There are times when the doubts about God in our culture have an effect on me. I begin to question: Does God really exist? Do I really have a relationship with him? Is God truly in charge of the world?
The anchor I return to first in those moments is not any of the specific goodnesses God has shown to me, though they are many, nor do I recite the Creed. The anchor I return to I was told at a music workshop in Cincinnati some years ago by the speaker, Bill Richart.
Bill’s Story
Bill had been to Poland on a tour. On this particular day the tour group’s main activity was to tour Auschwitz, the infamous concentration camp where the Nazis killed more than a million people, including St. Maximilian Kolbe. However, on the way to Auschwitz, within a few miles of it, they passed both the birthplace of St. Pope John Paul II and the site where St. Faustina’s convent stood when Jesus appeared to her and told her to promote his Divine Mercy.
I don’t know whether Bill drew the connection as he talked or I did as I listened, but this Truth of events was clear: more than 20 years before Auschwitz claimed its first victim, the person who would bring down the iron curtain of communism was born within its shadow; in the decade of the 1930s when communism and fascism thrived, God was giving a simple nun a devotion to remedy the spiritual effects of the culture of death of the 20th century. God did this quietly, within a few miles, in the often dismissed country of Poland.
God was in charge. God is in charge. It is hard to “bind the strong man,” as Jesus talks about in the Gospel today. But God is doing it.
Jesus Binds the Strong Man
In today’s Gospel Jesus is very busy. Chapter 3 of Mark begins with a note that so many people came to Jesus that he didn’t even have time to eat. He is proclaiming “The Kingdom of God is at hand” and proving it by healing many with diseases and by casting out demons. People want to be healed. They want to be set free. So they come to hear and be touched.
Enter the scribes and Pharisees. The battle of the next three years with them begins. It was a common belief in that time that greater devils could and would cast out lesser ones—just as stronger military or political leaders overtook their weaker opponents. The priests, scribes, and Pharisees were not healing people. They couldn’t do what Jesus was doing. AND Jesus was not following the normal path of a rabbi. He was speaking with authority. He was saying things like, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” He was not only curing, he was curing on the Sabbath.
He did not fit their picture of how God works.
So they concluded he must not be of God. He must be of Satan.
Jesus responds to their distress with logic:
“How can Satan drive out Satan?
If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.
And if a house is divided against itself,
that house will not be able to stand.
And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided,
he cannot stand;
that is the end of him.
He is saying in effect, “Think about it: you are seeing people healed, calmed, made normal. The signs of evil on them are gone. Would Satan do away with his ability to do harm? That would be working against himself. So, if I am doing that, how could I be working for Satan?”
Makes sense.
Jesus goes on to explain:
But no one can enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property
unless he first ties up the strong man.
Then he can plunder his house.
This is the deeper explanation. Jesus recognizes Satan can be powerful. Jesus is binding up the strong man, Satan. He is countering the effects of evil Satan works on ordinary folks: sickness, mental illness, bodies that don’t work, leprosy. In a real sense, Jesus is saying, “Satan is my real enemy.”
He has to do that first before he can truly lead people into the Kingdom of God.
Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit
But then Jesus says something that has always perplexed me:
Amen, I say to you, all sins and all blasphemies
that people utter will be forgiven them.
But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit
will never have forgiveness,
but is guilty of an everlasting sin.”
For they had said, “He has an unclean spirit.”
What is “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit?” According to the Catholic Catechism, it is to deliberately refuse to accept God’s mercy by refusing to repent. It is choosing to stick with the strong man, Satan, rather than choose to accept forgiveness and salvation. Such a hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss. (CCC 1864) To blaspheme is to show a lack of respect for God. As I understand this today, it means that blaspheming against the Holy Spirit is refusing to see and make use of the power of the Holy Spirit to draw a person to repentance. It is refusing to see and align ourselves with what God is doing in the world.
Binding the Strong Man Today
I circle back to Auschwitz, St. Pope John Paul II, and Sr. Faustina. Auschwitz stands out as a place and symbol of the “Culture of Death” which St. Pope John Paul II named as the zeitgeist of the 20th century. But that was not all St. Pope John Paul said about that century. He also said that the greatest sin of the 20th century was the sin of refusing to see sin.
You can’t turn from wrong until and unless you see it is wrong. Sometimes you dare not see the wrong, especially sin in yourself, unless you ALSO have an understanding of the great Mercy of God–unless you see what the Kingdom of God looks like and that God wants you to be a part of it.
God’s mercy is endless—if we turn from sin and to him. Satan’s power for evil is relentless—unless we turn from sin and to God. Quietly, in two very ordinary communities, in 1920 and through the 1930s, God was in charge. He was proclaiming the “Kingdom of God is at hand” JUST AS MUCH as he was speaking the same message in the synagogues and around the wells of Galilee. God was binding up the strong man in the first century….and in the 20th…and today.
Have no fear. Our God is here.
Prayer:
Lord, let me always remember and recognize you are here, today, in this world, in my little corner of the world. Every time I believe and follow you I proclaim your kingdom. I, too, bind up the strong man. I listen to and obey the Holy Spirit. Help me to do my part to follow you and bind evil in how I spend my time today. Give me the grace ALWAYS to believe your goodness can and will overcome evil–if we simply let ourselves be drawn to you, to mercy—while turning away from sin. Draw me close, Lord. ALWAYS.
