Monday in the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time, May 20, 2024

Mark 9, 14-29

As Jesus came down from the mountain with Peter, James, John and approached the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and scribes arguing with them. Immediately on seeing him, the whole crowd was utterly amazed. They ran up to him and greeted him. He asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?” Someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I have brought to you my son possessed by a mute spirit. Wherever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, grinds his teeth, and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive it out, but they were unable to do so.” He said to them in reply, “O faithless generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I endure you? Bring him to me.” They brought the boy to him. And when he saw him, the spirit immediately threw the boy into convulsions. As he fell to the ground, he began to roll around and foam at the mouth. Then he questioned his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” He replied, “Since childhood. It has often thrown him into fire and into water to kill him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” Jesus said to him, “ ‘If you can!’ Everything is possible to one who has faith.” Then the boy’s father cried out, “I do believe, help my unbelief!” Jesus, on seeing a crowd rapidly gathering, rebuked the unclean spirit and said to it, “Mute and deaf spirit, I command you: come out of him and never enter him again!” Shouting and throwing the boy into convulsions, it came out. He became like a corpse, which caused many to say, “He is dead!” But Jesus took him by the hand, raised him, and he stood up. When he entered the house, his disciples asked him in private, “Why could we not drive the spirit out?” He said to them, “This kind can only come out through prayer.”

St. Mark fills his Gospel with accounts of the Lord’s miracles.  Most of these accounts are relatively brief, just a few verses.  In a few cases he spends much more space.  For example, his report on the exorcism of Legion in the land of the Gerasenes runs seventeen verses.  The story of the exorcism of the young man in today’s Gospel Reading runs fifteen verses.  For comparison, he spends only ten verses on the feeding of the five thousand.  This tells us not only what interests St. Mark, but also what he wants to impress upon his readers, especially his original readers, who were mostly  Gentile converts.  Detailed accounts of the Lord’s victories over the devil and his army of demons would certainly have appealed to them and taught them what they needed to know about the Lord’s power.

The events in the Gospel reading for today transpire immediately after the Lord and his Apostles Peter, James, and John return from Mount Tabor following the Transfiguration.  The exorcism Jesus performs here serves to validate the events on the mountain and the words heard by the Apostles just as the healing of the leper did when Jesus descended the mountain upon delivering the Sermon on the Mount.  One further descent and validation is to come: following the Last Supper and the inauguration of the Mass, Jesus will come down the Mount of Olives to die on the Cross.  In the healing of the leper, the Lord in sign enters our own sinfulness in order to heal us from our sins.  In the present exorcism, in sign he casts out the evil one who has dominated the human race to that point.  In his Death on the Cross, he will fulfill the signs of the healings and rescue us all, and destroy the power of the devil over all humans.

“It has often thrown him into fire and into water to kill him.”  The Church Father Origen makes an interesting comment on this verse.  Already in the mid third century some were saying that the boy was suffering from some physical ailment, attributable in Origen’s day to an upset of the balance of the four humors.  Origen points out that if so, the Lord would certainly have treated him differently than he did, and then would not have explained to his Apostles that prayer (and fasting) were necessary for casting out an evil spirit of this magnitude.  In the present day, many modernist scholars still echo the notion which Origen so soundly defeated.

“O faithless generation, how long will I be with you?“. This sounds like a rebuke of the Apostles, who failed to cast out the devil, but the Fathers, such as St. Jerome, are universal in seeing these words as applied to the boy and his father.  What is lacking is not want of power for a successful exorcism, but the faith necessary to be exorcised.  St. Mark, in his more detailed telling of the event, records: “And Jesus said to him: ‘If you can!  All things are possible to one who has faith.’  Then the boy’s father cried out, “I do believe, help my unbelief!” While Jesus does not always require an explicit confession of faith on the part of the one he is to heal, he does so on several occasions, such as this one, in which a Jewish child and his father must renounce evil and believe in God’s mercy.

Later, in private, the Apostles ask the Lord how they could have failed: surely they had received power from him to cast out demons and cure diseases (cf. Matthew 10, 1)?  They had exercised this power previously: “Even the demons were subject to us!” (Luke 10, 17).  Jesus explains, “This kind can only come out through prayer.”  That is, they had received the power, but the power required faith, and prayer must then proceed from faith.  With Jesus on Mount Tabor, the faith of the nine remaining Apostles was weakened enough that they could not accomplish this work and their prayers came out of this weakened faith.  Jesus continues, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”  We ought to consider the size and purity of our faith, and pray for more, so that we might move the mountain of our world to convert and to become a truly holy mountain.  

The thirty-ninth article in our continuing series on the Holy Mass: The Work of the Laity at Mass

The Holy Mass is the supreme worship of the Catholic Church of Almighty God.  Within this worship there are various roles.  In the worship of the Temple, which followed the Law of Moses, the priest offered sacrifices to God in the Temple while the choir sang the psalms.  The people, meanwhile, prayed outside that their sacrifices, offered st the priest’s hands, would be acceptable to Almighty God.  For nearly two thousand years the roles at Mass were based on the roles in the Temple worship.  The priest offered the Sacrifice to Almighty God; his server responded on behalf of the congregation; the choir chanted or sung the various hymns within the Mass such as the Gloria.  The people were free to pray quietly in their own way, their prayers accompanying the prayers of the priest on the altar.  The Roman Missal of 1970 greatly altered the dynamic by giving the people vocal parts of the Mass, essentially replacing the server in this regard.  The role of the choir was also reduced to leading the people in the singing of the hymns within Mass.  At the same time, the place for hymns was greatly expanded.  The idea of giving vocal responses to the people came through a desire to increase what was called “active participation” by the laity in the Mass, though praying quietly is just as active as praying vocally.

Next: The Education of Men Studying for the Priesthood