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."
Copyright © Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, USCCB
Epistle of Barnabas (c. 130)
§ 15-16 (trans. Maxwell Staniforth ©1968)
"Something greater than the temple is here"
About the sabbath (...) he also tells them: “I have no patience with your new moons and sabbaths” (Is 1:13). You can see what he is saying there: “It is not these sabbaths of the present age that I find acceptable, but the one of my own appointment: the one that, after I have set all things at rest, is to usher in the Eighth Day, the commencement of a new world.” And we too rejoice in celebrating the eighth day; because that was when Jesus rose from the dead, and showed Himself again, and ascended into heaven. We come now to the matter of the Temple; and I will show you how mistaken these miserable folk were in pinning their hopes to the building itself, as if that were the home of God, instead of to God their own Creator. (...) But what we have to ask next is: Can there be any such thing as a temple of God at all? To be sure there can - but where He Himself tells us that He is building it and perfecting it. For it is written: “When the week draws to its close, then a Temple of God will be built gloriously in the Name of the Lord” (cf. Tb 14:5). From this I must infer that there is indeed such a thing as a temple. Only, mark that it is to be “built in the Name of the Lord”, for in the days before we believed in God, our hearts were a rotten, shaky abode, and a temple only too truly built with hands, since by our persistent opposition to God we had made them into a chamber of idolatry and a home for demons. But now “it will be built in the Name of the Lord”. Make sure, too, that this temple of the Lord shall be built “gloriously”, and listen to the way in which this can be done. When we were granted remission of our sins, and came to put our hopes in His Name, we were made new, created all over again from the beginning; and as a consequence of that, God is at this moment actually dwelling within us in that poor habitation of ours.