January 28, 2024 (Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time)
/by Fr. Xavier Lavagetto, O.P.
[This is the text composed by the homilist prior to delivering the homily.]
The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday sent me down memory lane. For most here, it is ancient history, but for me, it was yesterday! The early sixties were a time of tremendous hope. It was Vatican II, the civil rights movement, and President Kennedy. At my alma mater, St. Mary’s College High School, we sang with gusto, “We shall overcome.” … It excited us, but not all. One irate parent, a member of the John Birch Society, cornered the principal, Bro. Mel, and after a tirade, he ended with a flourish: “What shall we overcome? What shall we overcome?” … Br. Mel quietly said: ”Ignorance, poverty, disease, racism, bigotry.”
Those tasks remain; they plague us still. Ignorance, intolerance, racism, and a spirit of revenge still possess us. These diminish the person and possess the mind as cruelly as any demon. Indeed, they are worse, for they make us into demons!
Consider the demonic depths of the last century — a time of “-isms” made it a century of holocausts and death! In the first 80 years, 127 million people died, not in war, but at the hands of their own governments. Reflecting on those years that Pope Benedict knew so well, he wrote, “People of the present are sacrificed to the moloch of the future — a future whose effective realization is at best doubtful. One does not make the world more humane by refusing to act humanely here and now.” … One does not make the world more humane by refusing to act humanely here and now.” (Deus Ist Caritas. §31b)
Today’s Gospel may seem quaint with its talk of possession. After all, we are so enlightened. … Yet when I start talking of actual cases of possession, people are simply riveted. … Have you noticed how movies dealing with the occult, the demonic, or Marvel superheroes rake in the bucks? … Go figure! … It is one thing to know that the world can be hellish; it is another to recognize that we are complicit; we readily do the devil’s work for him … for free!
Scriptures use most often two names: Satan and the Devil. Satanus was the original name for the heavenly court’s District Attorney who attacks and accuses! ... Have you ever attacked and accused someone else? … While Diabolus comes from the word to divide and tear apart. …. Have you ever torn someone apart verbally or in your heart? For that matter, how many politicians use division to mobilize the vote? Rage is an addictive drug.
Fr. Ronald Rolheiser explains it: the powers of hell, satan and the devil, work in two ways. Sometimes they work as the devil by dividing us from God, each other, and from what is best within us. Sometimes they work in just the opposite way, as satan. Here, they unite us to each other but through the grip of mob hysteria, envy-induced hype, and the kind of sick unity that makes for gang-rapes and crucifixions.” …. We might add the tribal mentality that divides the nation and doubts our democratic institutions. … I wonder if we need an old-fashioned exorcism of America.
Jesus comes with new authority to break those shackles of mind and heart that make us ideologues and killing machines; he would free us to be alive and helping!
Reducing faith to no more than having the correct answers and avoiding evil takes us no further than Jesus’ accusers. Our goal is not to parrot truth but to know the one who is TRUTH. Our goal is not to just avoid evil but to become virtuous, faith-filled, free adults.
Plato complained about the tyranny of the marketplace that enslaves the mind. Common opinion and half-truths are blinding and binding. The marketplace sells us a false future and awakens envious desires. Buy this, buy that, and you will be …. ( and you fill in the blank)! St. Paul urges us: “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.” (Rom. 12:2)
We heard God’s promise to Moses in our first reading: “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their kinsmen, and will put my words into his mouth...” The people in today’s Gospel caught a glimpse of that promise in Jesus, who taught “a new teaching with authority.” In him, they experienced God.
Yet we can replace Jesus with mere belief; we can replace growing in character with merely not messing up. God wants a free mind and a generous heart at every step in our life’s journey. Truth and love need each other if we are to become whole, for love without truth is misguided, and truth without love is brutal. Let me say that again: love without truth is misguided, and truth without love is brutal.
Paul urges us, “Living the truth in love, we should grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ.” (Eph. 4:15)
Jesus reveals a God who treasures us; he asks you to treasure each other as God’s gift. When you do, the genuine demons that rule our world flee. Jesus will touch, help, and heal through you, and then we can rightly sing, “We shall overcome.”
Today, we celebrate those who seek new freedom … they are the candidates for Baptism, those seeking reception into the Church, and those Catholics asking this year for confirmation. I marvel at the hunger in their hearts, the sacrifice of their time, and the desire for spiritual freedom and a life-giving joy. They inspire me not to take life for granted but to delight in the Christ who is God’s love, come in person.
