Monday, September 7, 2026

Monday of the Twenty-third week in Ordinary Time

Luke 6:6-11

Listen to the whole reading — MP3

First reading

1 Corinthians 5:1-8

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles, that one has his father’s wife. You are puffed up, and didn’t rather mourn, that he who had done this deed might be removed from among you. For I most certainly, as being absent in body but present in spirit, have already, as though I were present, judged him who has done this thing. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, you being gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, are to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole lump? Purge out the old yeast, that you may be a new lump, even as you are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old yeast, neither with the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Responsorial psalm

Psalms 5:4-5,6,11

For you are not a God who has pleasure in wickedness. Evil can’t live with you. The arrogant shall not stand in your sight. You hate all workers of iniquity. You will destroy those who speak lies. The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. But let all those who take refuge in you rejoice, Let them always shout for joy, because you defend them. Let them also who love your name be joyful in you.

Gospel

Luke 6:6-11

It also happened on another Sabbath that he entered into the synagogue and taught. There was a man there, and his right hand was withered. The scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, that they might find an accusation against him. But he knew their thoughts; and he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Rise up, and stand in the middle.” He arose and stood. Then Jesus said to them, “I will ask you something: Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good, or to do harm? To save a life, or to kill?” He looked around at them all, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did, and his hand was restored as sound as the other. But they were filled with rage, and talked with one another about what they might do to Jesus.

Lectio

Paul writes about yeast — that small, hidden thing that changes the whole loaf. He is not scandalized so much by one man's sin as by the community's comfort with it, their being "puffed up" while something quietly corrupts them from within. The old yeast is not always dramatic. More often it is the slow leaven of malice we have grown used to, the resentment we no longer notice we are carrying, the wickedness we have made peace with because everyone around us has too.

In the Gospel we see what that fully risen loaf looks like: the scribes and Pharisees, watching Jesus, hoping he will heal so they can accuse him. Notice the terrible mathematics of the leavened heart — a man's withered hand becomes, for them, an opportunity for a trap. They would rather guard their law than see a wound made whole. And when the wholeness comes anyway, they are "filled with rage." This is the fruit of the old yeast fully worked through: to be angry at a healing because it happened on the wrong terms, ours.

And yet Jesus does not perform in secret. "Rise up, and stand in the middle," he tells the man. The healing happens in full view, in the open, unafraid of the watchers. That is what sincerity and truth look like — the unleavened bread Paul longs for. Not perfection, but a life brought out of the corner and into the center, where God can touch what is withered in us without our first hiding it.

Whose healing or good fortune have you secretly resented lately, because it came on terms you did not choose or control?

What is the withered thing in you that you keep in the corner, that Christ is quietly asking you to bring into the middle and stretch out today?

Saint of the day

St. Cloud, Priest (522-c.560)

Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora