Monday in the Third Week of Ordinary Time, January 24, 2022

I had a rough time of it at Mass on Sunday evening but I’m doing better now.  Thanks for your continuing prayers!

Mark 3:22-30

The scribes who had come from Jerusalem said of Jesus, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “By the prince of demons he drives out demons.” Summoning them, he began to speak to them in parables, “How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand; that is the end of him. But no one can enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can plunder his house. Amen, I say to you, all sins and all blasphemies that people utter will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an everlasting sin.” For they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”

The opening of today’s Gospel reading is a little difficult to understand.  Who is Jesus summoning, for instance?  The crowd or the Pharisees?  It seems, though, that this is a continuation of the story of Jesus in Peter’s house in Capernaum, and a great crowd gathers to hear him teach.  His relatives in Nazareth hear rumors of what he is doing and they come up to take hold of him.  Pharisees have also come down from Jerusalem to listen to him and make a report to the authorities there, as they had reported previously on John the Baptist.  To this point they have formed a very hostile opinion of him and would even like to kill him in conjunction with the Herodians.  Jesus has made very serious claims about himself and, though he has backed them up with miracles, the Pharisees despise him.  He is not one of them and has in fact challenged their self-assumed position as the people’s teachers to the point of showing that they are worse than useless.  

The Pharisees try to discredit him, but the problem of the miracles, which many have seen, remains.  They attempt to explain away the miracles with a wild accusation: “He is possessed by Beelzebul . . . by the prince of demons he drives out demons.”  (“Beelzebul” was the name of an ancient Canaanite deity, later used by the Jews for the devil).  The Pharisees cannot claim that the healing of the sick, the injured, and the deformed, and well as the exorcisms, did not occur; that Jesus performed these is incontestable.  But what they claim is that the supernatural power required for performing them comes from the devil.  The absurdity of the idea and the willingness of the Pharisees to promote it tells us a great deal about them.  It is not the Lord Jesus who is “out of his mind” as his relatives fear, but the Pharisees, whose malice has run so rampant that this seems feasible.  And, an invention of utter desperation, it fails to catch on with the people.  Their desperation brings to mind the image of the priests of Baal (that is, “Beelzebub”) in 1 Kings: 18, 28: “They cried with a loud voice, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till they were all covered with blood.”

As Jesus spent some days in Peter’s house at this time, perhaps the Lord allowed the Pharisees to slither back to Jerusalem to make their report to their masters, as he does not argue with them here.  Little would be gained by such a direct confrontation anyway: those particular Pharisees were past converting.  Instead, the Lord takes the opportunity of their departure in order to teach the people, for they truly wished to learn.  And so Jesus calls them together and teaches: “How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.”  He does not address the accusation made by the Pharisees, which is unworthy of serious discussion, but he uses the subject brought up in the accusation to explain that the devil’s reign over the world is finished.  First, if Satan is driving out Satan, there is civil war in hell which will lead to the devil’s overthrow.  Second, if miraculous works are being performed on the earth, it is because God is showing the signs that he has “bound” the devil and is putting an end — “plundering” — his dominion.  That is the meaning of, “No one can enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can plunder his house.”

“Amen, I say to you, all sins and all blasphemies that people utter will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an everlasting sin.”  The ascribing of God’s work to the devil is a sin against the Holy Spirit.  It is a most malicious act.  The Pharisees did this two thousand years ago.  It still goes on today.  

We see here how patient Jesus is with sinners.  He could have made a fearful example of the Pharisees when they accused him of being possessed and of wickedness, but he did not.  He let them go.  They would have until the end of their lives to seek forgiveness and convert, just as Judas would be given many chances to walk away from his evil deeds.  He did not come to condemn the world but that it might live (cf. John 12, 47).