Fill Your Soul
Oct. 13: Friday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
Today’s Magnificat says: “The most difficult part of ongoing conversion is admitting that we really are sinners and allowing God to see and forgive us as we are, with all our weaknesses showing, especially the ones over which we seem to have no control.”
Or, if you prefer meme format—
Reading I
Jl 1:13-15; 2:1-2
Gird yourselves and weep, O priests!
wail, O ministers of the altar!
Come, spend the night in sackcloth,
O ministers of my God!
The house of your God is deprived
of offering and libation.
Proclaim a fast,
call an assembly;
Gather the elders,
all who dwell in the land,
Into the house of the LORD, your God,
and cry to the LORD!Alas, the day!
for near is the day of the LORD,
and it comes as ruin from the Almighty.Blow the trumpet in Zion,
sound the alarm on my holy mountain!
Let all who dwell in the land tremble,
for the day of the LORD is coming;
Yes, it is near, a day of darkness and of gloom,
a day of clouds and somberness!
Like dawn spreading over the mountains,
a people numerous and mighty!
Their like has not been from of old,
nor will it be after them,
even to the years of distant generations.
“The Day of the Lord” is usually a good thing, but not here. Here, the Lord plans on punishing Israel. But that’s not the end of the story. (It never is.)
Seeing disaster coming, Joel warns the priests to declare a fast and wear sackcloth. They need to start atoning now, not after disaster befalls them.
Responsorial Psalm
9:2-3, 6 and 16, 8-9
R. The Lord will judge the world with justice.
I will give thanks to you, O LORD, with all my heart;
I will declare all your wondrous deeds.
I will be glad and exult in you;
I will sing praise to your name, Most High.
R. The Lord will judge the world with justice.
You rebuked the nations and destroyed the wicked;
their name you blotted out forever and ever.
The nations are sunk in the pit they have made;
in the snare they set, their foot is caught.
R. The Lord will judge the world with justice.
But the LORD sits enthroned forever;
he has set up his throne for judgment.
He judges the world with justice;
he governs the peoples with equity.
R. The Lord will judge the world with justice.
When God punishes, it’s not simply justice. He wants to shake us from our complacency, to recognize that we’ve done wrong. We made the snare that we’re now trapped in.
Alleluia
Jn 12:31b-32
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The prince of this world will now be cast out,
and when I am lifted up from the earth
I will draw all to myself, says the Lord.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The “prince of this world” is Satan; Jesus is the king of heaven. Which is why he has the authority to do what we see in the Gospel—
Gospel
Lk 11:15-26
When Jesus had driven out a demon, some of the crowd said: “By the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he drives out demons.”
Others, to test him, asked him for a sign from heaven. But he knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste and house will fall against house. And if Satan is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that it is by Beelzebul that I drive out demons. If I, then, drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own people drive them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the finger of God that I drive out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you. When a strong man fully armed guards his palace, his possessions are safe. But when one stronger than he attacks and overcomes him, he takes away the armor on which he relied and distributes the spoils. Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
“When an unclean spirit goes out of someone, it roams through arid regions searching for rest but, finding none, it says, ‘I shall return to my home from which I came.’ But upon returning, it finds it swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and brings back seven other spirits more wicked than itself who move in and dwell there, and the last condition of that man is worse than the first.”
Jesus expels the demons,1 but that’s, once again, not the end of the story. When God blesses us, we can’t just move on with our lives, like we deserve it, like we earned it. That kind of pride leaves an emptiness in our soul.
We need to fill it up, to keep the demons out. And the only thing that does the trick, the only thing that’s big enough to fill your entire soul, is God.
On a related note, I was planning on going to see the new Exorcist movie, until I found out there’s only one priest, who’s in the movie for like five minutes, and dies five minutes into the exorcism. Did the filmmakers not know what an exorcist is?
