Tuesday, September 1, 2026
Tuesday of the Twenty-second week in Ordinary Time
Luke 4:31-37
Listen to the whole reading — MP3
First reading
1 Corinthians 2:10-16
But to us, God revealed them through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For who among men knows the things of a man, except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God, except God’s Spirit. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that were freely given to us by God. Which things also we speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things. Now the natural man doesn’t receive the things of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to him, and he can’t know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual discerns all things, and he himself is judged by no one. “For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct him?” But we have Christ’s mind.
Responsorial psalm
Psalms 145:8-9,10-11,12-13,13-14
The Lord is gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and of great loving kindness. The Lord is good to all. His tender mercies are over all his works. All your works will give thanks to you, the Lord. Your saints will extol you. They will speak of the glory of your kingdom, and talk about your power; to make known to the sons of men his mighty acts, the glory of the majesty of his kingdom. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. Your dominion endures throughout all generations. The Lord is faithful in all his words, and loving in all his deeds. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. Your dominion endures throughout all generations. The Lord is faithful in all his words, and loving in all his deeds. The Lord upholds all who fall, and raises up all those who are bowed down.
Gospel
Luke 4:31-37
He came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. He was teaching them on the Sabbath day, and they were astonished at his teaching, for his word was with authority. In the synagogue there was a man who had a spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Ah! what have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know you who you are: the Holy One of God!” Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” When the demon had thrown him down in the middle of them, he came out of him, having done him no harm. Amazement came on all, and they spoke together, one with another, saying, “What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!” News about him went out into every place of the surrounding region.
Lectio
There is a strange irony in today's readings. The demon in the synagogue knows exactly who Jesus is — "the Holy One of God" — and names him with perfect accuracy. Yet this knowledge saves nothing. It is knowledge held at a distance, knowledge that recoils rather than receives. Meanwhile Paul tells us that the deep things of God are not grasped by information at all but discerned by the Spirit, given freely to those willing to be given to. The demon has the facts. It does not have the mind of Christ.
We can spend years accumulating correct ideas about God while remaining, in Paul's phrase, "natural" — able to speak the vocabulary but unmoved in the depths. The people in Capernaum were astonished not because Jesus said something new but because his word carried authority, because it did something. It threw a man down and set him free. The Psalm gives the tone of that authority: the Lord who "upholds all who fall, and raises up all those who are bowed down." This is not the God of clever argument but the God whose power bends toward the ones who cannot stand on their own.
So the question underneath all of this is not whether you know the right things about Christ, but whether you have let his word have authority over you — whether you have handed over the part of yourself that would rather keep him at arm's length, correctly named but safely quarantined.
Where in your life do you know exactly what Christ is asking of you, yet keep him at a distance, like the demon who names him but resists him?
What is the part of you that is "bowed down" today — the burden you've stopped expecting anyone, even God, to lift — and would you dare name it to him now?
Saint of the day
St. Giles of Castaneda, Abbot (640-720)
Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora