Lent meditation: Adam is “the man with the withered hand”

From the Holy Gospel according to Luke

Luke 6:6-11
At that time: It came to pass also on another Sabbath, that Jesus entered into the synagogue, and taught; and there was there a man whose right hand was withered. And so on.

Homily by St. Peter Chrysologus.
Sermon 32
This man is a figure of all men. His healing is a type of their healing, and his soundness is a pledge of that soundness for which all have looked so long. The hand of man hath withered through the deadness of faith rather than through the drying up of the sinews, and by the fault of the conscience rather than by the weakness of the flesh. The withering up of man's hand hath been of old time, and a sickness which smote him at the very beginning of the world, and no art or benefit of man could heal that which had been blasted by the wrath of God. That hand had touched the forbidden thing, it had sought that which was unlawful when it had been stretched out to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It had need of Him who had made it, not to lay a plaster upon it, but to cancel the sentence which He had uttered, and to loosen by pardon that which He had bound by judgment.

This man's healing is a type of the healing of all men, our perfect health is to be found in Christ, then shall our miserable hand be withered no more when there droppeth thereon the Blood of the Suffering Lord, when it is stretched forth to the Tree of Life, which is the Cross. When it gathereth the mighty fruit of His suffering, when it layeth hold upon the Tree of Salvation, when the body is so nailed thereto with the nails of the Lord that it can never return again to the tree of lust and barren enjoyment. And He said to the man which had the withered hand, Rise up, and stand forth in the midst. Rise up and stand forth in the midst, O Thou that dost confess thine own weakness, thou that dost call for pity from on high, thou that canst witness to the power of God; rise up and stand forth in the midst, thou that tellest of the unbelief of the Jews; the power of so many signs hath not pierced them, so many works of healing hath not beset them; let the pity shown to such misery constrain them and soften them.