Luke 4: 31-37: Jesus heals a possessed man.
Yesterday we saw in the Gospel, rejected in his town, Nazareth, Jesus goes to Capernaum. Speak «with authority» to people and arouse the admiration of all. There he makes the first «sign»: he frees a possessed man from his evil. Preach and at the same time liberate. The Good News is that God’s saving force is already at work in this world. Evil begins to be defeated. An exorcism: the first victory of Jesus against the evil one. The devil expresses it accurately: «Have you come to destroy us?» And he protests: naturally, evil does not want to lose ground.
Contemporaries of Jesus united the physical and the spiritual. The cause of a person’s evil – corporeal, soulish, spiritual – was normally attributed to evil spirits. Whatever the origin of these evils, Jesus liberates the whole person: sometimes he heals him from his illness, sometimes from his evil possession, sometimes from his death, and above all, from his sin. There is an integral vision of the person: of his ills and of his salvation.
The Risen Lord wants to continue to free us from our evils. What are our particular «demons»? Which is our slavery: envy, fear, depression, selfishness, materialism? Jesus is always ready to heal us. When we are told, by inviting us to communion at Mass, that he is «the one who takes away the sin of the world,» we understand that he wants us totally free, in the fullest sense of the word. But he also wants us to work with him in healing others. The healing power of Jesus passed to their community: that is why Peter and John healed the paralytic in the Temple «in the name of Jesus.» The Church, above all for its sacraments, but also for its human welcome, for its word of hope, for its proclamation of the Good News of God’s love, should be healing ills and «possessions» of all. Spreading hope. Freeing from slavery. Overcoming evil.
Peace and good
Fr. Antonio Majeesh George Kallely, OFM
