Memorial of Saint Gregory the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church
I've always been perplexed by today's gospel (Luke 4:31-37), until I started reflecting on it more for today's reflection. In this story, Jesus meets up with a man who has a demon, a demon who proclaims that Jesus is exactly who he says he is: the "Holy One of God." And here's why I've always been perplexed: why would Jesus immediately seek to cast out and silence the demon who knows exactly who Jesus is? Isn't it good that the demon knows who Jesus is?
But on further reflection, I realize that of course Jesus had cast out the demon, for several reasons. First, if he had NOT cast out the demon, he could be accused of being selfish or self-aggrandizing. He would come across as saying, "Yeah, listen to this demon! I'm the One!" If Jesus had NOT cast out the demon, he would therefore have allowed himself to be under the demon's power, especially the power to make himself feel better about himself because of the praise of others. If he had NOT cast out the demon, the demon would have won!
As usual, Jesus subverts the demon's purposes by not caving into the pressure of being thought well of (however truthful it is that he is the Holy One). Jesus does the unexpected thing, precisely in order to keep being himself. I think in part he calls us here to be wary of other peoples' good opinion if and when that prevents us from being or doing the people God calls us to be.
More than that, this gospel lesson suggests that God acts in unexpected ways. Indeed, one of the few things we might say about God with great certainty is that God acts unexpectedly. Paul proclaims today (1 Thessalonians 5:1-6, 5-11) that "you know very well" that Jesus will come "like a thief in the night." How strange to think that the thing we know "very well" about the mysterious God is precisely that God will be, well, mysterious. God will not come when we want, will not do the things we want, will not answer our prayers in the precise manner that we expect, and so on.
Today's saint, Gregory the Great, desired a life of contemplation, but was eventually elected to be pope, and oversaw tremendous missionary activity and the establishment of monasteries in early medieval Europe (the late 500s). He accepted that God was unexpected and would therefore lead him in unexpected ways.
God will keep us on our toes because that's who God is. Today, may we pray for the grace to follow the unexpected and mysterious God who will lead us places we did not think we would go.
- Jana M. Bennett