Blue Eyed Ennis: Fourth Sunday Ordinary Time 2012 Gospel Reflections Unclean Spirits

Fourth Sunday Ordinary Time 2012 Gospel Reflections Unclean Spirits

Scripture readings for Sunday's Mass are here.

Lots to get your teeth into here................

Various reflections on all the readings from St Louis University Centre for Liturgy are here.

This is a superb and incisive reflection by Peter Woods on the gospel with a great title : "Why Demons Sleep Through Sermons."

Another excellent one here by Richard Vincent on the authority of Jesus which says

"Mark's story of Jesus' first experience in public ministry is a story about a new kind of authority and power - used to liberate from the powers of evil rather than add to them through oppression or self-seeking manipulation."

This story is Jesus' first public demonstration of the power and authority of God's kingdom. The term "scribe" originally referred to people who copied the scriptures. Over time, the term came to refer to experts in the law, that is, lawyers.

Scribes or lawyers were recognized as the authorized biblical scholars of the time. They impressed others with the profundity of their scholarship. It was their custom to bolster their authority by quoting famous rabbis.

In contrast to the scribes, Jesus did not possess any officially sanctioned authority. He was "uneducated ", not having studied under a prominent rabbi. Unlike the scribes, he did not rely on quoting great rabbinic names as precedent for his teaching. Jesus' teaching spoke for itself. Williamson comments,
"They [the scribes] taught with erudition, but Jesus taught with authority. Jesus interprets the Scripture as one who has the right to say what it means. His teaching has no need of external support, whether from Scriptures or elsewhere; his word is self-authenticating, not like that of the scribes."
Clearly, Jesus was no ordinary rabbi. He did not depend on academic credentials or rabbinic precedent as his authority. He was a prophet directly commissioned by God to speak on God's behalf."

Another set of reflections from The Edge of Enclosure from here.

Sunday's Gospel Reading Mark 1:21-28

They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, "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."

But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent, and come out of him!"

And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.

They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, "What is this? A new teaching--with authority!

He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him."

At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee. -

James Tissot Man With Unclean Spirit

One of the striking things about this Gospel is that it is the "unclean spirit" who recognizes who Jesus really is.

This passage holds up a mirror to provide some disturbing facts on our own limitations and inadequacy; it acts as a sad and sober reflection for all of us who think we lead "good clean" lives and claim to know who Jesus is.

It is also remarkable that a simple encounter and a rebuke from Jesus penetrates to the complete and deepest truth of the person, so often hidden inside and He sets them free. This week also celebrated the feast of St Paul and his Damascene road encounter with God and the transforming power of what that meant is still unfolding in our world today.

Unclean spirits conjure up all sorts of images and modern interpretations infer that the man in the gospel was an epileptic.

But the story can also point to any facet of a person's spirit that is held captive and oppressed by any number of distressing negative forces.

Ultimately, it is only God's power and authority that can seek us out and restore the true nature that lies in the core of our hearts and that is one with the creator of all of us.

Nina Simone song describes the longing that goes with wanting to be free.

(Her own sufferings from bipolar disorder make this an especially poignant song too.)

“Man is his own most vexing problem.”

—Reinhold Niebuhr

Usually when something is broken, its value declines or disappears altogether.

Broken dishes, broken bottles, broken mirrors are generally scrapped. Even a crack in furniture or a tear in cloth greatly reduces its resale value.

But it isn’t that way in the spiritual realm. Throughout the gospels Jesus always puts a premium on broken people and heals them.

In the video below, Luka Bloom sings an understated but compelling cover version of U2's song BAD.

There are many interpretations of this song: some think it is about heroin addiction; others prefer to leave it wide open.

The words could fit any form of addiction and fit well with the Gospel idea of possession by "unclean spirits" that have the power to tear us apart.

I'm thinking of the "big players" like Greed, Envy, Lust, Anger, Jealousy, Coveting, Idolatry, and then there are the milder more banal type of mood changes that can afflict us: the stubborn hissy fits that we throw at God when things don't work out the way we want them too, the obsessional anxiety states, the hysteria we sometimes get ourselves fixed into over inconsequential problems that we pin on God.

Any of these could identify as states of being possessed by or in thrall to "unclean spirits."

If you twist and then turn away again
If you tear yourself in two again
If I could, you know I would If I could, I would
Let it go.

Surrender, Dislocate

If I could throw this lifeless lifeline to the wind
I'd leave this heart of clay.
See you walk, walk away Into the night
And through the rain Into the half-light
And through the flame

If I could through myself Set your spirit free
I'd lead your heart away.
See you walk, walk away Into the light
And through the day.

So let it go and so to fade away
Let it go and so to fade away.

I'm wide awake I'm wide awake
I'm not sleeping

If you should ask then maybe
They'd tell you what I would say
True colours fly in blue and black
Bruised silken sky and burning flag

Killers crash, collide in bloodshot eyes
If I could, you know I would If I could,
I would.

Let it go.

Surrender, Desperation, Dislocation
Separation, Condemnation, Revelation
In temptation, Isolation, Desolation.

Let it go
And so to fade away
Let it go
And so to fade away.

I'm wide awake I'm wide awake
I'm not sleeping
So let it go. Surrender.
Let it go
Let it go
I'm wide awake ...

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More from Seamus Heaney

“History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime,
The longest-for tidal wave of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea change
On the far side of revenge
Believe in miracles....”

“The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.” ―

“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”

and five more......

On his inspiration: 'The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis”

On which animal he'd prefer to be: "I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks."

On fame: "The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself. The prizes can’t help you at all.”

On becoming a poet: "My quest for precision and definition, while it may lead backward, is conducted in the living speech of a landscape and a language that I was born with. If you like, I began as a poet when my roots were crossed with my reading."

On authority "At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure. "

Easter Hope All Year Round

Celestial spirit that doth roll
The heart's sepulchral stone away,
Be this our resurrection day,
The singing Easter of the soul -
O gentle Master of the Wise,
Teach us to say: "I will arise." ~
Richard Le Gallienne

"The great gift of Easter is hope - Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake."
-- Basil C. Hume

Celtic Christianity may offer us a lifeline in the form of an approach to faith which is rooted in the imagination...[Celts] excelled at expressing their faith in symbols, metaphors and images, both visual and poetic.
They had the ability to invest the ordinary and commonplace with sacramental significance, to find glimpses of God’s glory throughout creation and to paint pictures in words, signs and music that acted as icons opening windows on heaven and pathways to eternity
Ian Bradley The Celtic Way

Favourite Quotes from Pope Francis

“Thanks to magnanimity, we can always look at the horizon from the position where we are. That means being able to do the little things of every day with a big heart open to God and to others. That means being able to appreciate the small things inside large horizons, those of the kingdom of God.

This offers parameters to assume a correct position for discernment, in order to hear the things of God from God’s ‘point of view.’ … However the risk in seeking and finding God in all things, then, is the willingness to explain too much, to say with human certainty and arrogance: ‘God is here.’ We will find only a god that fits our measure. The correct attitude is that of St. Augustine: seek God to find him, and find God to keep searching for God forever.”

-- Pope Francis

Carlo Caretto's Love Letter to His Church

How much I much criticise you my church and yet how much I love you !

You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe you more than I owe anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.

You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in the world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.

Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your arms!

No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you.
Then too – where should I go? To build another church?

But I cannot build another church without the same defects, for they are my own defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church. No, I am old enough. I know better!"

Did the Woman Say ?

Great Quotes

A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

Mary Oliver

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person."

~Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms, 1989

“And

"
"You can get all A's and still flunk life."

"Lost in the mystery of finding myself alive."

Walker Percy

"The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”

A tough life needs a tough language-and that's what poetry is. That's what literature offers- a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.
Jeanette Winterson

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way.”

- C.S. Lewis

The independent hearts of Celtic descendents everywhere still yearn for the solitary place, still rejoice in the goodness of creation, still see the Lord beside them as they walk, still see Him in the face of friend and stranger. The gospel light with its eastern fire still gleams. The truth still lingers in the heart.
Pat Robson – The Celtic Heart

People are itchy and lost and bored and quick to jump at any fix. Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help?

They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture. They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world."

-- James Hillman

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government only when it deserves it.
--Mark Twain

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice: - we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
-- George Orwell

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your own experience or convictions.
--Dag Hammarskjöld

If you want to build a ship don't herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

For what are we, without hope in our hearts, that someday we'll drink from God's blessed waters?"
-Bruce Springsteen

"Sometimes grace works like waterwings when you feel you are sinking."
-Anne Lamott

"A prayer may be a wordless inner longing, a sudden outpouring of love, a yearning within the soul to be for a moment united within the infinite and the good, a humbleness that needs no abasement or speech to express it, a cry in the darkness for help when all seems lost, a song, a poem, a kind deed, a reaching for beauty, or the strong, quiet inner reaffirmation of faith. A prayer in fact can be anything that is created by God that turns to God."

Paul Gallico

"God does not die when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."

Dag Hammarskjold

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”

― Paul Hawken

The greatest religious challenge of our age is to hold together social action and spiritual disciplines. This is not just a theological necessity, dictated by the need to integrate all of life around the reality of the living God. It is a matter of sheer survival. The evils we confront are so massive, so inhuman, so impervious to appeals and dead to compassion, that those who struggle against them face the real possibility of being overwhelmed by them.”

~ Theologian Walter Wink

One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours?
I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.

~ Khalil Gibran

Blue Eyed Ennis

Fourth Sunday Ordinary Time 2012 Gospel Reflections Unclean Spirits

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Fourth Sunday Ordinary Time 2012 Gospel Reflections Unclean Spirits

The demons of negativity and doubt can possess us all but ultimately there are times when our own strength is not enough and we have to surrender to God.

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