For good or not-so good, we are into the political season. Acceptance speechs have been offered and now that Labor Day is over, bang the race has begun.

Today’s Gospel follows immediately after Luke’s presentations of Whom He accepts Isaiah’s prophetic announcement of what the Messiah will do. Most politicians announce themselves as doers of great things. We watch to see if they can do any of them except talk.

What we hear and read in today’s Gospel is Jesus leaving His native town who wanted Him to stay and do wonderful deeds for them. He slips away to begin doing what He said He was and would do.     

We have the first miracal performed by Jesus in Luke’s account. It is important to note that it is an encounter with an Evil Spirit who possesses a fellow while Jesus is teaching on the Sabath in the synagogue. Two tensions are initiated in ththese few verses. Two basic themes in Luke’s Gospel begin right here. The religious leaders in the Jewish tradition do not allow such activities on the holy day of rest. Even more thematic is the driving out of a demon, a force of evil with whom Jesus met in the desert of temptations and will battle with through out the remainder of His active human life.

Jesus begins actively doing “Who He is and accepts His Truth of identity. The Evil one is doing who it is, destroying, holding back the dignity and healthiness of his human condition. The Evil One knows Who Jesus is and cries out wondering if Jesus has come to destroy it. Jesus tells the spirit to be quiet. Why?

Evil cannot spread the goodness of God. Those who have received that goodness in some way, (here it is a physical healing) are charged to go out in amazement and gratitude. He soon will be collecting those who will have been given-to, by netsfuls of fish, or other miracles of healing, as we read in the next few verses.

The other day someone asked about the difference between those who feel that they belong here at Creighton University and those who do not. I actually was silent for a few moments about how and why I feel I belong here. I eventually answered, (in a typical Jesuit way), that those who feel they belong to who they are, are more easily to feel they belong where ever they are. If we are at home with ourselves, others will come visiting. If I am next door trying to find who I am, no one will be home, because I am not there.

Jesus was Who He was, all the time and in every circumstance of celebration or challenge. He shared what He was, because He had received Himself from His Father.

The Evil One was trying to convince the man in today’s story that he was a “demoniac”. Jesus healed him to be who and what he was, a man”. This is an aspect of the redemptive mission of Jesus. He saves each to be an “each” a real individual male or female created again and again from the destructive influences of the Evil One.

The “man” was returned to his sense of belonging and to be at home first and then go next door, not to fine himself, but reveal his goodness, his “godness”. Our redeemed goodness is the God-Life within us which Jesus shares with us in the Eucharist and the other sacraments and all the ways He offers us our “eachness” our acceptance that we do belong.  Receive it well, believe it gently and go next door where you also belong.