church places before us a searching question: when sin is tolerated and goodness is suppressed, who truly governs our hearts? Grant us, O Lord, the courage to purge what corrupts and the freedom to stretch forth our withered hands toward Your healing grace.

A reading from the first Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians.

Brothers and sisters: It is widely reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of a kind not found even among pagans — a man living with his father's wife. And you are inflated with pride. Should you not rather have been sorrowful? The one who did this deed should be expelled from your midst. I, for my part, although absent in body but present in spirit, have already, as if present, pronounced judgment on the one who has committed this deed, in the name of our Lord Jesus: when you have gathered together and I am with you in spirit with the power of the Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord. Your boasting is not appropriate. Do you not know that a little yeast leavens all the dough? Clear out the old yeast, so that you may become a fresh batch of dough, inasmuch as you are unleavened. For our Paschal Lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the feast, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

The Word of the Lord.

Psalm five. R. Lead me in your justice, Lord.

For you, O God, delight not in wickedness; no evil man remains with you; the arrogant may not stand in your sight. You hate all evildoers. R. Lead me in your justice, Lord.

You destroy all who speak falsehood; the bloodthirsty and the deceitful the LORD abhors. R. Lead me in your justice, Lord.

But let all who take refuge in you be glad and exult forever. Protect them, that you may be the joy of those who love your name. R. Lead me in your justice, Lord.

Alleluia. My sheep hear my voice, says the Lord; I know them, and they follow me. Alleluia.

A reading from the holy Gospel according to Saint Luke.

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.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Two scenes from the life of the Church, separated by centuries yet bound by a single thread: the catastrophic cost of pride. In Corinth, a community boasts while a grave sin festers in its midst. In Capernaum, men who ought to rejoice at a miraculous healing burn instead with murderous rage. Pride is the yeast Saint Paul names — invisible, self-multiplying, transforming the entire character of what it inhabits.

Saint Augustine, meditating on the nature of pride, called it the beginning of all sin precisely because it inverts the proper order of love. It places the self where God should stand. The Corinthians had done exactly this. They had permitted a man to live in a union the natural law itself condemns, and rather than weeping, they paraded their tolerance as sophistication, their laxity as liberality. Augustine would recognize this immediately: the community had begun to love its own image of itself — progressive, cosmopolitan, spiritually superior — more than it loved the truth that alone could set the sinner free.

And Paul's remedy is startlingly severe to modern ears. He commands excommunication — the handing of this man to Satan. Cornelius a Lapide, in his magnificent commentary on the Pauline epistles, clarifies what this means with precision. The punishment is medicinal, not vindictive. Satan is permitted to afflict the body so that the soul, stripped of every earthly comfort and false security, might be shocked into conversion. The destruction of the flesh is not damnation; it is surgery. The goal, explicitly stated, is that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord. This is the paradox of true pastoral charity: sometimes the most loving act is the hardest discipline. A physician who refuses to lance an infected wound is no physician at all.

The leaven image deepens this. A single spoonful of old yeast does not merely sit inert beside fresh dough — it works through every ounce of it. Tolerated sin does not remain contained. It reshapes the culture of a household, a parish, a civilization. The Church is the unleavened bread of Passover, consecrated and set apart, and she remains so only by vigilance. For our Paschal Lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. The feast is already prepared. We dare not bring to that table the corrupted leaven of yesterday.

Then comes the synagogue, and a man whose right hand is withered. Saint Thomas Aquinas, reflecting on the significance of the right hand in Sacred Scripture, notes that the right hand is the organ of action, of strength, of one's capacity to do good in the world. A withered right hand is, therefore, not merely a physical affliction — it is the image of a soul whose power to perform works of righteousness has atrophied. And the Lord does not merely heal this man privately. He commands him to stand before all, to be seen in his limitation, to stretch forth precisely what is broken.

This is the sacramental imagination of the Church. Grace does not operate around our wounds; it operates through them. The man must stretch out the very hand that cannot move. The act of obedience precedes the restoration. And in that moment of impossible trust, the flesh is made whole.

The Pharisees, meanwhile, watch — not with hope, not with curiosity, but with prosecutorial intent. They have used the Law as a weapon for self-justification rather than as a lamp toward God. Their right hands, too, are withered, though invisibly so. They can see a man healed and feel nothing but fury. This is what pride, left to its full maturation, produces: a heart that is enraged by goodness because goodness implicitly condemns it.

Stretch out your hand today. Identify the one area of your interior life that has grown withered through habitual avoidance — the prayer you have postponed, the confession you have delayed, the sin you have refused to name. Bring it before the Lord precisely as it is, broken and exposed, and in that act of trust allow His power to restore it.

May Almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever. Amen.
EPISODE_TITLE: Stretch Forth Your Withered Hand
IMAGE_PROMPT: A Byzantine-style icon depicting Christ in golden light extending His hand toward a kneeling man with a visibly withered right hand inside a stone synagogue, with shadowed scribes watching from the margins.