The Gospel story is heartbreaking. We parents quickly understand the feelings of the father of this poor young boy, so afflicted by a spirit that made him jump into fire and water. And we can understand the agony of the father who had tried everything -- even Jesus’ disciples -- but no one could do a thing.
When Jesus heard about this, He said something puzzling: “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?”
This expression of seeming frustration express God’s longsuffering waiting upon humanity to become what it was created to be. God has been waiting, as the Father in the parable of the Prodigal Son, ever since the Fall, for humanity to come back into communion with Him.
God is always looking for faith, for belief.
He is looking for people who believe. He is looking for people who will commune with Him in a full, openhearted relationship … people who will let their eyes and ears be opened wide, to see and hear things as they really are, both physically and spiritually.
That is why He said this to the poor, distraught father: “All things are possible to him who believes.” With even the smallest amount of faith, even the size of a mustard seed, Jesus said that we could move mountains. And here in front of Jesus was the boy attacked and infected by a demon: that sure was a mountain much larger than Mt Hermon near by, or even Mt Everest.
Then the father said something that has been remembered down through the ages. It is one of the great statements of faith. It’s up there with Mary saying, “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord, be it unto me according to your word” (Luke 1.38). Or Peter, who said “I know You are the Christ, Son of the Living God” (Mark 8.16).
What the poor father said was this: “I believe … help Thou mine unbelief!”
What a statement! It says two things. The first is a courageous statement of trust, of recognition of Christ standing before him as the Truth, as Divine Love, as the Son of God.
But it is also a confession that one’s faith is weak in a world full of doubt. “Help me, Jesus, help me to have more faith, to better believe. You said that even just a little faith can move mountains. Then help me to believe that my little boy, so wounded by demons, can be made well.”
You have heard the end of the story. Jesus did what the disciples could not do. He commanded the “deaf and dumb spirit” to leave the little boy.
There are two important things about this. First, Jesus called the spirit “deaf and dumb.” This is true of all demons. They are completely deaf to the Word of God, they cannot hear and respond to Jesus’s call to Divine love, peace, and beauty. They are dumb, meaning that that they cannot speak and confess that Jesus is the Son of God, Lord of all.
The second thing is more important. Jesus was able to command the demon to leave not because of His divine power. Remember that Jesus completely submerged His divine nature under His humanity when He was born to Mary.
No, Jesus made the demon leave by His perfect human nature. At His Baptism, He was completely deified by the Holy Spirit. And in this perfect, fully deified human nature, He commanded the demon to leave.
That is important to remember when we hear Jesus’ response to the disciples, who asked Him why they couldn’t succeed. He said, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.”
It is this statement that is the reason why this Gospel is read on the fourth Sunday of Lent, which is today. If we meditate on these words, we begin to understand that there really is a groth or development of our faith. We are called here to always strive toward greater faith, and we do this through prayer. St John Climacus described this constant striving toward greater faith as a “ladder.” His very name testifies to this: “Climakos” is simply Greek for “ladder.”
It is in prayer that Christ is intimately present to us. If we constantly open our hearts to Him and call upon His Name, He is really there. And as the Holy Spirit brings Christ to our hearts, just as He overshadowed Mary and she conceived Christ in her womb, so also are we to bear Christ more and more deeply.
If we say “Yes, Lord, come, marana tha!” then the Holy Spirit will open our eyes and ears. He will work more powerfully through us. He will glorify Christ through our speech and action. He will open our ears to the leading of Christ.
In our Epistle Reading today, St Paul says in this life that “God has set a hope before us.” This is the same hope that the distraught father had, when he turned to Jesus in desperation. St Paul describes the mystical presence of Jesus, brought to our hearts by the Holy Spirit, as a “hope that enters into the inner shrine behind the curtain.”
What St Paul is describing here is the fact that Jesus has ascended into heaven, as the “forerunner on our behalf,” where He is now King of humanity, and sits at the right hand of the Father. There, He is interceding for us, with the Holy Spirit, to the Father.
Every good thing that we experience, every gift that we receive, is an answer by the Father to the intercessions of His Son.
Admittedly, this is hard to see in the here and now. There is this coronavirus pandemic that we are now experiencing. We are all quarantined, and the future is not at all certain. We might become anxious and worried about whether it is going to come like a plague into our area. We worry about our family and friends in places where the virus is afflicting thousands and thousands of people.
Here, we need to imagine ourselves in the place of the father with the demon-possessed boy. We are faced with a great peril. And we turn to Jesus in prayer. We cry to Him, Who is both enthroned in heaven and who is mystically present in the Spirit … we cry “I believe, help my unbelief.”
We trust Him as the King of all humanity and all creation. We recognize Him as the One Who said, “All authority has been given to Me” (Matthew 28.18), right before He ascended into heaven
And if we pray long enough and hard enough, we begin to see, in our hearts, little by little, the love and peace of Christ.
Even in a time of pandemic. Even here. Even now.
Yesterday, I was reading some old English poetry, and I came across these lines from Sidney Godolphin, who was a poet from the 1600’s. I would like to share with you his final verse from his poem, “Lord when the wise men came from Far”:
When then our sorrows we apply
To our own wants and poverty,
When we look up in all distress
And our own misery confess
Sending both thanks and prayers above
Then though we do not know …
We love.
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