Withered Man: Stretch Out Your Hand, For Christ Stretched His Out on the Cross!

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Mass Readings for the Day

In today's Gospel Jesus shows us that we need to be healed of resisting redemption.  The hand is a symbol of the will and the works of the human person.  In this light Sirach says,

Set before you are fire and water; to whatever you choose, stretch out your hand.  Before everyone are life and death, whichever they choose will be given them.

Man stretches out his hand to good or evil.  Too often we get addicted or attached or numbed in some way to stretching out our hand to what is evil.  It may not be apparently ill but the devil is a master of deceit and can make a lesser good look like a higher good.  When Christ comes to heal us, the first thing he has to heal us of is the desire to remain unredeemed, to keep attached to sin, or at least to lesser goods that bring us nowhere fast.

What do we do?

Thanks be to God that Christ has stretched out his hand on the Cross that he may place within our hearts the desire to be redeemed and the desire to be holy.  IN the Holy Eucharist, Jesus places within our very flesh, our wills, our souls, his own desire for our highest good.  Here he says,

STRETCH OUT YOUR HAND!

or in other words, choose what is good and reject what is evil.  We remember that this life-saving command is uttered by Jesus who is God made man, God who uttered at the beginning and from his utterance was created.  Jesus creates this desire in our hearts.  We only have to permit him to be God, allow him to be the Savior, allow him to save us.

May Our Lady obtain for us this grace.