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Master·evangeli.net

Today's Gospel + short theological explanation

Monday of the Twenty-third Week in Ordinary Time
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Gospel text (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... 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.

Without Jesus the Redeemer it is inevitable to "harden the heart"

EDITORIAL TEAM evangeli.net (based on texts by Benedict XVI) (Città del Vaticano, Vatican)

Today, we all —Jews and non-Jews— must make a firm resolution: we have to "die to ourselves" and recognize Jesus the Redeemer. Without God, man does not explain himself and falls into absurdity and contradictions. It is then inevitable that we harden our hearts, rejecting any self-knowledge and denying our own guilt, unless there is "Someone" who also carries this guilt, who "develops" it and who forgives it.

There occurs a reciprocity here: without the idea of the Redeemer —who does not conceal the guilt, but suffers it— we cannot bear the truth of our own guilt and we appeal to the first deception: our blind obstinacy in front of this guilt, from which all other deceptions are born, to end up with our total incapacity to face the truth. And conversely: it is not possible to know the Redeemer and believe in Him without the courage to be honest with ourselves.

—O Lord, I ask you for the grace of the "confession" to recognize the truth: Yours (I need You!) and mine (I am not "God", but a weak creature!).