This is the week that the Christmas season ends and we return to “Ordinary Time” in the Church. But there is nothing ordinary about today’s gospel. A man with an unclean spirit comes into the synagogue where Jesus is teaching. Immediately the unclean spirit is afraid and screeches at Jesus, “What do you want of us? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are - the Holy One of God!”
How will I pray with this gospel? I could picture myself as one of the bystanders in the synagogue, amazed as this scene unfolds. But then something moves inside my soul and I realize that I am the one with the unclean spirit.
Unclean? How often do we realize that our lives are messy and less than perfect? Our struggles to be kind or honest, our motives that are less than pure, our struggles to control our appetites and addictions, are all behaviors that clearly fall into the “needs healing” category. Unclean.
And so we enter the synagogue with our unclean spirits and encounter Jesus teaching. The unclean part of us recoils with fear and dread. What will Jesus want of us in our un-cleanliness? Will he destroy us? No. He heals us.
With great conviction and authority Jesus addresses the screeching of our unclean spirits and sends them out of us. It isn’t something that happens easily. The man in the gospel has a violent convulsion and loud shrieking as the spirit leaves him. Aren’t we like that? No matter how much we want to change, to rid ourselves of this unclean spirit, don’t we cling to it - to our habits - as a familiar companion and almost dread the change as much as we desire the healing?
We find ourselves tossed on the floor of the synagogue, the unclean spirit knocked out of us and Jesus kneeling over us gently, holding us for support. Now the unclean spirit is gone and has been replaced by a wonderful freedom Jesus gives us. Follow him, this “Holy One of God” and we will always feel this heady joy, this freeing love.
We stay there in a heap on the synagogue floor, staring up into Jesus’ loving eyes, but our fears remain because we know how many times we have gotten up from the floor of the synagogue and wandered outside where we forgot about Jesus’ love for us and accepted once again the unclean spirit into our lives. Jesus knows all that, too. The one who holds us so gently now, who stares down at us with such compassion and love, understands our struggles and knows that letting go of our unclean spirits is a lifetime project.
Our healing has just begun.
Maureen McCann Waldron
The most important part of my life is my family – Jim my husband of 47 years and our two children. Our daughter Katy, a banker here in Omaha, and her husband John, have three wonderful children: Charlotte, Daniel and Elizabeth Grace. Our son Jack and his wife, Ellie, have added to our joy with their sons, Peter and Joseph.
I think family life is an incredible way to find God, even in (or maybe I should say, especially in) the most frustrating or mundane moments.
I am a native of the East Coast after graduating in 1971 from Archbishop John Carroll High School in suburban Philadelphia. I graduated from Creighton University in 1975 with a degree in Journalism and spent most of the next 20 years in corporate public relations in Omaha. I returned to Creighton in the 1990s and completed a master’s degree in Christian Spirituality in 1998.
As our children were growing up, my favorite times were always family dinners at home when the four of us would talk about our days. But now that our kids are gone from home, my husband and I have rediscovered how nice it is to have a quiet dinner together. I also have a special place in my heart for family vacations when the kids were little and four of us were away from home together. It’s a joy to be with my growing family.
Writing a Daily Reflection is always a graced moment, because only with God’s help could I ever write one. I know my own life is hectic, disjointed and imperfect and I know most of us have lives like that. I usually write from that point of view and I always seem to find some sentence, some word in the readings that speaks right to me, in all of my imperfection. I hope that whatever I write is in some way supportive of others.
It’s an incredibly humbling experience to hear from someone who was touched by something I wrote. Whether the note is from someone across campus or across the world, it makes me realize how connected we are all in our longing to grow closer to God.
