4th SUNDAY OT 2018
HE’S
GOT AUTHORITY
4TH SUNDAY OT 2018
HE’S
GOT AUTHORITY
Uncertainty and
insecurity. Jesus was born into such a world. In today’s Gospel we hear that Jesus
visited the Synagogue on the Sabbath..
After prayers had been said the Law that God entrusted to Moses was read from
the Sacred Scrolls. The speaker for the day explained these Laws in minute
detail. Here people learned that to be the
righteous one had to live up to a very demanding standard. Ordinary people were
fearful of getting it wrong. They were very insecure. When
Jesus spoke He did so with
authority, with godly good sense, compassion and mercy. He was a breath of
fresh air! So different from the Scribes.
It occurs to me that today there are so many opinionated people. How many of them
are speaking with authority. How are we to know with any certainty what is true, what is
false; what is good, what is evil? With such bewilderment surely there is an
urgent need for the truth of God the Creator to be voiced with authority. This Jesus
Himself did in the Synagogue, as we’ve just heard and throughout His public
ministry.
Before He ascended into Heaven He commissioned the Apostles as
foundations of His Church to continue to speak with His authority - for the
good of mankind. We as Church are to proclaim with His authority the beauty of God’s truth so as to ensure that human morality should be godly
morality; human choices be godly choices.
And now today’s Gospel moves on to tells us, “In
their Synagogue just then there was a man possessed by an unclean spirit and it
shouted, ‘What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?
Have you come to destroy
us? I know who you are: the Holy One of God.’ We must be aware that in those
days there was no psychiatric medicine to deal with this kind of situation. It
was then thought that those who were deranged and tormented were possessed by
unclean spirits, demons. There was little that could be done to help them.
We’ve already heard how Jesus had impressed the
people with the authority of His teaching. Now we hear of Him sharply addressing
the unclean spirit. “‘Be quiet! Come out of him!’ The unclean spirit threw the
man into convulsions and with a loud cry went out of him.” The astonished people exclaimed, “Here is a
teaching that is new and with authority behind it. He gives orders to unclean
spirits and they obey Him.”
Here was authority and powerful action! Jesus dealt
with an awful, unmanageable situation. He had liberated this wretched helpless
man. We of today have our own problems –
many of them man-made. We’re unable to prevent them and don’t know how to deal
with them.
Climate changes are beyond our control; we don’t know
how to cope with increasing random terrorism, nor with a multitude of addictions. How can we
bring a halt to the disintegration of
what was once known as the stable family? With all our boasting about human
progress there is a great sense of insecurity and fear for the future.
Surely today’s
Gospel sounds a rallying cry to those of us who still believe in Jesus as having
the authority and power to make a radical
difference, to turn the tide. For our part, all of us can do some serious
praying. By the way we live all of us can bear witness to the enduring worth of
Christianity. In the midst of the fierce political debates that rage throughout
the word today all of us can and must bear witness to Gospel values.
To conclude I ask
what response is to be given to these questions? “Can Jesus really make a difference? Or did
His power to save, to heal, to push back the tides of evil,
perish on Calvary?”
Amen. God
bless you.
Peter Clarke
O.P.
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