“Looking around at them with anger and grieved at their hardness of heart, he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out and his hand was restored.” (Mark 3:5.)
Saint Augustine of Hippo comments on this verse from the Gospel proclaimed during today’s Mass:
“Now as for the Lord’s saying: “Satan cannot drive out Satan,”3 lest perhaps anyone using the name of some of the lowest powers when driving out a demon should think this opinion of the Lord’s to be false, let him understand the point of this saying: Satan does spare the body or the senses of the body, but he tempts the senses for the purpose [NT Vol. II, p. 42] of dominating the will of the man in question, in a triumph of greater import, through the error of impiety. Satan does not strike for the body as such, but rather for the innermost self in order to work in him in the manner described by the apostle: “according to the prince of the power of this air, who is now active in the sons of disobedience.”4 For Satan was not troubling and tormenting the senses of their bodies, nor was he battering their bodies, but he was reigning in their wills, or better, in their covetousness.” (Eighty-three Different Questions, Question 79)
Collect
God our Creator,
we give thanks to You,
Who alone have the power
to impart the breath of life
as You form each of us in our mother’s womb;
grant, we pray,
that we, whom You have made stewards of creation,
may remain faithful to this sacred trust
and constant in safeguarding
the dignity of every human life.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
we give thanks to You,
Who alone have the power
to impart the breath of life
as You form each of us in our mother’s womb;
grant, we pray,
that we, whom You have made stewards of creation,
may remain faithful to this sacred trust
and constant in safeguarding
the dignity of every human life.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
Who lives and reigns with You
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Glory to the Father
and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit:
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and will be forever. Amen
