Wednesday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
One of my favorite teachers in seminary, Fr. Mike Seger told us that the right answer to every question he asked was, “Do good and avoid evil.” For this moral theologian, it was important to boil it all down to this foundation. Once he had a student wake up from a dead sleep exclaiming this phrase.
For Abraham, doing good was not a simple choice. Abraham was faced with a desperate choice, to honor his wife’s request by sending his son, Ishmael away, perhaps even to die in the dessert with Hagar or to save them. God intervened, promising Abraham, that it was good to honor Sarah’s wish and that He would make a great nation out of Ishmael. Abraham listened to the Lord trusting that in sacrificing his son, good would be accomplished. Whether we like it or not, this banning is the attribution of the foundation of Islam.
Honesty and the ability to be genuine are not easy. In today’s gospel, Jesus encounters two people possessed by demons. Ironically, the demons recognize the holiness of the Messiah and perceive that he will drive them out of their current victims. So they ask Jesus if they could be driven into a herd of swine, perhaps figuring that they could wait there until Jesus was gone and repossess others later. If such a plan existed, we do not know nor does the narrator of the story, who gives us little clue as to why the demons even asked for such treatment. All Jesus said in this story was “Go then!” With that command, the demons entered the swine and the swine charged into the sea to drown. The swine here indicates that Jesus was in an area that had a gentile population. This could explain why the swine herders and the towns’ people ironically reacted to Jesus, the way he had to the demons. This story ends with the whole town saying to Jesus, ‘go then’ please leave of us. Like Ishmael, Jesus is banned. If the people of that gentile village had understood who Jesus was, would they have reacted differently? Did they believe that they were choosing the good by sending Jesus away? When difficult things happen to us how do we react?
Lord give us your Spirit of wisdom so that we might consistently choose Gospel values so that one day we will be one with You who lives and reigns one God, forever and ever.
Amen.
- Deacon Michael Montgomery