Saturday, September 5, 2026

Saturday of the Twenty-second week in Ordinary Time

Luke 6:1-5

Listen to the whole reading — MP3

First reading

1 Corinthians 4:6-15

Now these things, brothers, I have in a figure transferred to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that in us you might learn not to think beyond the things which are written, that none of you be puffed up against one another. For who makes you different? And what do you have that you didn’t receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? You are already filled. You have already become rich. You have come to reign without us. Yes, and I wish that you did reign, that we also might reign with you. For, I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last of all, like men sentenced to death. For we are made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You have honor, but we have dishonor. Even to this present hour we hunger, thirst, are naked, are beaten, and have no certain dwelling place. We toil, working with our own hands. When people curse us, we bless. Being persecuted, we endure. Being defamed, we entreat. We are made as the filth of the world, the dirt wiped off by all, even until now. I don’t write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have ten thousand tutors in Christ, you don’t have many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, I became your father through the Good News.

Responsorial psalm

Psalms 145:17-18,19-20,21

The Lord is righteous in all his ways, and gracious in all his works. The Lord is near to all those who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of those who fear him. He also will hear their cry, and will save them. The Lord preserves all those who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord. Let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.

Gospel

Luke 6:1-5

Now on the second Sabbath after the first, he was going through the grain fields. His disciples plucked the heads of grain and ate, rubbing them in their hands. But some of the Pharisees said to them, “Why do you do that which is not lawful to do on the Sabbath day?” Jesus, answering them, said, “Haven’t you read what David did when he was hungry, he, and those who were with him; how he entered into God’s house, and took and ate the show bread, and gave also to those who were with him, which is not lawful to eat except for the priests alone?” He said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

Lectio

"What do you have that you did not receive?" Paul's question cuts through everything the Corinthians had built up around themselves. They had grown rich, wise, honored — or so they imagined — and in their fullness they had forgotten the simple truth that every gift came from somewhere else, from Someone else. Paul offers his own life as the counter-image: hungry, beaten, homeless, treated as the dirt wiped off the world's shoes. Not because suffering is holy in itself, but because it strips away the illusion of self-sufficiency. The apostle who has nothing knows exactly what he has received, because he is not distracted by the pretense of having earned it.

There is a hidden tenderness in how these readings speak to hunger. Paul hungers. David and his men were hungry when they ate the holy bread. The disciples were hungry, plucking grain as they walked. And into all this the psalm quietly insists: "The Lord is near to all those who call on him... He will fulfill the desire of those who fear him." The Pharisees watching the disciples had made the Sabbath into another possession to guard, another mark of their righteousness. But Jesus, Lord of the Sabbath, points back to the deeper law — that the law exists to serve the hungry human being, not to accuse him. Grace bends toward need, not toward those who imagine they need nothing.

Perhaps the spiritual poverty Paul describes is not something to fear but something to receive. To know we are hungry is already to be close to the God who is near to all who call on him in truth.

Where in your life right now are you quietly taking credit for something that was actually given to you — a talent, a relationship, an opportunity — and how would today change if you named it as a gift?

Is there a person you have been judging the way the Pharisees judged the hungry disciples, watching for their failure rather than seeing their need, and could you soften toward them before the day ends?

Saint of the day

St. Lawrence Justinian, Bishop († 1455)

Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora