Reading: Mark 1:29-39
The Devil is in the Detail
Why stupidity may not be a value - apology Flaubert!
Rev Dr Nikolai Blaskow
It started in the desert. A voice from heavens which had been torn apart, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” It all continues relentlessly in the desert, ‘the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness… and the testing ‘by Satan’ 40 days, and the wild beasts and with extraterrestrial beings looking after him.
Then in the midst of political turmoil with John the Baptist arrested, Jesus begins his professional life as a healer, an egalitarian apocalyptic preacher – starting to gather around him unlikely collaborators – Simon, Andrew, James his brother John professional fishermen.
He teaches in the local church/synagogue for the first time, astounding everyone with his authority, not like the religious leaders who claimed to have authority but didn’t have it. A new authority with power, an unclean spirit convulsing a man in the congregation comes out of him at Jesus’ command.
Jesus’ fame, St Mark tells us, spread throughout all the region of Galilee.
And now surely a moment of peace in the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John… but Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever … another “at once” experience… Jesus without words simply takes her by the hand, lifts her up and the fever is gone.
No rest for the righteous. For that evening at sunset, the good news having got out, people brought to him all who were sick or possessed by demons.
St Matthew tells us that the whole city gathered around the door… and he cured many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons – and curiously – St Mark remarks, Jesus would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.
No wonder in the morning while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place and there he prayed.
Sister Marylin Sunderman, RSM in her Lenten Reflection on the thought and spirituality of Thomas Merton helps us to understand what Jesus experienced in that praying:
… the contemplative is conscious that she or he is at-one with God in the embrace of intimate love.[1]
She cites Merton:
Action is charity looking outward to others and contemplation is charity drawn inward to its own divine source. [2]
Merton argues that the contemplative person belongs to silence and must let it soak into his or her being. For it is there that the contemplative ‘listens expectantly for and to God’ and experiences the
presence of the Three Divine Persons: the Father, the source and giver of Love; the Son, the image and glory of Love; and the Spirit who is the communication of the Father and the Son in Love.[3]
Spiritual companionship and contemplation literally immerse themselves in what he quaintly describes as a special kind of consciousness:
There is no awareness like the awareness of the contemplative who suddenly wakes up to the fact that… all of reality is full of God, and that the universe is swimming in meaning.[4]
No wonder then, once found by Simon and his companions who had hunted him down and found him, recuperated, Jesus was able to say “Let us go on to the neighbouring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came out to do.” 39 And he went throughout all Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.
What are we to make of all of this?
GOD BEYOND NAMES Bernadette Farrell
God, beyond our dreams, you have stirred in us a memory,
you have placed your powerful spirit in the hearts of humankind.
All around us, we have known you;
all creation lives to hold you,
In our living and our dying
we are bringing you to birth.
God, beyond all names, you have made us in your image,
we are like you, we reflect you, we are woman, we are man.
All around us, we have known you;
all creation lives to hold you,
In our living and our dying
we are bringing you to birth
God, beyond all words, all creation tells your story,
you have shaken with our laughter, you have trembled with our tears.
All around us, we have known you;
all creation lives to hold you,
In our living and our dying
we are bringing you to birth
God, beyond all time, you are laboring within us;
we are moving, we are changing, in your spirit ever new.
All around us, we have known you;
all creation lives to hold you,
In our living and our dying
we are bringing you to birth
God of tender care, you have cradled us in goodness,
you have mothered us in wholeness, you have loved us into birth.
All around us, we have known you;
all creation lives to hold you,
In our living and our dying
we are bringing you to birth
[1] Sr. Marilyn Sunderman, RSM, PhD., professor of theology and chair of the on-campus undergraduate theology program at Saint Jospeh’s College, ‘Merton – On Contemplation, posted March 1, 2017.
[2] Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1978) 70.
[3] Merton, “The Inner Experience: Kinds of Contemplation (IV),” Cistercian Studies 18.4 (1983) 54; cited, Sunderman.
[4] Thomas Merton, “The Gift of Understanding,” The Tiger’s Eye 6 (December, 1948) 41.