Tuesday of the First Week In Ordinary Time

The Crucifix in
the Friars' Cemetery

All were amazed and asked one another,
“What is this?
A new teaching with authority.
He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.”
His fame spread everywhere throughout the whole region of Galilee.

The Gospel of Saint Mark is often symbolized as a lion. The image comes from Ezekiel’s vision of “four living creatures”: a lion, an eagle, an ox, and a man. (Ezekiel 1:10) Traditionally each of the four gospels has been assigned one of these images: Mark, the lion; Luke, the ox; Matthew, the man; and John, the eagle. How each of these gospels fits its respective image may challenge the scholars but clearly the man we encounter in Mark is a lion.

Jesus is powerful and free. He goes where he wants to go and does what he will do. Everyone is astonished at him and no one can control him until he is ready to be controlled.  

In today’s gospel a madman confronts him. The poor fellow is afflicted with a demon who challenges Jesus to a kind of contest. “I know who you are!” If no one else in the synagogue knows Jesus, who he is or where he comes from, the demon knows. That should be worth something, so the demon supposes. Immediately Jesus charges the demon, “Be quiet! Come out of him!” and the demon obeys. He is powerless before the Son of God.

As Saint Paul would later say in Philippians 2: “Every knee shall bow in heaven, on earth and under the earth, and every tongue proclaim to the glory of God, Jesus Christ is Lord.”

Or, as the Letter to the Hebrews teaches us in today’s first reading: In “subjecting” all things to him, he left nothing not “subject to him.”

The challenge of Jesus’ authority remains to us today. It is sometimes a direct affront, “I will not worship him. I have better things to do than attend church, pay tithes, or study the Bible.”

But it is more often a simple ignoring, or forgetting. We don’t pay attention. We forget in the busyness of our lives that there is one Lord and he has everything in hand. We forget that, by renewing the baptismal vows as often as we do, we declare ourselves under his command.

The New Year invites us to slow down, think, pray and remember. Call it contemplation! Let God be God for five or ten minutes of each day. Have nothing to do but be in God’s presence, grateful, content, open. The rosary can help, as can daily attendance at Mass. Or take the advice from Saint Matthew, "Go to your room, close your door and pray to your Father in secret." 

To love someone we must spend time with that one. In prayer we place ourselves under God’s authority and say, “Here I am, Lord. I come to do your will.” In that place we find the same joyous freedom that Jesus demonstrates in the Gospel of Saint Mark.