Gospel (Lk 6,6-11) - One Saturday Jesus entered the synagogue and began to teach. There was a man there who had a paralyzed right hand. The scribes and Pharisees watched him to see if he healed him on the Sabbath, to find something to accuse him of. But Jesus knew their thoughts and said to the man who had a paralyzed hand: "Get up and stand here in the middle!". He stood up and stood between them. Then Jesus said to them: «I ask you: on the Sabbath, is it lawful to do good or to do evil, to save a life or to take it away?». And looking at them all around, he said to the man: "Stretch out your hand!". He did it and his hand was healed. But they, beside themselves with anger, began to argue among themselves about what they could do to Jesus.

The commentary on the Gospel by Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia

Jesus enters the synagogue on the Sabbath, and Luke notes that it is "another" Sabbath, not only to specify that entering the synagogue and teaching was a usual activity of Jesus, but that with his presence he truly manifests a another Sabbath, that is, a new time, and every time the Gospel speaks to our life, the profound reality of the Sabbath, that is, rest with God, finds its fulfillment. «I ask you – says Jesus – on the Sabbath is it lawful to do good or to do harm, to save a life or to kill it? A very concrete question, which Jesus asks in front of a sick man, with a withered hand. For Jesus there is no middle ground, life is either saved or lost, either you do good, or when you don't do it it will always be bad. And God's Sabbath is the good of man, of every man. That man did not ask to be healed, but he is present there, like a silent request, like the presence of so many poor people in this world, in our cities, who with their own suffering, painful life, ask to be able to participate also them fully to that rest with God which is the encounter with the goodness of life, but they remain on the margins. Jesus invites man to get up and come to the center, and it is like calling back to life a person considered non-existent. And so in that healed man there is also a part of our life, sometimes turned in on itself. "Stretch out your hand" says Jesus to each of us: it is the sign that it is possible to do good, that that hand can be used to serve, to accompany, to welcome, to collaborate in God's plan of doing everything well. The healing of that man is the beginning of a new Saturday, a new creation, in which at the center there is the life of every man always to be saved.