14th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Fr. Leo
The sentence that draws my attention in today’s passage from Mark’s gospel, which I think bears reflection is, “And they took offense at him.” Truly a sad moment when they close their hearts to Jesus and turn on him. We have to wonder why? And further, after acknowledging Jesus’ authority, in being astonished by his wisdom and witnessing his power, they cannot find it in their hearts to rejoice. Why?
When they realize Jesus is one of them they can’t accept the extraordinary in the ordinary because that is not how they conceived God would come into their lives. It wasn’t “their” way for God’s work. Resistant to change, rejection was their only option.
We can learn from this as the same dynamic continues to express itself in our church, society and our individual selves. This denial of soul happens when we view life in a modern, rationalist, and mechanical way. For example, let us look at how we as a society approach healing of the body. When we are ill, we go in for a test to diagnose what is wrong with our body as if it were a machine that needs to be tweaked. We are told we need to take a medication to help one of our organs function properly with the others.
While that approach deals with the disease, what about the “dis-ease” in our psyches that may be stressing our body into illness? Without doing soul work, we do not let all the energies shaped by our history come to light so that spiritual wisdom and power can heal the true source of our ills and not just its symptoms. We need to dream. We need to reflect on our dreams and the subtle movements in our hearts. Our souls need to be heard and followed.
As a church, this same dissociation can take place between religion and genuine spirituality. When law and doctrine become detached from the heart, they don’t allow for the spirit of the law, or the words around a spiritual reality to be felt and experienced. We are pulled away from our true inner soul to obey a truncated ‘religion’ that closes the door to the true wisdom and power of Christ.
Individually, we need to strive to live soulful lives. We need to seek and create beauty in our lives. Something a mechanist view of life rejects. The native place for God is in our ordinary lives. Lives lived with attention to the soul and the spirit that speaks within. We are not just external machines living in a complex society, we are complex people with souls that love and keep us connected to Spirit.
Enjoy a sunset, take a leisurely walk, smell the air and let yourself be reminded that life is about soul and that God lives in the simple things in an extraordinary way!