1 Cor 2:10-16 / Luke 4:31-37
In the ninth book of his Confessions, St. Augustine an incident near
the end of the life of St. Monica, his mother. They were in Rome standing
at a window, overlooking a garden. Augustine writes: "We had gone
there . . .
to get away from the noisy crowd and rest. And so the
two of us.. . we enjoying a way pleasant conversation. . . . We were
asking one another . . .what it would be like to share the eternal life enjoyed
by the saints …"In the course of our conversation that day, the world
and its pleasures lost all their attraction for us." Augustine and
Monica experienced what Paul talks about in today's reading. Is our
attraction to the things of this world growing stronger or
weaker? "The Spirit will lead you into all the truth." John
16:13
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First
Reading
One word that
has been used to describe Christian living is "journey." An older and
perhaps more applicable word is
"struggle."
Paul describes the struggle between the Spirit of Christ and the spirit of the
world. It is an experience we all might have felt as we are torn by the
dilemmas of our life. Such a struggle can eventuate in growth toward Christian
maturity and wisdom. It enables us to rise above the spirituality and outlook
we had in primary or grammar school as we develop the spiritual tools,
criteria, mechanisms and strategies for dealing with adult life in a Christian
way. These are the materials of an appraisal of spiritual and secular things
that Paul describes. Their use results in our gradual approximation to the mind
of Christ. Slowly, we begin to be able to think like the Lord.
The closer we
are to the mind of Christ, the more dramatic is the struggle we have with the
spirit of the world. This is one reason why the Lord's confrontations with
Satan and the evil spirits in the Gospels are so stark and brutal. We are
witnessing in them the collision of two opposites. This is why the saints were
very conscious of sin and more aware of wrongdoing in the slightest things
than are most people. The light of Christ floods our minds revealing little
scrapes and scars that otherwise we would never have noticed. This inner light
constitutes the difference between Francis of Assisi and Jack the Ripper
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Whenever
deliverance or exorcism is mentioned, we may think of something dramatic
happening, much like what we see in the movies. We may think of images of the
possessed person shouting and other weird things happening. We probably got
these impressions from what we read in the gospels about how Jesus cast off
devils and evil spirits. One such instance is in today's gospel when the evil
spirit that possessed the man shouted at Jesus. But Jesus said sharply,
"Be quiet! Come out of him." And the evil spirit came out of the man
without hurting him at all. We may not have seen such things happening,
especially in church. We don't expect such things to happen in church of all
places. But that doesn't mean that there are no evil spirits around. But if
Jesus gave the Church the authority and the power to cast out evil, then how is
it happening? In a less dramatic way,
but certainly, in no less a powerful way, we see it happening in the
Confessional. People who have heard the Word of God and have opened their
hearts to the cleansing and healing Word will realize the sin and the evil in
their hearts. They go for the Sacrament
of Reconciliation and there Jesus cleanses and casts out the evil in their
hearts, and they are healed and forgiven. Let us also listen to the Word of God
and open our hearts to the Word. And when we realise the sin and the evil in
our hearts let us go for the Sacrament of Reconciliation. There we will be cleansed and forgiven. That
is the power of the Word of God, and that is also the power and authority
that Jesus has given to His Church.
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Let us pray: Lord our God, we say that authority means service, but
we experience that it is very hard to make this beautiful principle work. Keep
always before our eyes the example of your Son Jesus Christ. His authority was
healing and saving, respectful of people and yet committing us to get out of
our mediocrity. May all authority among us be humble, dedicated, self-effacing,
willing to serve to the end, and patterned after that of Jesus, your Son and
our Lord for ever. Amen. God bless.
