All the works of Christ's signs, wondrous with mighty deeds, are to be believed to have come about not by human means nor by chance, but by divine providence, as the Gospel discourse has shown us today. 'And Jesus,' it says, 'entered into the synagogue, and there was there a man having a withered hand' (Mark III). Christ indeed enters the synagogue, but the Jew neither receives Him as He comes, nor recognizes Him as He is present, nor, being blinded, understands Him as He works. See how bodily presence counts for nothing where there is the wretched separation of the mind; just as, on the contrary, bodily absence does no harm where hearts have been united through faith.
'And there was there a man having a withered hand.' In this man the image of all men is figured; in him the cure of all is enacted; in him the long-awaited health of all is restored. For the man's hand had withered more from the shock of faithlessness than from the dryness of the sinews, and more from the guilt of conscience than from carnal weakness. This sickness was exceedingly old, and had befallen at the very beginning of the world, and could be cured neither by human art nor by any benefit; it had been incurred by the just indignation of God, when man had touched what was forbidden, presumed upon what was not permitted, and reached out to the tree of knowing good and evil (Gen. III).
It needed an author, not one who might apply a poultice, but one who could loose the sentence that had been imposed, and by pardoning dissolve what by indignation He had bound fast. In this man only a shadow of our health is enacted, but perfect salvation is reserved for us in Christ; for the dryness of our hand is then dissolved by His compassion, when it is bathed with the blood of the Lord's Passion, when it is stretched out on that life-giving wood of the Cross, when it plucks fruitful virtue from suffering, when it embraces the whole tree of salvation, when the Lord's body is fastened with nails, so that it may never return to the tree of concupiscence and of the withered will. 'The Pharisees,' it says, 'watched whether He would heal on the Sabbath, that they might accuse Him.'
To the disgrace of the judge and the wickedness of the examiner, a crime is sought from a cure, an accusation from piety, a charge from virtue, a punishment from healing. But it is no wonder: good things always offend the evil, holy things the impious, sacred things the profane; or when does not the wanton accuse discipline, the more vicious accuse virtue, the criminal accuse innocence? Anxious priests watched on the Sabbath, not whether He might sin, but whether He might heal, that they might accuse Him. Lovers of crimes keep vigil, they lie in wait to accuse virtues, as though the Sabbath were provided against salvation, not for it. They watch whether He would heal on the Sabbath: with such an interpreter of the Law, I do not say the sick man toils overmuch, but he alone even breathes his last.
The Sabbath did not deny a devout healing to the sick, but rather in all piety at times granted rest to mortals wearied with excessive labor. And He said to the man having the withered hand: 'Rise up into the midst' — you who profess your own weakness, who exact the pity of Heaven, a witness of divine power, an affirmer of Jewish unbelief. 'Rise up into the midst,' that those whom so great a power of signs does not prick, whom the works of so great a salvation do not bend, may at least be constrained and softened by pity for so great a weakness. Then He said to them: 'Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or evil, to save a soul or to destroy it?'
By saying this, He commends the goodness of His own work, and accuses the consciousness of their conceived malice: for while He longed to make that man whole in body and soul, they in their zeal to accuse strove to destroy Him, they who even suffered Him to heal on the Sabbath — lying in wait in their minds as to whether He would heal, so that when He had healed, they might be condemned by the malignity of their own intent, and by such forbearance prove more worthless than malice itself, and be more furious in guile than mad in such judgment. 'But they held their peace, and looking round upon them.'
'with anger, being grieved at the blindness of their hearts.' It says 'looking round,' not merely 'gazing' — that is, not only beholding their face as a man, but as God contemplating their bodies, hearts, minds, senses, things past, present, and to come. 'Looking round upon them with anger, being grieved.' He is angry as a Lord, grieved as a parent, sorrows as a man, beholds as God. He says to the man, 'Stretch out your hand'; and he stretched it out, and his hand was restored. 'Stretch out your hand': by a command that is loosed which had been bound fast by a command. 'Stretch out your hand.' The punishment recognized its judge, the work by its indulgence betrayed its Creator. Pray, brethren, that the Synagogue alone be worn away by such a weakness;
and let there be no one in the Church whose hand covetousness may wither, avarice contract, plunder weaken, or tenacity bind fast in sickness; but if this same thing should happen, let him hear the Lord and quickly stretch it out in a work of piety, loosen it, and reach it out in mercy and in almsgiving. He knows not how to be healed who knows not how to lend to the poor. 'Then the Pharisees, going out, at once took counsel with the Herodians how they might destroy Him.' The Jew is always joined to the Herodians, that he may assail the Christians. 'Jesus,' it says, 'withdrew with His disciples to the sea' — that by the comparison of the waves He might prove and show the more depraved error of the Jews.
But because Jesus, with the little ship serving Him — that is, the Church — is set apart from the confusion of the crowds, and the pilot of the Christian people sits tireless with His varied manner of healing, and 'commanded the winds and the sea' (Mark IV), that they might at last rest in the obedience of tranquillity, according to the prophet: 'Let us break their bonds, and let us cast away their yoke from us' (Ps. II) — so that, remaining under the yoke of piety, we may be counted worthy to be partakers of the divine glory.