Exorcism in the Synagogue

Mark’s Gospel is different than Matthew and Luke. There is no account of Jesus’ birth, just the story of John the Baptist, the Baptism of Jesus, and Jesus appearing in the synagogue at Caparneum, where he drives out a devil.

That’s quite a way to begin a public ministry: by casting out a devil. Jesus, we are told simply turns to the possessed man and says “Quiet!  Come out of him!” and the man has a convulsion and with a loud cry the spirit comes out of him.

Now, I’m afraid if Mark approached a modern screen writer with that script it might not make the cut. It lacks the dramatic appeal, the extended tension and the sudden surprises that modern horror films use to portray an exorcism.

There are four such films making the rounds on Netflix, Hulu and HBO now.  One is called The Vatican Tapes in which “a priest and two Vatican exorcists do battle with an ancient satanic force to save the soul of a young woman.” Then there’s The Evil Dead  in which “5 friends go to stay at a remote cabin only to accidentally release a bunch of demons from a book.” 

The third is Deliver us from Evil in which “a police officer encounters a frightening alternate reality when a renegade Jesuit priest (notice there’s always a renegade Jesuit priest in these movies?) convinces him that demonic possession may be to blame for the gruesome murders.”  And finally The Rite, in which a seminarian “reluctantly attends exorcism school at the Vatican. While he’s in Rome, he meets an unorthodox priest (I wonder if he’s a Jesuit) who introduces him to the darker side of his faith.”

Those of us who are a little older remember bring scared out of our wits by Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, but the plot really hasn’t change much over the years. 

But what Jesus is doing in today’s Gospel is something more than starring in a fictional horror film. What Jesus is doing is real life. As real as the next sin I am tempted to commit, the grudge I am tempted to hold or the next war we are tempted to wage.

Since God created mankind in his own image and likeness, endowed with the free will to love or to sin, the world has been one long struggle between light and darkness, walking toward and alongside the Lord or walking away from and against him.

Eve and her husband chose to walk away from God, and that original sin was redeemed by the sacrifice of Calvary, as in a perfect sacrifice of love, the Son of the Living God offered his life to set us free from our original sinfulness.

But, as the Catechism reminds us, there is a bit more to the story, for, “behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy.” The author of genesis depicts him as a snake in the grass, or perhaps in a tree. 

Another movie I remember from years ago depicts him as a little red man with horns and a long tail, whispering into my ear: “Go ahead!  Don’t worry!  It’ll be a lot of fun!”

He is the fallen angel who goes variously by the name of Satan or the devil. Like our first parents, this angel was originally made to be good, but with the free will God gave him, he and the other demons chose to reject God. Thus, does Saint John call him “a liar and the father of lies.”¹ The Lord Jesus himself calls the devil “a murderer from the beginning.”²

The Prince of Darkness then, is far more frightening than any horror movie can portray, for he doesn’t just jump out from behind the door and make us scream, he quietly and slowly tempts us to reject the God who made us: to choose selfishness instead of love, hate instead of mercy and myself instead of my brother or sister.

Yet Satan is far less powerful than the scary movies, for he is just a creature like us, and no match for the God who made him.

And while the darkness of this world, from selfishness to murder to pandemic sickness can all be traced back to the Devil and his minions, we are the sons and daughter of God, who made heaven and earth, whose only Son by the Power of his Precious Blood, shed for us upon the Altar of the Cross for our salvation,

Seven times does Jesus Exorcise demons in the Gospels, and each time it is by a simple command. “Come out of him!” “Get out of there!”  Be gone!” And the devil has no choice but to obey.

For, in the words of our beloved Pope emeritus, the Cross of Christ is the devil’s ruin. And while the powers of darkness may still tempt us to choose power or wealth, or pleasure over sacrifice, mercy and a holy life, we always have a choice. Or, again, in the words of Pope Benedict: 

Overcoming the temptation to subject God to oneself and one’s own interests…giving God first place, is a journey that each and every Christian must make over and over again. “Repent” is an invitation we [will soon] hear during Lent, it means following Jesus…; it means letting God transform us…It means recognizing that we are creatures, that we depend on God, on his love, and that only by “losing” our life in him can we gain it.

That’s not quite so scary as the latest horror movie, I’m afraid. But it’s real life, in which the powers of darkness and sin have nothing to offer us but a dead end of crippling selfishness. But you have been called to the freedom of the children of God!  And how blessed you are to be called to the supper of the Lamb!

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Saving Nineveh

You’ve heard the story many times, and you heard part of it again today.

God goes to Jonah, and tells him that he wants him to go to the city of Nineveh, “and preach against it; for their wickedness has come before me”

By the second verse of the Book of Jonah, however, it becomes clear that this prophet isn’t convinced that the people of Nineveh will listen to him, so he gets on a boat bound for Tarshish. Tarshish is 2,500 miles away from where Jonah lived!

But the boat doesn’t get very far before a big storm breaks out and Jonah gets tossed into the sea and is swallowed by a big fish. For three days, Jonah prays to God from the belly of the

fish, telling him he has finally decided to obey him and go to Nineveh, and so God commands the fish to spit Jonah onto the shore, and he commands Jonah a second time: Go to Nineveh

and tell them “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed.”

Now, did you ever ask yourself why Jonah was so reluctant to go to Nineveh? It’s probably because Nineveh, the biggest city in the world at that time, was the capitol of Assyria, a nation

known for its brutality. In the British museum today, you can see a large collection of Assyrian stone carvings which proudly recount how they treated their enemies: impaling and beheading them, tearing down their cities and piling their citizens. One commentator writes that asking Jonah to convert Nineveh was like asking a Ukrainian to go to Moscow and tell Putin to repent.

So, Jonah must have thought that God was crazy. Those people in Nineveh are animals! They will eat me alive! Not even God can save them.

But then you heard what happened. Jonah goes to Nineveh and walks through the streets proclaiming (by the way, I suspect he just whispered it under his breath) “Forty days more and

Nineveh shall be destroyed.”

And what happens? The entire city repents, everyone from the King to the lowliest donkey put on sackcloth and ashes, turn away from their evil ways and return to the Lord.

Now, you would think that was a really great ending to the story. But no. Jonah is not thrilled that God has converted this people. So, Jonah goes out into the desert and sits there like a spoiled three year old, sulks and tells God, I am just going to sit here and die!

Why does he do this? Because God does not fit into his tiny view of what the world is supposed to be. Like a toddler, he is convinced that he, and his kind, are the center of the universe, and it is God’s job to give him everything he wants, and punish all those other people who are not like him.The Apostles said as much to Jesus once and he replied, “How

does it concern you, if I wish to be merciful?” Am I not God?

But since our first parents, the history of humankind has been a steady stream of disobeying God, because we’re convinced everyone but us should go to hell. If you ask a Hamas terrorist

what he thinks of the Jews, he would say “to hell with them.” If you ask a right wing Zionist about the Palestinians, he would say “to hell with them!”

And who, in our lives, do we see as “the other,” the resident of our own imagined Nineveh who is undeserving of salvation?

But as the Prophet Ezekiel tells us, God desires not the death of a sinner, but that they be converted and live (Ezekiel 18:33). And it is not our place to judge, and certainly not our prerogative to exclude anyone from God’s mercy. It is, rather, our place to pray for the

conversion of sinners, and the reconciliation of all nations and peoples.

Not very far from this Church, a talented priest with extraordinary pastoral skills, was once tempted to preach that all of us Catholics were going to heaven, and everyone else is going to hell. And while he was eventually reconciled to the Church, and God has done wonderful things through his followers, great damage was done by his failing to understand, as the Catechism teaches us that even those “who, through no fault of their own, do not

know Christ and his Church” can still be saved (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 848).

So let’s keep preaching by example and word to all men and women, even if they live in Nineveh.

Three Christmas Stories

 

Christmas is a time for stories. And tonight, I have three of them.

The first is about Papa Panov, an old and lonely cobbler, who reads from his Bible on Christmas Eve, then falls asleep and dreams that Jesus will come to see him the next day.

He wakes excited that he will welcome the Prince of Peace and sits gazing out the window when an old vagabond knocks on his door. Catching anxious glimpses down the street for Jesus, he nonetheless invites the shivering man into and pours him a puts on a pot of coffee to ward off the chill.

Then, as the impatient Papa Panov keeps looking down the street, a poor woman approaches with her child. He gives the baby some milk and a pair of baby shoes he has been saving as the finest from his hands.

And once they all leave that Christmas morning, he sits there wondering why God did not come to see him, until he falls asleep and hears the voice of Jesus: “I was hungry and you fed me…I was naked and you clothed me. I was cold and you warmed me. I came to you today in everyone of those you helped and welcomed.”

Tolstoy continues: 

Then all was quiet and still. Only the sound of the big clock ticking. A great peace and happiness seemed to fill the room, overflowing Papa Panov's heart until he wanted to burst out singing and laughing and dancing with joy.

And then there’s O’Henry’s story about Della and Jim, and how all she had been able to save was “one dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. And [how] the next day would be Christmas.” 

He tells us how Della sat on the couch and cried because she could not afford to buy a gift for Jim, whom she loved with all her heart, and wanted nothing more from life than to “greatly hug” him.

There was nothing Della and Jim loved more than each other, and no pain deeper than not being able to show that love at Christmas. Surely, Jim had loved his grandfather, who had left him a treasured pocket watch, and Della was more than a little proud of her beautiful long hair, the one thing that made her feel like the Queen of Sheba. 

But they loved each other most of all. So Della went to the wig maker and had him cut off her hair for twenty dollars, which she traded for a beautiful golden chain to hold Jim’s watch.

And as, that Christmas Eve, Jim came home and her saw her newly shorn hair, he was in shock, as he slowly drew a package from his overcoat pocket, which once unwrapped revealed a set of combs which Della had worshipped for a long in a Broadway window, and which Jim had bought with the money he got from selling his watch. 

Thus, O’Henry sagely observes these “two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house” were the wisest of all who gave gifts that Christmas night.

And finally, there’s the best Christmas story of all, for it is true. That on this night, in a backwater town, when the world seemed very dark, a star rose in the east, and led we shepherds and wise men to a young virgin and a little baby, who came from God to tell us we were loved.

That baby grew to be a man and taught us how to love each other, how to forgive and lay down our lives for each other, as he opened his arms on a Cross for our salvation.

As, on that night angels told us to never be afraid again, for today in the city of David a Savior has been born for you, who is Christ the Lord: an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

And so then they sang: “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

On the Third Sunday of Advent

 It’s getting awfully cold lately.

Oh, I don’t mean the kind of cold that bites your cheeks when the wind picks up and mixes with bits of snow and ice. I’m talking about a far more fierce kind of cold. The kind that freezes your heart.

And there are lots of frozen hearts out there.

I think of the guy who’s really intent on having more money than anyone else. He works 35 hours a day and sets the alarm for an hour earlier than he should because he wants to be one step ahead of all the others. He’s convinced that once he has enough money, he’ll finally be happy (“has anyone ever gotten to the point where they have enough money?”). The last time he prayed was when his grandmother died, and that was probably out of guilt or habit, and he spent most of the Funeral trying to keep his mother from seeing he was reading a text from his broker. He certainly doesn’t have time for Church, or even for Christmas.

And then there’s the gal who’s been let down so many times and finds all that pious chatter boring. Each relationship, each boss and every institution had been disappointment to her. They’re all fakes, each trying to take advanatage of her. They are like those little pop-ups on the internet, following her around to sell her something, make a buck off her. And despite the nagging of her mother, she knows that Church is just one more fake. She couldn’t care less, even at Christmas.

And then there’s the people who have been hurt, over and over again. So deeply hurt that their hearts are frozen and brittle and trembling. And they don’t want to be hurt again. So the last place they want to be is sitting is on a hard pew surrounded by gullible people singing about comfort and joy.

Yup, it’s very cold out there. Way down deep inside of them, it’s very very cold. 

Perhaps that’s is why Pope Francis recalls Dante’s description of hell as the place where the devil sits on a throne of ice “in frozen, loveless isolation.” Hell is the place, he says, where “we prefer our own desolation rather than the comfort of God’s word and his Sacraments.” And such desolation is characterized by a stone cold refusal to love, to a “cooling of charity, [with] selfishness and spiritual sloth, sterile pessimism, the temptation to self-absorption, constant fighting with other people, and a worldly mentality that makes us concerned only for how stuff looks…”

So maybe in these coldest and darkest days of the year, you can spare a thought or a prayer, or even a kind word for those who dwell in the cold darkness.  Maybe even invite them to come to Church with you at Christmas. They’ll probably say no again, but maybe it will be a little sign to them that you love them.

And perhaps you might teach them the Christmas prayer of Saint Catherine of Siena, who used to ask God to preserve her ‘from every evil thought; warm me, Lord, inflame me with your dear love, that every pain might float away.’

On the First Sunday of Advent

I’m not sure how old I was, but I remember it like it was yesterday.

I’d press my little kid’s nose to the cold window pane in the front of the house and stare up the street as the shadows began to lengthen and I began to hope. I was waiting for my father to come home from work, so I could show him what I had done in school that day. An A with a little superscript of a plus hovering over it’s right side told me and my classmates and my mom and my dad that I had done good. And 

I don’t know if I’ve ever known such joy or such a sense of accomplishment as when I heard the sound of his truck pulling over the graveled driveway and ran out to meet him, with my yellow-lined pride waving above my head.

He swept me up into his arms and cherished me, and carried me into the house as my mother enshrined the sacred text with a bright yellow refrigerator magnet.

That’s what it could be like, as the ancient Collect of today’s Advent liturgy reminds us, when we “run forth to meet the Christ with righteous deeds at his coming...”

Imagine! Our arms so brimming with righteous deeds, that we run forth to meet our judge with joy! Will the fervor with which we celebrated the Sacraments and the devotion with which we ate his Body and drank his Blood have so detached us from the darkness of this world, that we will glow with the bright sanctity of the redeemed? 

Will we run out to meet Christ when he comes, so clothed in the ways of this Mystical Body that they will call us “a man of the Church, a true woman of the Church”? What will Christ do, when we run out to meet him, our arms embracing all the righteous deeds of our lives? 

The ancient Collect give us the answer. He will gather us to his right hand, sweep us up into his arms, recognize us as his obedient children, and carry us into his heavenly kingdom, where we will sit with him and all his children at the Heavenly Banquet in the Kingdom of Heaven.

So, Be watchful! Be alert!