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.”
