Breaking the Word

3^rd Week in Ordinary Time, Saturday – 29^th January 2022 — Gospel: Mark 4,35-41

Power of the two worlds

Mark’s account of the boat being tossed in the sea is commonly referred to as the miracle of the calming of the Storm. There are many elements in this story that have parallels and verbatim with the story of the cleansing of the unclean spirit (1,21-28). Jesus’ rebuking the spirit and the command to “be silent” in 1,25 are parallel to Jesus’ rebuke of the wind and the command to “be still” in 4,39. The response of the crowd in 1,27, “What is this … he commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him,” is parallel to the response of the disciples in 4,41, “who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” These similarities suggest that, for the evangelist who formulated and transmitted these stories for the early Christians, it means the exorcism and the stilling of the storm illustrate the same point: Jesus has power over both the natural world (winds and sea) and the supernatural world (demons).

3^rd Week in Ord. Time, Friday – 28^th January 2022 — Gospel: Mark 4,26-34

Perceiving Listener’s Capacity

In Mk 4,33 we find that Jesus did not speak to the people without a parable and He taught them as they were able to hear it. This means that there was a parabolic character in all of Jesus’ teaching; it’s a general practice and style of Jesus. At the same time, all of Jesus’ teaching involved the listener and it was listener who supplied the lesson to the teaching and not Jesus. The second half of the sentence indicates a freedom of choice that every listener was given at the time of Jesus. This is the true purpose of the parabolic teaching of Jesus. Jesus would never force them to accept his point of view. They were the ones to decide for or against. On the other hand, we also find that Jesus built upon their previous knowledge, permitting time for them to assimilate one lesson before giving them the next.  Conscious of his hearers’ capacity, Jesus did not flood them with more instruction than they could absorb (Jn 16,12;1 Cor 3,2; Heb 5,12).  He cautiously led them to a fuller understanding of the kingdom of heaven.