Daily Gospel Reflection – Monday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
Bishop Robert Barron
February 20, 2023
Monday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
Gospel: Mk 9: 14-29
As Jesus came down from the mountain with Peter, James, John
and approached the other disciples,
they saw a large crowd around them and scribes arguing with them.
Immediately on seeing him,
the whole crowd was utterly amazed.
They ran up to him and greeted him.
He asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?”
Someone from the crowd answered him,
“Teacher, I have brought to you my son possessed by a mute spirit.
Wherever it seizes him, it throws him down;
he foams at the mouth, grinds his teeth, and becomes rigid.
I asked your disciples to drive it out, but they were unable to do so.”
He said to them in reply,
“O faithless generation, how long will I be with you?
How long will I endure you? Bring him to me.”
They brought the boy to him.
And when he saw him,
the spirit immediately threw the boy into convulsions.
As he fell to the ground, he began to roll around
and foam at the mouth.
Then he questioned his father,
“How long has this been happening to him?”
He replied, “Since childhood.
It has often thrown him into fire and into water to kill him.
But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”
Jesus said to him,
“‘If you can!’ Everything is possible to one who has faith.”
Then the boy’s father cried out, “I do believe, help my unbelief!”
Jesus, on seeing a crowd rapidly gathering,
rebuked the unclean spirit and said to it,
“Mute and deaf spirit, I command you:
come out of him and never enter him again!”
Shouting and throwing the boy into convulsions, it came out.
He became like a corpse, which caused many to say, “He is dead!”
But Jesus took him by the hand, raised him, and he stood up.
When he entered the house, his disciples asked him in private,
“Why could we not drive the spirit out?”
He said to them, “This kind can only come out through prayer.”
*United States Conference of Catholic
Bishop Robert Barron
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus drives a demon from a deaf and mute child and heals him.
The account demonstrates the role of faith in divine healing. Jesus describes his disciples who could not heal the boy as a “faithless generation.” And when the child’s father wonders if Jesus can heal his son, he says, “Everything is possible to one who has faith.” Then he heals the child by driving out the deaf and mute spirit.
We have an adventurous God, and faith is the proper response to such a God. Don’t think of faith so much first in propositional form—the things that I believe—but rather in psychological or spiritual form.
Faith is an attitude of trust in the God who is always holding out new possibilities to us. When our lives and hearts are aligned to the God who creates the universe, when our wills are directed according to his purposes, we become the conduits of enormous power.
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