Tuesday in the Twenty-Second Week of Ordinary Time, September 1, 2020

Luke 4:31-37

Jesus went down to Capernaum, a town of Galilee. He taught them on the sabbath, and they were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority. In the synagogue there was a man with the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out in a loud voice, “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, “Be quiet! Come out of him!” Then the demon threw the man down in front of them and came out of him without doing him any harm. They were all amazed and said to one another, “What is there about his word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.” And news of him spread everywhere in the surrounding region.

A distance of a little over twenty miles, as the crow flies, separates Nazareth from Capernaum, certainly not far by modern standards, but the road between the two towns ran through the hilly, rocky country of southern Galilee to the lusher land around the Sea of Galilee.  About 1,500 souls populated Capernaum in those days, while Nazareth held some 400.  Jesus set up his headquarters here, early in his ministry, evidently at the house of his Apostle Peter.  Set along the shore of the sea, the little town bustled with the catching and selling of fish.

“Jesus went down to Capernaum, a town of Galilee.”  Luke assumes his readers would know in general where the Galilee region was located.  Matthew writes more specifically, “He came and dwelt in Capharnaum on the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and of Nephthalim” (Matthew 4, 13) for the benefit of Galileans who knew the area but not the town.

“He taught them on the sabbath.”  The Lord was teaching the Jews of the town in the fine synagogue whose recent construction was financed by the local centurion and in which the people took great pride.  “They were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority.”  The Greek word here translated as “astonished” has more of the character of “thunderstruck”.  The word translated as “authority” also means “power” and “weight”.  This “authority” was not given to him by the Pharisees or the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem, in that he was “authorized” to teach, but his teaching possessed such force of wisdom as to stagger his hearers.  

“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!”  The possessed man would have been well known to the community, and traveling rabbis may have have already attempted to exorcise the demon who held him captive.  Probably the townspeople would have simply let him wander around and go in and out of buildings such as the synagogue, leaving him alone as long as he left them alone.  Probably he wandered around the countryside too, sleeping out of doors, disappearing from the town for days or weeks at a time before returning, ever restless.  “What have you to do with us?”  The Greek here is nearly the same as the question Jesus asked his Mother at the wedding in Cana, except that it is, What to us and to you”, rather than, “What to me”.  The demon is mocking the Lord by turning his words around.  Perhaps the demon thought to bring up Cana as an affront to the Lord’s pride, in that Jesus had let a “mere” woman “push him around” after first refusing to do her bidding.  Perhaps.  The wedding at Cana would not have occurred very long before this.  The similarity in the Greek wording of both questions is very striking.  (The demon says “to us” because, as with Legion, several demons possess this man, a common trait in cases of this kind).

“Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are–the Holy One of God!”  To this point, Jesus has not performed any exorcisms.  He has, however, faced Satan and rebuked him and sent him away.  The devil, then, knew that Jesus possessed great power but he did not yet know what Jesus intended to do with it.  Note how the demon addresses the Lord: “Jesus of Nazareth . . . the Holy One of God”.  Only later will the demons address him as “the Son of God” and have an understanding of what that means.  “Have you come to destroy us?”  This reminds of the cry of Legion: “What have we to do with you, Jesus Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” (Matthew 8, 29).  The demons, long ago cast into hell, are already “destroyed”.  What they fear is the final judgment at the end of time, when their punishment will significantly increase even from its current intensity.  Jesus does not allow the demon to delay him: “Be quiet! Come out of him!”  Results follow immediately: “Then the demon threw the man down in front of them and came out of him without doing him any harm.”  The demon throws the man down as though contemptuously shedding or discarding him.  “They were all amazed.”  A better translation of the Greek would be, “Awe came over them.”  The awe resulted from the power Jesus exhibited in the exorcism.  The rabbis attempted exorcism in those days with potions, sacrifices, and long prayers — and failed, or their “successes” turned out to be failures soon afterwards.  Here, no doubt exists that the demon has been driven out of the man, and that by a single, simple command of the carpenter from Nazareth.

Both St. Mark and St. Luke, writing for Gentile Christians, present this exorcism as the first powerful work the Lord performed in public for all to see, and in this way they show that the Son of God has come to earth to break the power that evil had over the whole human race by his Passion and Death.