The Treasure of the Gospels

In yesterday's blog entry, I wrote of Jesus' ability to expel demons and how it said something about who he was. Having power over the spirit world placed him on a higher rung on the ladder of the created universe. Although the people who witnessed his ability to cast out the evil spirit did not verbally acknowledge Jesus' identity, the evil spirit said it: You are the Holy One of God (Luke 4:34c).

The passage which follows that encounter is the Gospel reading for today's Eucharist. Once again we find that Jesus is healing and expelling evil spirits. Once again, those evil spirits are vocal: You are the Son of God (Luke 4:41b). In order to understand what is being said, I think it is necessary to repeat that these people ranked the inhabitants of their world on a social ladder with God on the top rung, the "sons of God" (which we call angels) on the next rung followed by the spirits that roam the world, the human beings, and the animal life on the next three rungs respectively. So they believed that God had control of all the ranks, the "sons of God" had control of the three ranks below them, the spirit world had control of humans and animals, and humans had control of the animal world.

The titles "Holy One of God" and "Son of God," used by the expelled spirits clearly place Jesus on a level higher than ordinary human beings. While the spirits vocally acknowledge this, Jesus' fellow human beings are hesitant to say this out loud. However, their actions in today's passage show that some of them are beginning to believe this about Jesus because they are actively seeking him out and bringing those who are sick and possessed to him for relief. Their actions speak for themselves.

Of course, it is important to remember that the Gospels were written after the fact. Jesus had returned to the Father at least thirty, possibly forty years before the first Gospel was committed to parchment. It was only after the Christian community had an opportunity to reflect on the life of Jesus that they were able to acknowledge who Jesus had been in their midst.

In that respect, we are far more fortunate than they. We live at a time when hundreds of generations have reflected on the Scriptures and have passed on the fruit of that reflection. That process must continue. Not only must we pass on that treasure of the past, we must continue to reflect on our encounter with Jesus in the Scriptures. They are an essential component to our spiritual life. The Scriptures are the spiritual food of our prayer life. All of our Catholic prayer is dependent upon the Scriptures for its life blood. Our devotions, our piety, our liturgy, our art, and our music all derive their power and inspiration from the Scriptures and the reflections of the community upon those Scriptures. To ignore the Scriptures, to allow dust to collect on our Bibles, must be avoided.

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator