Monday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time
In one of the most graphic accounts in all of Mark, today we find Jesus on the far side of the Sea of Galilee, in pagan territory.
It is a strange and baffling tale. The possessed man is the most violent we meet in the New Testament, and is in the grip of a legion of unclean spirits. Yet this “legion” recognises who Jesus is and even “bows down before him.” Jesus expels them, ordering them into a nearby herd of swine to commit mass suicide, rushing headlong off a cliff into the Sea of Galilee. Greatly rattled, the locals ask Jesus to leave their territory immediately.
Many use Gospel texts of the expulsion of devils or impure spirits to frighten others. Mark does the opposite. He presents all his stories in order to strengthen faith, not cause fear.
Mark associates the demonic in four ways in the drama:
- With the cemetery, that place of
- With swine, equating them with the domination system of the day (Rome).
- With the sea, that place of chaos and destruction from which that Empire
- With “legion,” exploitative and oppressive Roman
Jesus overcomes all of them. This account of his victory was written after 70 CE for an early Church living under the thumb of those very legions. Rome, the domination system of the day, is but the pawn for the Devil’s diabolical work. That is true of the domination system of every time and place. The Devil, evil incarnate, is the real enemy.
Nothing worldly, nothing manipulative, nothing insidious, nothing threatening, nothing unGodly is a match for Jesus. ALL must bow before him, as the unclean spirits do.
In Mark, only the demons know who Jesus is (along with the centurion who proclaims him at Golgotha). “We know who you are, Jesus of Nazareth. The Holy One of God!”
This is something the disciples never grasp in the first Gospel written. But we know who Jesus is, you and I. And that makes the demonic and the diabolical in all its forms cower and tremble.
Belonging to him, we have nothing to fear.
-Timothy J. Cronin