Navarre Bible Commentary:Wednesday, 2nd Week of Ordinary Time

Byzantine Mosaic

Mark 3:1-6

Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)

The Man with a Withered Hand

3 Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. 2 And they watched him, to see whether he would heal him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. 3 And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come here.” 4 And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. 5 And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.6 The Pharisees went out, and immediately held counsel with the Hero′di-ans against him, how to destroy him.

Cited in the Catechism:  In promulgating the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Blessed John Paul II explained that the Catechism "is a statement of the Church's faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition and the Church's Magisterium."  He went on to "declare it to be a sure norm for teaching the faith and thus a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion" (Fidei Depositum). Passages from this Gospel reading are cited in the Catechism, paragraphs 574, 581, 591, 1859 and 2173.

Commentary

Curing of the man with a withered hand

3:5. The evangelists refer a number of times to the way Jesus looks at people (e.g. at the young man: Mk 10:21; at St Peter: Lk 22:61; etc.). This is the only time we are told he showed indignation—provoked by the hypocrisy shown in v. 2.

3:6. The Pharisees were the spiritual leaders of Judaism; the Herodians were those who supported the regime of Herod, benefitting politically and financially thereby. The two were completely opposed to one another and avoided each other’s company, yet they combined forces against Jesus.

The Pharisees wanted to see the last of him because they considered him a dangerous innovator. The most recent occasion may have been when he pardoned sins (Mk 2:1ff) and interpreted with full authority the law of the sabbath (Mk 3:2); they also want to get rid of him because they consider that he lowered their own prestige in the eyes of the people by the way he cured the man with the withered hand. The Herodians, for their part, despised the supernatural and eschatological tone of Christ’s message, since they looked forward to a purely political and temporal Messiah.

Source: The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries. Biblical text from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and by Scepter Publishers in the United States. We encourage readers to purchase The Navarre Bible for personal study. See Scepter Publishers for details.

"Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ." St Jerome