Monday in the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time, February 21, 2022

I had a fairly good day, though I still suffer from weakness.  Thanks for your prayers!  I’m hoping to begin Bible Study again in March.  My plan is to study the callings God gives us: marriage, priesthood, and the single life.

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 details for us two very dramatic, detail-filled accounts of exorcism.  The first is that of Legion in 5, 1-20; the other one is here.  These are dark, grim stories that, as frightening as they are, only hint at the horror of the actual situations.  From the amount of coverage Mark gives them, we can see how they must have gripped him.  He shows the terrible hold that evil takes on people, and then the great power that Jesus possesses to cast the possessing demons out.  Here, in addition, he emphasizes the essential part of faith in the struggle against evil.

“O faithless generation, how long will I be with you? How long will I endure you?”  This response of Jesus to the manifest failure of his Apostles to cast out the demons afflicting the child seems excessive.  The demon has complete control over the child and shakes him like a dog shakes a toy.  The fact that the Apostles are even trying to cast the demon out strikes one as very brave.  And yet, they fail.  Why do they fail in this instance? In Mark 6, 13 we learn that when Jesus sent them out on mission “they cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them.”  It seems that they did possess authority from Jesus to exorcise demons, and that they succeeded in doing so at that time.  But here, they fail.  This may indicate that the authority was temporary and meant only for that mission.  On the other hand, the authority may have persisted, but they erred in their method of exorcism.  The response of Jesus to their failure indicates that they failed because their faith was so shaken by the manifestation of the demon that they could not drive it out.  This is similar to the episode in which the Lord was walking on the sea and Peter, in the boat, asked the Lord to grant that he come to him on the water.  The Lord did, and after a couple of steps Peter’s faith failed and he sank into the sea.  That is, Peter’s faith that he could do what the Lord authorized him to do.  Peter looked to himself and not to the Lord and allowed himself to think that his weakness was greater than the Lord’s greatness.  Now, the Lord indicted the Apostles who failed in their attempted exorcism as a “faithless generation”.  The Greek word translated here as “generation” can also mean “race” and  “family”.  In this case, the Lord addresses the Apostles as members of his extended family who ought to have learned better from him, as from an older brother or their father.  He has brought the Apostles into his life so that they can hear his every word and see his every deed.  After two years of this intense experience it is as though they had never even heard of him.  

“But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”  Even the boy’s father, who has managed, undoubtedly with difficulty, to get his child out to the deserted place where the Lord had left nine of his Apostles when he went up the mountain to be transfigured, shows a lack of faith.  This is odd.  It is as though a sick person were to go to the doctor even though he thought the doctor could not heal him. The Lord’s rebuke of the father tells us of the importance of faith not only by the one to be cured but by members of his family and his friends.  “Everything is possible to one who has faith.”  Faith — the firm and abiding belief that God can do whatever he wills to do — is the foundation of the Christian’s life, for by it we believe that he can forgive us our sins and bring us into heaven.  The father’s desperate prayer, “I do believe, help my unbelief!” is answered by the Lord’s expulsion of the demon.  The climactic moments of the exorcism are very dramatic.  The boy is as though dead.  The Lord’s raising him up from this state reminds us of how we are purged of evil in baptism and raised out of the water as pure children of God.  We ought to recall that the rite of baptism contains an exorcism and the explicit rejection of the devil.  

“This kind can only come out through prayer.”  The humbled Apostles ask the reason for their failure.  The Lord tells them of the necessity for prolonged prayer to drive out “this kind” or “level” of demon.  That is, the prayer would increase and fortify the faith necessary for them to drive it out.  Some manuscripts, including those used by St. Jerome for the Vulgate, include “fasting” with prayer, but the present translation eschews this tradition.  In fact, fasting is a very important preparation for those who are to exorcise.

We very often launch into our daily work and even into very difficult activities without prayer.  By praying first, we gain the grace of solidifying our belief in God’s power to help us.  We need to do this because otherwise we run the risk of instead believing that we can do things on our own.  This, of course, is false, for without Christ, we can do nothing (cf. John 15, 5).