Word to the Wise
Wednesday, January 16, 2008 - Wednesday in the First Week of Ordinary Time
[1 Samuel 3:1-10 and Mark 1:29-39]"Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come." So he went into their synagogues, preaching and driving out demons throughout the whole of Galilee.
From the outset in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is presented as a healer and exorcist in addition to being a teacher. The healing of the man in the synagogue (yesterday's gospel) and the healing of Simon's mother-in-law are the opening examples. But there is a bigger picture. It would be easy to see Jesus' ministry on the level of so many persons healed without seeing the broader picture that these healings and exorcisms depict. It is a battle against the forces of evil/Satan! It's not just a one by one sort of thing, but a fundamental conflict. Some religious systems see all of reality as a conflict between two principles - Good and Evil (such as the Manichaeans or modern day Zoroastrians). However, in the case of the gospel, the outcome is certain. Jesus will conquer, even if the battle is a constant one. The war is constantly being won even if it is constantly being fought. Each of us must deal with daily evils that confront us. Some of them are purely personal and psychological. Others are social: drugs,abortion, racism, capital punishment,war, hunger, etc.. Unlike illness and natural disasters, these evils are the result of human actions. We can be happy if we make an individual contribution to these moral problems but we must never forget that the battle Jesus fought is still with us because human freedom allows humans to make evil choices. Human beings can create situations or structures that make these social evils a constant problem. I am reminded of the story of the village by a river. One day the villagers see a human corpse floating down the river. Being people of faith, the villagers pull the body from the water and give it decent burial. The next day there are more bodies and the villagers perform the same service. Finally, one of the villagers says, "Don't you think we should go up the river and deal with what is causing all these bodies to float downriver to us?" Jesus reached out to the individual who needed him, but he was fighting the bigger battle as well. A consciousness of this may help us when dealing with the individual hurts becomes a onerous task. AMEN
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