MARK'S GOSPEL: The Power and Authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ!

Sermon by Rev. John Paul Shea

4th  Sunday in Ordinary Time, Feb 1, 2015

Saints Peter & Paul Parish, Tucson, AZ

Fr. J.P. Shea 

"Throwing him into convulsions, the unclean spirit cried out with a loud voice and came out of him. They were all amazed, so that they debated among themselves, saying, 'What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey Him.'" (Mark 1:26-27)

Today’s readings call us to acknowledge the power and authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

We heard in last week’s Gospel that our Lord began his ministry. He came proclaiming the Good News, saying, "The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” (Mark 1:15) Our Lord then chose His 12 disciples whom He would use to proclaim His message of salvation.

Today’s Gospel is the very next scene after last week’s reading. While last week’s gospel emphasized the proclamation of the kingdom of heaven, today’s passage emphasizes the initiation of Our Lord’s kingdom. 

 We are reminded that Our Lord has come to initiate His authority and power over the darkness that has and is captivating our world. In today’s Gospel, Jesus heals a man with an unclean spirit. 

After choosing His disciples Our Lord goes into Capernaum where we hear that He teaches with great authority. "The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority not as the scribes." (Mark 1:22) 

In the synagogue is a man who is possessed by an unclean spirit. He cries out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”And Jesus rebukes the spirit and it comes out of the man.

My brothers and sisters, today’s reading reminds us that the kingdom of God has come upon us and it has come through the power and authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ! 

Ever since the fall of humanity, our world has been under the influence of the evil one, and today’s Gospel reminds us that our Lord has come to break this power. 

Our Lord has come to conquer the powers and influence of the devil so that we can be led in the path of salvation. He has come to battle the spiritual dysfunction that is in each and every one of us -- in order to lead us into eternal life.

Each one of us has been baptized. Yet, our baptism does not free us from the influences of the evil spirits that surround us. Baptism gives us grace to be children of God, but we must accept this grace. We must continually make an effort to live out our baptismal call by renouncing sin. We must continually call upon the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the Holy One of God! 

There are many bad spirits roaming around today who seek to destroy souls. Spiritual possession as we see in today’s Gospel is rare, but unclean spirits are always at work to influence us. 

Bad spirits lead us to shame, fear, stubbornness, hardness of heart, and disordered and uncontrolled sexual appetites. There are demons of pride, demons of addiction, demons of lust… you name the sin or the temptation, and you can bet there is an unclean spirit involved.

If we allow these spirits into our lives they can easily take hold of our will. One example I will give is unclean spirits associated with  pornography. When we view pornography we invite dirty spirits into our lives, and it becomes difficult to get rid of them. These filthy images and their spirits come back. They haunt us. They tempt us! And they easily take control of our souls if we do not continually and frequently call upon the name of Our Lord Jesus. 

As Our Lord rebukes the evil spirit in today’s Gospel, we too need to rebuke the evil spirits that roam our society and world! To the evils of our culture we need to say, “Get behind me satan!”

We need to strive to keep our love pure and holy because evil spirits can ruin the lives of any soul that is lukewarm. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, and we need to treat them as such. If we darken our bodies on earth through immorality, how can we expect to have a holy and glorified body in heaven? 

We must persevere in prayer, go to frequent confession, and receive Our Lord in the Eucharist. These are gifts that Our Lord has given to our Church to fight against evil until Our Lord comes again!

We should have our homes blessed with holy water and put blessed salt over our doors. We  should learn the Saint Michael prayer and say it daily. The devil is afraid of this prayer! In fact, the devil hates prayer. We should pray the Rosary. The Rosary is a weapon against evil.

My brothers and sisters, our world is in a spiritual battle, and this battle is rapidly intensifying in our lifetime.

It is a battle between the spirit of God and the spirit of the evil one. The spirit of evil was born into our world through original sin. But battle has already been won through Our Lord’s death on the cross. 

Yet, the struggle is not finished. Our Lord has handed on this striving to His Church until He comes again.

Until this day, may each one of us continually call upon the Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus. He alone has power and authority because he is the holy one of God. For He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.

Don't miss Lawrence Fox's post on WHO IS JESUS IN THE GOSPEL OF MARK?

Maybe you'd enjoy a poem by Susan Fox on the subject of  battling evil spirits? RED and GREEN: A Poem about Temptation

WHY JESUS CAME: Repent and Believe in the Good News

Sermon by Rev. John Paul Shea

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Jan. 25, 2014

Saints Peter & Paul Parish, Tucson, AZ

"Repent! And believe in the Gospel!" (Mark 1:15) 

Our Lord's ministry begins in today’s Gospel passage (Mark 1:14-20). These passages help us to reflect on the mission of our Lord Jesus Christ and His Church.

“After John had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God:

“This is the time of fulfillment.
The kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:14-15)

These three short sentences  were the first words that came out of our Lord’s mouth in Mark's Gospel. 

Therefore, these words -- highly significant in light of Our Lord's ministry -- emphasize His missionary statement, His purpose in coming to earth.  

Throughout the Gospels we hear that our Lord did many great things while He was on earth. He healed the sick… He showed love to the poor… He performed miracles… Yet, today’s Gospel passage reminds us that, although our Lord did many great acts of mercy, these acts were not the primary goal of our Lord’s mission. 

The healing and forgiveness that our Lord displayed on earth demonstrated who He is. It revealed that God had come among us. But the fundamental reason why our Lord came to earth was to lead souls to heaven, to free us from the slavery of sin! And He has handed on this mission to our Church until He comes again. 

My brothers and sisters, our Church was given to us by Christ in order to lead souls to salvation. This is why our Lord established His Church! We come to Mass to begin to live holy lives. 

The world will never understand us, because we are not a church of the world's values. This is why the world keeps trying to influence the Catholic Church toward immorality and lies.  We are a Church that follows the laws of God, and we stay true to the truth taught by the apostles of Jesus Christ. This is why our Church has unchanging doctrines. These are our treasures. These are the pearl of great price. 

Our Church is a Church of mercy because it leads people to the truth. If we want to receive salvation, this means that we have to make sacrifices on our part. We have to “deny ourselves” and take up our cross. 

Today the world's message is different. Our culture tells us to indulge, live as we desire, never deny ourselves.  Temptations are everywhere. Immodesty and sex appear on Twitter, television, and can even be seen from the highway because these images are plastered all over billboards. And the message is that these things are good: “Do whatever feels good!”

Avoid temptation. If you have strayed, reconcile with God. God showers His mercy on repentant sinners. Receive God’s love  with a contrite heart.

God is calling us to live His message of repentance. Don't close yourself off from Our Lord’s mercy by pride and arrogance, or by willingly persisting in sinful lifestyles. Our Lord’s mercy is poured abundantly into the lives of the pure of heart and the poor in spirit. His mercy is given to those who acknowledge their sins and come to Him. This is why our Lord has given us the Sacrament of Confession.

Sacrament of Confession 

Today’s first reading is from the Book of Jonah 3:1-5,10. As you may recall, Jonah was sent to preach the message of repentance to Nineveh. Nineveh was a large city that had become wicked. They had turned away from God, and God warned them that it would lead them to destruction. 

So we can learn from this reading that when whole societies  turns its back on God’s laws as we are seeing today, then widespread repentance is required to repair the damage that threatens as a consequence of our actions.  

Our world is in desperate need for repentance and forgiveness of sins. As in the City of Nineveh,  anger, violence, and immorality is taking its toll in the hearts and souls of multitudes of persons on this planet!  “When God saw by their actions how they  turned from their evil way, He (God) repented of the evil that he had threatened to do to them; he did not carry it out.” (Jonah 3:10)

This is the response our world needs today! In your hearts, put on sackcloth and ashes!  We must turn to the Lord with cries for pity! 

Ultimately, brothers and sisters, as Saint Paul tells us in the  second reading (1Cor 7:29-31), the world that we live in today is going to be purified. It will be changed. Saint Paul tells us, “The world in its present form is passing away." 

We will live in a new heaven and a new earth where there will be no sin and no death! This is what we are to prepare for now! “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

WESTERN PROGRESSIVE SOCIETY & ISLAM: The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend

by Lawrence Fox 

#JeSuisCharlie French support free speech after the murder of French
cartoonist Charlie Hebdo Jan 7, 2015 by Muslim fundamentalists.
His cartoons mocked the Prophet Mohammed

The manner in which Western Progressive Society responds to violence perpetuated in the name of the Prophet Mohammed, including the Jan.7, 2015 murder of a group of French cartoonists and the Nov. 13, 2015 murder of 129 in Paris, is tragically logical.

I say logical since educational, journalistic, judicial, political and corporate entities within Western Progressive Society fundamentally adhere to the vile principal, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

This is not hard to grasp once a person steps back and views the ethical devolution of Western Society following the Reformation. After the Reformation came the Enlightenment, and the Age of Reason, which built the foundation of the French Revolution -- the purest expression of a progressive society undertaking “jihad” against Catholicism and everything Christian.

Then there came the gifts of Empiricism and German Idealism both contributing to the madness known as dialectical materialism. She is the Lady who seduced modern man into embracing with gusto the progressive movements of Nazism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, Liberation Theology, and the modern pro-abortion movement.

All of these movements contributed to the slaughter of 80 to 100 million people of faith around world; a good percentage of them being Christians, as well as millions of unborn children.

Hate creates  strange bedfellows. I can remember my years at University of California, Berkeley, listening to various “progressives” speaking about their hopes for the death of religion, the death of capitalism, the murder of unborn children, the death of the family, and the death of America and Israel.

It was amazing to see Muslims parading with lesbians, feminists, communists, and anarchists! I remember one time asking the Muslims, “What do Muslims have in common with the LGBT movement and the abortionist?” Their reply was, “We hate Western Society (Christianity and Capitalism) and especially America.” The enemy of my enemy is my friend. 

The progressive hatred for all expressions of Judeo-Christian thought (especially Catholicism) has embedded itself so deeply within the fabric of Western Society that any verbal or written resistance to the “progressive” stance is now “offensive hate speech.”

Object to the murder of an unborn child, sodomy, prostitution, contraception, assisted suicide, the destruction of human embryos for science, children undergoing sex change, or the adoption of children by same sex parents, and you have now fallen into the cesspool of intolerance.

Your offensive hate speech merits lost business opportunities, prison, elimination of your passport, and subjects you to being shouted out on campuses, ridiculed by the press, and marginalized by the courts.

And yet the butchering of Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and moderate Muslims in numerous countries (Mali, Libya, Egypt, Nigeria, Sudan, Malaysia, Palestine, Israel, Indonesia, Pakistan, China, Syria, Lebanon, Armenia, Iraq, East Timor, Chechnya, North Korea, India, Thailand, and Sri Lanka) is not offensive in the Western mind.

In the Progressive West, persons who adhere literally to the numerous chapters in the Quran, which promote violence as the will of Allah, are conveniently considered not to be Muslims, but “extremists,” who have co-opted the religion of peace. This peaceful religion – by the way -- has been embroiled in a 1300-year civil war between Sunnis and Shiite Muslims -- with no end in sight.

The attitude within Islam towards Christianity and Judaism has never been favorable and today it is most lamentable. Regarding non-Muslims, the Quran says, “The most implacable of men in the enmity to the faithful (Muslim) are the Jews and the pagans and the nearest affection to them are those who say, ‘We are Christians.’” (Surah 5:82) Countries dominated by Islamic culture tolerate the execution, persecution, imprisonment, and destruction of Jewish and Christian structures based upon a literal reading of the Quran. “O Believers! Take not the Jews or Christians as friends. They are but one another’s friends.” (Surah 5: 56)

“There are many non-violent Muslims,” constitutes the pitiful polemics from the mouths of Western leaders as if that contributes to honest dialogue with another re-emerging culture of death, Islam itself. This only demonstrates to me that an ideological exchange exists between Western Progressive Society, Nazism, Communism, and Jihadist Islam.

The jihadists are only doing what the spiritual descendants of the French Revolution, Nazism and Communism wish they could continue if they were not too busy self-abusing themselves with drugs, abortion, contraception, suicide, trans-gendering, pornography and masturbation, and forms of asphyxiated sex.

Western Society deems it hate speech when anyone seeks to hold the foundations of Islam accountable for the butchery which began in the Seventh Century – where its adherents wiped out whole communities of Coptic, Syrian, Armenian, Malabar, Greek and Latin Rite Christians.

In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI -- speaking at Regensburg, Germany -- simply called Islam and Western Society to embrace both “faith and reason” as a means overcoming fideism (faith apart from reason), fanaticism, and ethical suicide.

The best that Western Society could do was mock him and blame him for offending Islam and therefore make him guilty of the subsequent assassination of Christians in Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Egypt.

As long as Islamic jihadists continue to butcher Christians and Western Society is willing to consider this as tolerable “collateral damage,” it will cling to President George W. Bush’s Doctrine, “That Islam is a religion of peace which was been hijacked by bad non-Muslims” and Barack Obama’s self-absorbed mantra, “The future must not belong to those who offend the Prophet.”

Obama then drops drone missiles on Muslims who he identifies as not being Muslim because they view Obama’s marriage to a “so-called Christian woman” to be an offense against Mohammed. And so the White House and the U.S State Department became little more than brothels visited by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Yes, these "honest" Muslims were the ones behind the assassination of Anwar Sadat, who dared to make peace with Israel.

The tragedy of the logic continues. The American government makes deals with Al-Qaeda jihadist Muslims in Syria, who are fighting against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a group that the White House conveniently defines as non-Muslim. The White House crawls into bed with Iraqi Shiite Muslims, who hate Iraqi Sunni Muslims. The Iraqi Shiite Muslims turn around and make deals with Shiite Muslims in Iran that seek to nuke Israel off the map.

Western leaders protest “ho hum” when Hamas Muslims sends rockets into Israel. But when Israel retaliates by bombing rocket launcher sites where Hamas has conveniently stuffed Christian women and children, the West protests “those dirty Jews.”  When Boko Haram burns alive and enslaves Christians in Nigeria, Western Society does nothing except to send out meaningless hashtags, “Bring back our girls.” 

It is all very discouraging to say the least, since there is not even an attempt to honestly dialogue with Islam and those elements supporting the Quran from which such vile behavior flows. But how can the West respond to such barbarism, while it defends the legal practice of tearing apart the limbs of fully developed babies in their mother’s wombs and identifies such terror as “Western Progressive Choice.” 

There is not a thread of hope that things will get better as long as the ideologies, which presently govern Western Society, remain in the majority. 

As such,

Dear Christians, Jews, Animists, and moderate Muslims in Libya, Egypt, Nigeria, Sudan, Malaysia, Palestine, Israel, Indonesia, Pakistan, China, Syria, Lebanon, Armenia, Iraq, East Timor, Chechnya, North Korea, Thailand, and Sri Lanka, 

Please know that apart from a few brave men in the United States and the Australian Military, you need to fend for yourself. By the way, Bill and Melinda Gates want to send you contraception and the morning after pills to comfort you in your loss because pregnancy is the root of your problems.  

Signed,

Western Society, United Nations, and NATO

P.S. Most of us are running extremely high deficits and were hoping that you would please send us money. It would be much appreciated. 

More on the Religion of Peace from Lawrence Fox:

GLORY OF ISLAM: Putting the Beheadings, Crucifixions and Rape into the Context of the Quran

LAMENT FOR WESTERN MAN

GOD PITCHED HIS TENT AMONG MEN: The Manner of Christian versus Muslim Prayer

THE MIND OF ISLAM: On Family Life, the Messiah and How to Treat Non-Muslims