This Sunday’s Gospel reading is from the first chapter of Mark’s gospel, the gospel which is the special focus for Year B. It describes what must have been a powerful and frightening scene. From the mouth of a possessed man the unearthly voice of many demons suddenly shrieks out in the midst of the silence of a spell-bound assembly: “What do you want of us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the holy One of God!”
As lens for his entire Gospel, Mark chooses this confrontation between Jesus and Satan and, in doing so, reduces the cosmic forces of Good and Evil to a one on one struggle between Jesus of Nazareth and the Devil himself. In this way, Mark wants to remind us that Satan, Evil, is always the hidden face behind every opposition that Jesus encounters, every plot against his life and every rejection of his person and teaching. At the same time, Mark reminds us that behind the human face of Jesus is always the hidden face of God. It is the face of God that the Evil One recognizes on the face of Jesus!
Jesus wins this first bout in what will be a life-long struggle. He knows that the Evil One will return again and again throughout his ministry to sow fear or doubt or hate, all of which will end in his arrest, passion and death. Calvary may, at first blush, seem to suggest that Satan is the winner in this cosmic struggle, but the Resurrection reveals that love, not hate, good, not evil, wins out in the end. For Mark, as for us, faith in Jesus lays hold to ultimate victory over sin, death and the Evil One.
In recounting this event in the life of Jesus, Mark offers encouragement to his first readers as they engage in their own personal struggles with evil in the form of sin or doubt or fear or any one of the countless buffetings that always seem to encircle us. Satan failed to win against Jesus, but can he prevail over his followers? Mark’s response is a firm, “No!” Our faith in Jesus is our echo of Mark’s “No!”
Mark does not sugar-coat the cost of discipleship. He is a realist. Faith in Jesus must work itself out over the course of every day and in the face of many voices, tugs and pulls that are contrary to his. But we have in Jesus someone who struggled as we do and has overcome. For us who believe, his victory becomes our victory as well. We too know who Jesus is: “The holy One of God!” So, let us follow Jesus, stay very close to him, continue to read his Word and walk his path. If we do that, Jesus will do for each of us what he does for the possessed man in this Sunday’s Gospel. He will free us from every evil and, at the same time, fill us with another very different spirit: his Holy Spirit!
V. Rev. Lewis S. Fiorelli, OSFS
Provincial
Wilmington-Philadelphia Province
