First Reading
Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Moses spoke to all the people, saying: “A prophet like me will the Lord, your God, raise up for you from among your own kin; to him you shall listen. This is exactly what you requested of the Lord, your God, at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let us not again hear the voice of the Lord, our God, nor see this great fire any more, lest we die.’ And the Lord said to me, ‘This was well said. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their kin, and will put my words into his mouth; he shall tell them all that I command him.’” Whoever will not listen to my words which he speaks in my name, I myself will make him answer for it. But if a prophet presumes to speak in my name an oracle that I have not commanded him to speak, or speaks in the name of other gods, he shall die.”
Second Reading
1 Corinthians 7:32-35
Brothers and sisters: I should like you to be free of anxieties. An unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord. But a married man is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided. An unmarried woman or a virgin is anxious about the things of the Lord, so that she may be holy in both body and spirit. A married woman, on the other hand, is anxious about the things of the world, how she may please her husband. I am telling you this for your own benefit, not to impose a restraint upon you, but for the sake of propriety and adherence to the Lord without distraction.
Gospel Cycle Cycle B
Mark 1:21-28
Then they came to Capernaum, and on the sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue and taught. The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. In their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit; he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” Jesus rebuked him and said, “Quiet! Come out of him!” The unclean spirit convulsed him and with a loud cry came out of him. 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.
What does it mean to speak with authority? In today’s Gospel, the people recognize that there is both a new teaching and a teaching with authority. Jesus is able to proclaim the Word of God in such a way that people could recognize that it was truly the Word of God, and not just some other spiritual teaching. Perhaps all of us recognize that difference when we hear really strong and clear preaching from a priest who seems to be speak directly from the heart about his own inner experience of Christ our Savior.
But it is not only the priest who is responsible for that. It is every one of us who follow Jesus as our Lord. We must come to have this inner experience by which we are completely convinced that He is our Savior. That can happen in an instance. And it can also take many years. Sometimes it seems to be there and at other times it seems we have lost our faith.
Yet as long as we remain faithful in seeking God and striving to understand our Lord, we can place all our hope in Him. The people in today’s Gospel could see and touch and experience the Lord Jesus, even though they may not have yet understood that He is God. They could sense His relationship to God.
When we turn to the first reading, from the Book of Deuteronomy, we can hear Moses speaking about his own experience of God and his experience with the people who followed him and trusted him. When they asked to hear the Lord Himself, some tremendous experience happened and they did not want to have that experience again. They preferred to have a prophet who could speak in the name of God.
And so we have a whole history of prophecy given to us in the Hebrew Scriptures and which speak so eloquently about this God who loves us. Sure, there is a lot of killing and mayhem and anger in those Scriptures, but there is also that experience in the midst of all of that of a God who actively looks for us and wants us to share His life, a God who seeks us out and desires our company. For us Christians, following Christ, we hear the voice of this loving God and we begin to recognize His presence in our lives. But it often comes down to one simple question: do I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God?
Once I believe in that, all of the scriptures begin to make sense and the Church as well. Once I believe, I can begin to allow the Scriptures and the Church to form me and to shape the way that I look at the world. This is kind of healing, similar to that in today’s Gospel. This healing takes all other spirits out of me and allows the fame of God to spread through this world.
Let us give thanks today for the gift of faith and ask that we may always grow deeper in this faith and may always acknowledge Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God.