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SERMON 32 On the Withered Hand1 ll of the miracles of Christ are marvelous works of his powers, and they must not be believed to have happened in a human fashion or by chance, but by Divine design, as today the words of the Gospel have shown us. And Jesus entered, it says, into the synagogue; and there was a man there who had a withered hand (Mk 3.1). Indeed Christ goes into the synagogue, but the Jew does not welcome him as he enters, nor does he recognize who is present, nor in his blindness does he understand who is at work. See how bodily presence means nothing where the mind is miserably far away; just as, on the other hand, bodily absence is no obstacle where hearts are joined through faith. And there was a man there who had a withered hand. In this person the image of all people is being depicted, in this person is being accomplished the cure of all people, in this person is found the long awaited restoration of everyone’s health. For the hand of the man had withered more by dullness of faith than by the dryness of nerves; and more by a guilty conscience than by physical weakness. For that infirmity was very ancient which had arisen at the very beginning of the world, and it could be cured by neither human skill nor human mediation, since it had been contracted according to the justified displeasure of God. For [man]2 had touched what was forbidden, he had taken what was prohibited, when he had reached out to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.3 134 1. Mk 3.1–7. 2. Chrysologus does not specify the subject here. It could be either the man with the withered hand (who represents all humanity) or the hand itself. 3. See Gn 2.17 and 3.6. Similar exegesis relating Eden to the healing of the man with the withered hand can be found in Ambrose, Expositio Evangelii For he needed the Creator, not to apply salve,4 but to be able to suspend the sentence that had been rendered, and to release by forgiveness what he had bound by his displeasure. In this man only a shadow of our healing is being accomplished, while perfect health is being kept for us in Christ; that is, the pitiful withering of our hand disappears at the time when it is drenched in the blood of the Lord’s passion, when it is stretched out on that life-giving wood of the cross,5 when it plucks the potent fruit that comes from suffering, when it embraces the entire tree of salvation, where the Lord’s body is fastened with nails, never to return with a withered will to the tree of concupiscence. 2. The Pharisees were watching, it says, to see if he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they could accuse him (v.2). To the disgrace of the judges and the shame of the witnesses, a charge is being sought from a cure, an accusation from an act of kindness, guilt from a miracle, punishment from health. But it is no wonder: good things always offend the bad, righteous things offend the unrighteous, holy things the unholy. Or when does the licentious not make accusations against discipline, the corrupt against virtue, the criminal against innocence? The priests were anxious to see, not if he would sin, but if he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they could accuse him. The lovers of sin were on the lookout, they were laying a plot in accusation of miracles , as though the Sabbath were provided against healing and not for healing. If he would heal on the Sabbath. With this kind of interpreter of the Law, I do not say that the one who is infirm is excessively wearied, but that he completely expires! The Sabbath did not cruelly forbid a cure for the sick, but purely out of kindness furnished a certain period of quiet for mortals tired out from excessive labor. SERMON 32 135 secundum Lucam 5.39–40 (CCL 14.148–49), and Maximus of Turin, Sermon 43.4 (CCL 23.175–76). 4. See Is. 1.6. 5. For references to Greek patristic preaching on this theme, see M. Aubineau’s comment in his edition of Hesychius of Jerusalem, Hom. 1.3 in Homélies pascales, SC 187 (1972), 84–86...

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