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Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Bishop Barron's Daily Gospel Reflection January 10, 2017

Your daily Gospel reflection...
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
1st Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Mark 1:21-28
Friends, today's Gospel finds Jesus encountering a man with an unclean spirit in the synagogue at Capernaum. Isn't it interesting that the first unclean spirit that Jesus confronts is in the holy place, the place of worship? And what marks this man? Though he is a single person, an individual, he speaks in the plural: "What do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?"

The diabolic is, literally, a scattering power: diabalein. Sin separates us from one another—Sunde, related to sundering—but it also divides us interiorly, setting one part of the self against another. We've all experienced this: our minds are divided, our wills are split and our emotions militate against our deepest convictions

The authoritative voice of Jesus brings the man back to himself. And friends, this is precisely the effect that Jesus' voice has had up and down the ages. When you allow his word to reach deep down within you, you get knitted back together. When Jesus becomes the clear center of your life, then your mind, your will, your emotions, your private life, your public life—all of it—finds its harmonious place around that center.

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