Patrick Comerford
The 40-day season of Christmas continues until Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation (2 February 2026). This week began with the Second Sunday of Epiphany (Epiphany II, 18 January 2026), with readings that continue to focus on the Baptism of Christ by Saint John the Baptist, one of the three great Epiphany themes, alongside the Visit of the Magi and the Wedding at Cana.
Today is the fourth day of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, from 18 to 25 January. This year’s theme is ‘One Body, One Spirit’ – from Ephesians 4: 1-13 – which was prepared by the Armenian Apostolic Church, along with the Armenian Catholic and Evangelical Churches. The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Agnes (304 CE), child martyr in Rome.
Later today, I hope to return the choir rehearsals in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Mark 3: 1-6 (NRSVA):
1 Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. 2 They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. 3 And he said to the man who had the withered hand, ‘Come forward.’ 4 Then he said to them, ‘Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent. 5 He looked around at them with anger; he was 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 conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
Today’s Reflection:
In the Gospel reading at the Eucharist yesterday (Mark 2: 23-28), we heard a debate about the detailed interpretation and application of faith and practice on the Sabbath. That continues in today’s reading (Mark 3: 1-6), with a discission about healing and the Sabbath. The story of Jesus healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath is found in all three synoptic Gospels (see Matthew 12: 9-13, Mark 3: 1-6; Luke 6: 6-11).
In his hymn ‘Songs of thankfulness and praise’, Christopher Wordsworth (1807-1885) links the three traditional Epiphany narratives of the Visit of the Magi (verse 1), the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan and the Wedding at Cana (verse 2), with the miracles of ‘making whole / palsied limbs and fainting soul’:
Manifest in making whole
palsied limbs and fainting soul;
manifest in valiant fight,
quelling all the devil’s might;
manifest in gracious will,
ever bringing good from ill:
anthems be to you addresst,
God in man made manifest.
Several Gospel passages involve controversies over healing and observing the Sabbath, including: casting an ‘unclean spirit’ or demon out of a man (Mark 1: 21-28; Luke 4: 31-37); healing Simon Peter’s mother-in-law (Matthew 8: 14-15; Mark 1: 29-31; Luke 4: 38-39); the controversy over grain (Matthew 12: 1-8; Mark 2: 23-28; Luke 6: 1-5); today’s story of the healing of a man with a withered hand (Matthew 12: 9-13; Mark 3: 1-6; Luke 6: 6-11); the healing of the woman in the synagogue (Luke 13: 10-16); the healing of a paralytic man (John 5: 9-18); the discussion about circumcision on the Sabbath (John 7: 22-23); and the healing of the man born blind (John 9: 1-33).
Once again, as with yesterday’s reading, we are faced today with an example of rhetorical humour on the part of Jesus. Of course the Pharisees were not opposed to doing good on the Sabbath, still less were they likely to object to healing on the Sabbath.
The word Pharisee has become a byword for hypocrisy, and was challenged last year by Giles Fraser in a ‘Beyond Belief’ BBC discussion with Professor Amy-Jill Levine of Vanderbilt University, co-author of The Pharisees, the Catholic theologian James Alison and Dr Stephen de Wijzeoft Manchester University (14 January 2025).
The Pharisees were not like some judgmental evangelicals and Free Presbyterians who wanted to keep the playgrounds, parks, golf clubs, sports venues and pubs in Northern Ireland locked up and closed on Sundays. Works of necessity and works of mercy are allowed, even encouraged on the Sabbath day, even for animals. Indeed, healing is intrinsic to the sabbath.
A work of necessity readily given as an example is when the Jews decide to continue fighting in the Maccabean war even on the Sabbath (see I Maccabees 2). Healing is an act of mercy and so does not violate the Sabbath. The rabbinic tradition teaches clearly, ‘Any danger to life overrides the prohibitions of the Sabbath’ (m. Yoma 8: 6). The question here, then, is whether the man's condition is life-conditioning: could he, and Jesus, not wait until the next day?
A man with a withered hand faced the regular barrier of being perceived as ritually unclean, because he was unable on his own to carry out the ritual obligation of washing both hands on many occasions throughout the day, including before and after eating a meal with bread, before eating dipped fruit or vegetables, before prayer, after sleeping, or after touching certain parts of the body. This involved pouring water over both hands, something a man without the use of one hand could not do on his own.
Today’s reading says Jesus sees this man as he enters the synagogue, not inside the synagogue. The man is not only healed, but he can now wash both hands and enter the synagogue, taking his rightful place in the community of faith, and in the synagogue on the Sabbath. He has been restored both physically and spiritually.
Cardinal Karl Lehmann, who died in 2018, was described as the face and voice of Catholicism in Germany for over 35 years. He was the Bishop of Mainz and former Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the University of Mainz, and in the 1960s he was an assistant to Karl Rahner, the Jesuit theologian, during the Second Vatican Council.
The German theologian Professor Johanna Rahner of Tübingen University told the German weekly Die Zeit that Cardinal Karl Lehmann ‘interpreted the Church’s teaching as a seelsorger (a ‘carer of souls’ – the German word for priest) and not in the narrow, doctrinal, sense.’
I like the idea of seeing the priest or the pastor as the physician or doctor of souls. The German theological journal, Seelsorger describes itself as a ‘Journal for the Contemporary Cure of Souls,’ and the topics on pastoral care it discusses range from sexuality to post-modernity, the conscience to the use of story, vice, virtue, and baptism and the dangers and blessings of a long-term pastorate.
The soul is the deepest centre of the psyche. Problems at the level of the soul radiate out to all levels of the psyche and even the body.
The priest, the soul doctor, traces the problem to its deepest point. A hurting person should be addressed at all of those levels, but it is the soul doctor who addresses the very deepest level.
Among the Patristic writers, Saint John Chrysostom says that every priest is, as it were, the father of the whole world, and therefore should have care of all the souls to whose salvation he can co-operate by his labours. Besides, priests are appointed by God as physicians to cure every soul that is infirm. Origen has called priests ‘physicians of souls,’ while Saint Jerome calls us ‘spiritual physicians.’ Later, Saint Bonaventure asks: ‘If the physician flees from the sick, who will cure them?’
Canon 21 of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 drew an analogy between the physicians of the body and the physicians of the soul. This analogy between medical or physical care and spiritual or pastoral care was enthusiastically developed in mediaeval sermons and penitential literature, opening the door to many further comparisons.
The English word curate refers to a person who is charged with the care or cure (cura) of souls in a parish. In this sense, ‘curate’ correctly means a parish priest. In France, the cure is the principal priest in a parish, as is the Italian curato and the Spanish cura. But in English-speaking places, the term curate is commonly used to describe priests who are assistants to the parish priest.
However, the word curate in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer means the incumbent of a benefice, who is licensed by the bishop to the ‘cure of souls.’ The shared cure of souls is made clear by the traditional wording of the bishop’s deed of institution to a new incumbent, ‘habere curam animarum, et accipe curam tuam et meam, receive the cure of souls which is both mine and thine.’
In other words, when a parish priest begins his or her new ministry, the bishop is sharing the care of the parish – described traditionally as ‘the cure of souls’ – with the priest, but the bishop does not give it away. The 43 Canons of the Church of Ireland, listed in Chapter IX of the Constitution, refers specifically to cures rather than parishes.
The soul is just as complicated as the body, just as rich and strange and puzzling. And it needs just as much attention. That does not mean that any priest can necessarily address these soul problems. But the true soul doctor is the depth psychologist.
When we think about salvation, it is worth recalling that the English word ‘salve’ is derived from the Latin salvus, which means healing. The priest, as an alter Christus is seen as one who mends broken hearts, heals hurting souls, and applies God’s soothing balm on pained and wounded lives.
The priest truly is the ‘doctor of souls.’ Perhaps theology is the technical language of soul doctoring. But the prescription is the word and the medicine is the Eucharist, regular confession and daily prayer. The proper exercise is found in prayer, regular good deeds and acts of kindness.
Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 21 January 2026):
The theme this week (18-24 January 2026) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Freedom Theologies’ (pp 20-21). This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections from Dr Thandi Gamedze, poet, theologian, and senior researcher at the Desmond Tutu Centre for Religion and Social Justice.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 21 January 2026) invites us to pray:
Father, we give thanks for Dr Thandi Gamedze and the creative ways her research brings untold stories to life. Bless her, we pray.
The Collect:
Eternal God, shepherd of your sheep,
whose child Agnes was strengthened to bear witness
in her living and her dying
to the true love of her redeemer:
grant us the power to understand, with all your saints,
what is the breadth and length and height and depth
and to know the love that surpasses knowledge,
even Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Eternal God,
who gave us this holy meal
in which we have celebrated the glory of the cross
and the victory of your martyr Agnes:
by our communion with Christ
in his saving death and resurrection,
give us with all your saints the courage to conquer evil
and so to share the fruit of the tree of life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflections
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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