Wednesday in the Second Week of Ordinary Time, January 18, 2023

Mark 3, 1-6

Jesus entered the synagogue. There was a man there who had a withered hand. They watched Jesus closely to see if he would cure him on the sabbath so that they might accuse him. He said to the man with the withered hand, “Come up here before us.” Then he said to the Pharisees, “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?” But they remained silent. Looking around at them with anger and grieved at their hardness of heart, Jesus said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately took counsel with the Herodians against him to put him to death.

The First Readings this week, taken from the Letter to the Hebrews, make much of the priesthood of Melchizedek, a contemporary of Abraham who ruled the city later known as Jerusalem.  He does not play a major role in the story of Abraham though and his appearance in the Letter to the Hebrews seems sudden and the meaning of his appearance obscure.  But at the time this Letter was written, the Jewish people were becoming more and more unhappy about the state of their priesthood, which had become so corrupted that it seemed to many to have lost its legitimacy.  By the time the Romans occupied Israel, the chief priesthood was being bought and sold by whoever ruled Jerusalem.  Because of the naked ambition of the chief priests and their dealings with their Gentile rulers, the people began to look for a purer priesthood, and they found it by going back to Abraham’s time.  Furthermore, it was believed that Melchizedek, a name that was probably a title, meaning “the righteous king” or, “the king of righteousness”, was in fact Noah’s son Shem.  The yearning for a son of this line to replace the priesthood descended from Aaron even found voice in one of the Psalms: “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (Psalm 110, 4).  The author of Hebrews shows how the Priest the people had been yearning for is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.  Not only is Jesus the true High Priest, but as St. Luke shows us, he is also of the line of Shem, the son of Noah (cf. Luke 3, 36).

The Pharisees were aware of the problems with the priesthood of Aaron at that time, and this likely played a role in the origins of the Pharisaic movement.  But they also knew, deep down, that they lacked legitimacy and must have feared what would happen to them if and when a true teacher of Israel, perhaps a prophet, appeared.  This helps us to understand some of their hostility toward Jesus, and their blindness to the great miracles her performed, or, at least, how they validated his claims about himself.  In today’s Gospel Reading, “they watched Jesus closely” to see if he would heal a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath.  Now, they did not intend to prevent him from performing this healing, which they believed would break the law of the Sabbath.  Indeed, they wanted to cure the man so they might have grounds for physically attacking him.  This shows that their concern is really not for the Law but for their own social/political position.  The Lord thwarts them, however, by having the afflicted man perform the action: the Lord does not move a muscle but stands with the man who stretches out his hand.  The hand is cured, but there is no actionable evidence that it was Jesus who healed it.  But the Pharisees do not attack the man whose hand was healed.  Again, their concern here is not with the supposed breaking of the Law.

Jesus looked “around at them with anger and grieved at their hardness of heart” when the Pharisees refused to hear his teaching.  They had cheated and defrauded the people of the Law of God for many years, and now they would look for a reason to kill one who opened this Law to all.  But he looked with love and mercy on the man with the withered hand. It will be like this on the Last Day when he comes again, when he condemns the wicked and those filled with rage and hatred and when he summons to heaven the just who carried out their duties as faithful believers despite persecutions and infirmities.