A Liberating Locution - Missionary Commentary for Sunday, January 28, 2024

Readings for the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Psalm 95:1-2, 6-7b, 7c-9
1 Corinthians 7:32-35
Mark 1:21-28

USCCB link for the Sunday Readings

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You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?

Jesus has that integrity; today’s Gospel reading tells us.  He not only talks about the defeat of evil and the coming of God’s Reign on the earth, he brings it!  Demonic powers fear him, which for people who see their whole world as infested with evil spirits—of sickness, of conflict, of immorality—is very impressive.

While I was in Chile, I found that many working-class families in urban areas, or those living in the small towns and rural, isolated settlements of the Original Peoples like the Mapuche and the Aymara, may ask for a special blessing of their home or their family members to ward off evil.  

For example, I remember walking into a small neighborhood store to buy some lemons one day, and the owner asked me whether I did “those things”—he wasn’t sure what to call it—that would keep “the evil eye” away from his store and bring him commercial success.
 
At first, I tended to try and find out what the “real problem” was.  Tensions in the family?  Psychological stress?  Economic injustice?  But later on, I learned to pay due respect to the mysterious nature of evil in our world, and to the accumulated, practical wisdom of the cultures and spiritual traditions of our host people, who know the ritual value of visible and tangible gestures and words for human beings and appreciate the potential power of the Gospel message.

We cannot dismiss such petitions out of hand, nor ignore the perspective of our host communities.  Our openness to drink from the “local wells” of knowledge and experience is essential for discovering and practicing what the mission of Christ requires of us who follow him today, whether we are abroad, or in our own neighborhoods.  The Holy Spirit goes ahead of us, on mission, and has always been present in cultures throughout the world, preparing us for a message that will astonish us, the revelation of One who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk.
 

Notes on the Sunday Readings

First Reading
The prophetic office of Moses, who has announced to the people what God requires of their lives, will be continued for the Chosen People in the prophets that God will raise up as the occasion requires, men and women who will only speak what is heard from God.

Psalm
The psalmist reminds us that we have a choice. We can listen to the Lord, “kneel before the Lord who made us,” for we are “the people he shepherds,” or we can harden our hearts. 

Second Reading
Paul wants to calm the anxieties of the Corinthian community about whether the unmarried should remain as such, when Christ is expected to return very soon.  He offers his opinion that our relationship to the Lord must be the most important factor in deciding how to live out our sexuality.  If Jesus is expected to return any day now, then people should remain as they are, given their eschatological situation.

Gospel
Mark intends to portray Jesus’ word as so powerful that people not only abandoned their occupations to follow him, as we saw in last Sunday’s reading (Mk 1:14-20), but even demonic powers cower before it.  His teaching, accompanied by liberating actions, is thus clearly more powerful than that of the scribes, becoming a word that will spread far and wide.
 
Notes and commentary by Fr. Bob Mosher, 
a member of the Missionary Society of Saint Columban.

The podcast this week features Adam Janke with St. Paul Street Evangelization. 
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