January 28^th 2018.  Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Gospel: Mark 1:21-28

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading . . .

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GOSPEL Mark 1:21-28

Then they came to Capernaum,
and on the Sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue and taught.
The people were astonished at his teaching,
for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.
In their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit;
he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?
Have you come to destroy us?
I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”
Jesus rebuked him and said,
“Quiet! Come out of him!”
The unclean spirit convulsed him and with a loud cry came out of him.
All were amazed and asked one another,
“What is this?
A new teaching with authority.
He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.”
His fame spread everywhere throughout the whole region of Galilee.

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . In the first reading, the people of Israel complain to Moses. They do not want to hear the voice of the Lord anymore because it fills them with terror. In the Gospel, Jesus preaches in the synagogue and fills the man with an impure spirit with terror. That is what the authoritative teaching of the Lord does: it makes us feel uncomfortable; it uncovers the deceptions and illusions in our hearts! When Satan tempts us, he rarely does so in a way that explicitly sets us against God. His methods are much more subtle. He leads us to justify and rationalise evil things as if they were acceptable and even good. The term “impure spirit” is very significant. Impure water is water than has something foreign in it. An impure spirit has good elements in it that seem acceptable, but these elements are perverted for deceitful ends. Woe to me if I think I can recognize the deceitfulness in my own heart! Woe to me if I think I can know when I am being led astray by Satan! How am I to win this battle against the deception and treachery within me? How am I to recognize it? The Gospel shows us that only Jesus can flush out the duplicity in our hearts. The man with the impure spirit went to the synagogue every Saturday, but it was only when Jesus spoke that he reacted violently. We all react violently when we encounter the truth. To drive out the deception within our hearts, there is only one solution! That solution is to stay close to Jesus and to the things of God! This will provide us with the constant exorcism that we need!

The people of Israel do not want to hear the voice of God directly. It fills them with terror. Moses foretells the coming of the one true prophet who will speak God’s words, but he also warns of false prophets. There are two types of false prophecy: the exterior ones who preach a false Gospel, and the interior perversion of God’s word in our hearts

The theme of the first reading reappears implicitly in the Gospel. Moses announces the appearance of a prophet that will be of equal stature to Moses. This prophecy is made in response to the behaviour of the people at Mount Sinai. They complain that they are unable to bear hearing the words of God directly. When God proclaimed the ten commandments to them they were filled with terror. This is all very natural! The truth is tough to listen to. It wounds us and embarrasses us.  We prefer to hear the truth gradually or through a mediator who brings it to bear on us more gently. Moses accepts the role of mediator but he is aware that he will not live forever, so he announces the arrival of a future mediator. This foretells the coming of Jesus, the one, true prophet. This authentic prophet will have the words of God in his mouth. Moses also speaks of false prophets who will pretend to speak the words of the Lord. This problem of true and false prophecy is a great exterior problem and also a grave interior one. Exteriorly, there are false prophets who misinterpret God’s word and preach a false Gospel. Interiorly, all of us are susceptible to thoughts and patterns of behaviour that misrepresent God’s word.

The authority and truth spoken by Jesus flushes out the impure spirit. The impure spirits within us are not evidently contrary to God. They can profess faith in God whilst distorting and misrepresenting that faith

In the Gospel we are presented with Mark’s first account of a demonstration of authority on the part of Jesus. There are aspects of this account that are unsettling. Jesus preaches in the synagogue on a Saturday and he preaches with greater authority than the scribes. How did the scribes teach in those days? The Hebrew tradition involved citing various interpretations of a given text. No single interpretation had more authority than the others. Thus there were many opinions, thousands of beautiful reflections on various passages of scripture, but nothing definitive. Jesus, by contrast, speaks with authority, with the sense of one who has the capacity to define things. This authority is made explicitly manifest by the violent reaction of the man with the impure spirit. Each Saturday this same man would have gone to the synagogue without ever reacting because no one had ever before spoken with authority. The man could easily bear the relativism of the rabbinic practices of his time! For as long as there was a general failure to define things clearly, mistaken practices and attitudes could carry on in a hidden way. The term “impure” is not an accidental one. It is a word that seems to belong to chemistry more than to ethics. Impure water is water that has other things present in it. The fact that the spirit is termed “impure” indicates that it incorporates various elements mixed together. The spirit cries out, ““What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” There is nothing false or deceptive about this statement! The most dangerous temptations are not those in which we do or say something evidently wrong. The most insidious temptations involve being lured into doing something that seems right in itself, but at the wrong time, or in an inappropriate way. Satan is not a beginner when it comes to tempting us. We must be careful if we think we are always able to recognize when we are being tempted. After many years of the spiritual life we are still regularly led astray by the spirit of deception, who is more subtle and intelligent than the human being.

Woe to us if we think we can recognize the false prophet, or the deceit within our own hearts! Satan is an expert at helping us to justify the indefensible

The impure spirit tries to escape destruction by professing faith in Jesus as the Son of God. The most terrible things are done in the name of God. Things that are done directly against God are relatively easy to recognize. What is more difficult to combat are the false images of God, the misrepresentations of his work, the exhortation to patience when God is actually calling for action, the claim that God is severe about things that he is not actually severe about, falsifications, perversions and half-truths about the things of the Lord. This is the work of the tempter. How do we win this difficult battle? Woe to us if we think we can recognize the false prophet at first sight! The battle is all the more difficult because we react violently when the deceit in our heart is at risk of being exposed. There is a serenity and calmness about thoughts that come from the Lord, inspirations that derive from the Holy Spirit. By contrast there is a violent reactivity associated with the things that have their origin in evil. When our thinking is impure, it is self-contradictory in itself, but it doesn’t show itself immediately: it shows itself when it is confronted with the truth. There are things in our lives that are incompatible with the teachings of the Church, the content of the Gospel and the stirrings of our conscience, but we justify them with a tortuous rationalisation that only serves to obscure the truth. We use our intelligence to justify things that are unjustifiable.

Only Jesus can flush out the deceit. We must stay close to him and to the things of God if the deceit is to be driven out of our hearts

So how do we flush out this impure spirit? It is the Lord Jesus who drives it out into the open. This is the important point of the Gospel! The impure spirit attended the synagogue happily every Saturday and only Jesus was able to drive him out. We too have desperate need of real contact with Jesus and the things of God. These things are incompatible with the things of evil. We need to become ever more conscious of those things that dispel darkness and illuminate our lives. There are things we don’t like to speak about, because if we were to speak about them, our self-deceptions would come to the fore. Often we justify things that are indefensible with the expression “You are unable to understand me!” If we can’t be understood, then maybe it is because the way of thinking that we are clinging to is an irrational justification of the deceit that lies in our heart. It is common for people with a spiritual director to notice that there are things that they are afraid to talk about. The things we are afraid to talk about are shadows of the impure spirit within us. We need to be where Christ is if this battle is to be won, for it is the Lord who wins the battle in us! These things we have said about the Gospel today are poor, elementary and incomplete. How much else could be said! Recall those moments when a clear light shone in our hearts and darkness was dispelled! When the deceit and delusion was driven out! We need constant contact with Jesus in order to have this continual exorcism from our inner deceptions.