Tuesday, August 31, 2021

 Tuesday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

(I Thessalonians 4:13-18; Luke 4:31-37)

A hundred years ago psychiatrists regularly used the term “dementia praecox” to describe psychotic disorder.  It comes from Latin and may be translated as premature madness.  The idea was that most people become mad in old age, but a few develop the disorder earlier in life.  Today’s gospel has another way of describing madness.

Primitive people regularly thought of unclear spirits or demons as the cause of madness.  In today’s gospel Jesus confronts a madman who is said to have an “unclean demon.”  However mad it makes the man, the demon has the supernatural ability to recognize Jesus’ special relationship with the Father.  Still, the demon cannot defy Jesus’ authority.  When Jesus tells him to depart from the man, the demon obeys. 

Is Jesus’ authority physical or spiritual, natural or supernatural?  It is a mistake to try to categorize it according to these dyads.  With his, and derivatively with us, the spiritual pervades the physical and the supernatural exists alongside the natural.  The Father has sent him to the world, as he said in yesterday’s gospel, with the Spirit “to let the oppressed go free.”