Today, July 17
Feast of the Day
No feast of the day
Saint of the Day
Readings of the Day
Book of Isaiah 38,1-6.21-22.7-8.
In those days, when Hezekiah was mortally ill, the prophet Isaiah, son of Amoz, came and said to him: "Thus says the LORD: Put your house in order, for you are about to die; you shall not recover." Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD: "O LORD, remember how faithfully and wholeheartedly I conducted myself in your presence, doing what was pleasing to you!" And Hezekiah wept bitterly. Then the word of the LORD came to Isaiah: "Go, tell Hezekiah: Thus says the LORD, the God of your father David: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears. I will heal you: in three days you shall go up to the LORD'S temple; I will add fifteen years to your life. I will rescue you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria; I will be a shield to this city." Isaiah then ordered a poultice of figs to be taken and applied to the boil, that he might recover. Then Hezekiah asked, "What is the sign that I shall go up to the temple of the LORD?" (Isaiah answered:) "This will be the sign for you from the LORD that he will do what he has promised: See, I will make the shadow cast by the sun on the stairway to the terrace of Ahaz go back the ten steps it has advanced." So the sun came back the ten steps it had advanced.
Book of Isaiah 38,10.11.12abcd.16.
Once I said, "In the noontime of life I must depart! To the gates of the nether world I shall be consigned for the rest of my years." I said, "I shall see the LORD no more in the land of the living. No longer shall I behold my fellow men among those who dwell in the world." My dwelling, like a shepherd's tent, is struck down and borne away from me; You have folded up my life, like a weaver who severs the last thread. Those live whom the LORD protects; Yours is the life of my spirit. You have given me health and life.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 12,1-8.
Jesus was going through a field of grain on the sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, "See, your disciples are doing what is unlawful to do on the sabbath." He said to them, "Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry, how he went into the house of God and ate the bread of offering, which neither he nor his companions but only the priests could lawfully eat? Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath the priests serving in the temple violate the sabbath and are innocent? I say to you, something greater than the temple is here. If you knew what this meant, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned these innocent men. For the Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath."
Daily Reflection
The Sabbath was instituted as a holy day; all the saints and the just must observe the Sabbath... Let us see, then, in what the Sabbath observance consists for christians. On the Sabbath day we should not carry out any work here below; we are to abstain from all earthly works, do nothing that pertains to this world and give ourselves to spiritual work, go to church, listen attentively to Scripture and to the explanations given to us about it, think about heavenly things, give our minds to the hope of future life, keep the judgement to come before our eyes and meditate, not those present, visible realities, but the future, invisible ones. The Jews, too, have to observe all that. And amongst them blacksmiths, builders and every sort of manual laborer remains without doing anything on the Sabbath day. Yet, on that day, the lectors who proclaim Holy Scripture and the teachers who explain God's Law never cease in their duties without, however, profaning the Sabbath. My Lord himself acknowledges this: “Have you not heard,” he said to them, “that the priests in the Temple go without resting on the Sabbath without sin?” Thus it is the person who abstains from this world's labors and frees himself for spiritual activities who offers the true Sabbath sacrifice and sanctifies the Sabbath day as a festival... During the Sabbath, all remain in their own homes and do not go out. Now what is the home of the spiritual soul? That home is justice, truth, wisdom, holiness: all those things are Christ who is, himself, the soul's home. We should never go out of that home if we would keep the true Sabbath and celebrate this day of festival with sacrifice, according to the Lord's word: “Whoever remains in me, I remain in him” (cf. Jn 15,5).