NOTES for Mar 9:17-31

In the account of the healing of the epileptic boy, the word “unbelief” is heard twice, becoming an alarming refrain, quite simply the dominant theme of the story. Jesus seems to address these words to everyone, not specifically to the boy’s father, yet he is still the principal person upon whom their full weight falls. The father humbly acknowledges unbelief in himself, although one need only imagine how difficult this was for him. To us, words about unbelief sound ordinary. We have already lived through the postmodern era, with Hermann Hesse’s words that faith and doubt condition one another like breathing in and breathing out, but at that time “unbelief” sounded terrifying. The risen Christ “rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart” (Mk 16:14). The Lord Himself equates unbelief with hardness of heart. It is even worse than hardness of heart, for the apostle Paul asks: “What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what does a believer share with an unbeliever?” (2 Cor 6:15)—that is, the believer and the unbeliever differ as much as Christ and the devil. We must understand and feel this in order to understand what the boy’s father and the disciples, to whom these words were also addressed, experienced. For we are accustomed to the intelligentsia’s religious tolerance, and in recent years in our country we have even begun to respect atheists in a special way as people who have not joined the majority, the crowd, the mass. But “if we are faithless, He remains faithful” (2 Tim 2:13). This is why the healing takes place. The following words draw attention: “And He said to them: this kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.” It is unclear what else they could have tried to use to drive it out. Christ had taught them neither medicine nor magic, and everyone who heard these words understood that they had indeed tried to drive it out by prayer. Yet in a very simple and at the same time unanswerable way, He made them understand that not every prayer can be called prayer.