In this section you can find a daily commentary on the Gospel of the Day.

Monday 31 January 2022

Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Word for today
The Gospel of Mark 5:1-20

The torment

Jesus is the demons' torment, why? Because Jesus is able to inspire without spilling blood and, if some blood must be spilled, He offers His own blood to be spilled at the hands of the violent. Jesus is compassionate with all, calls for humbleness but never humiliates anyone because of his/her weaknessws. Jesus is the demons' torment as He does not talk to the mangers and the powerful of the people, political as well as religious, He does not reveal His knowledge to the learned and the wise of the earth, instead he approaches the little and the humble. Jesus is the demons' torment as He does not utilize fear and terror, treachery and ignorance to make Himself be heard. Instead He utilizes enthusiasm, tenderness, knowledge and the intelligence of His Word. Jesus is the demons' torment as He chases them away from man and from the history of mankind so the demons feel even more lonely and desperate, far from humanity.
The Evil one lives to be chosen by man and cannot live without having man's preference, that is his burning torment. Demons know that if they manage to obtain man's choice, it is always a choice without love and if they manage to have man's preference, it is only and always for interest and calculation, not for affection. Demons can neither love nor be loved, that is their sentence and their hell: they can only possess and dominate. Both angel-demons as well as human-demons have no other purpose in their existence than pushing man to achieve his goals without ever choosing or utilizing love, but choosing and utilizing domination, abuse, greed and violence that generate fear. Satan knows that he can never be loved, thus he can only be feared; he knows that he cannot be welcomed out of enthusiasm and thus he has no other choice but imposition and constriction. He knows that he cannot be sought out because of beauty and thus he can only persuade by terror. Satan tempts men to live in the same way so that men will prefer being feared rather than being loved, sought out for power rather than for the capability to love, for external beauty and prestige rather than for the beauty of their spirit and the wisdom of their goodness-seeking intelligence. There is a gigantic deception hidden in  Satan's temptation. Satan pushes us to live like him, to use the non-love, the non-life, like him but there is an abysmal difference between him and us. Satan has turned his back to God and has given up love and lives without love as he can no longer use it in any of its infinite forms, while man is in no way forced to live without love, man can in any moment decide to take the way of love and beauty, of tenderness and compassion. Satan's great deceit is to convince man that he too must live without love, that he too, like Satan, has no other way. This is the most dangerous lie in history. Man too has turned his back on God, he has rebelled against God, just like Satan, but the human decision is at a completely different dimensional and awareness level than that of Satan. Satan cannot use love; man, on the other hand, if he humbly recognizes his mistake, can, in Jesus, return to God whenever he wants. That is why Jesus is the demons' torment, because in Jesus, for Jesus, and with Jesus mankind can choose once again the way of love and of life forever.