NOTES for Mar 9:14-29

Today's passage brings us back again to the theme of healings, and this time it again concerns the healing of a demon-possessed man. But now the healing of the demon-possessed man by Jesus Himself is preceded by an unsuccessful attempt made by the apostles (v. 18). In addition, the text contains a brief but meaningful dialogue about faith and unbelief (vv. 23-24). At first glance, the connection is not completely clear: after all, even Gentiles sometimes received healing, as happened with the Syrophoenician woman mentioned in this same Gospel (Mark 7:25-30). But much here becomes clearer if we consider the meaning of the word "faith." In modern religious language, faith often means conviction that certain opinions or ideas about God, the human person, spiritual life, and other religiously important matters are correct. Meanwhile, both the Hebrew word usually translated into Russian as "faith" and the corresponding Greek word used by the evangelist mean not so much faith as conviction, but faithfulness and trust toward the one to whom such faithfulness has been promised. Faithfulness and trust were the foundation of the relationship between Jesus and all those whom He met during His earthly ministry. If trust did not arise from the beginning between Him and those with whom He interacted, further interaction became impossible, just as it did in cases when a person who had once trusted Jesus then betrayed Him for some reason. But if a relationship was not established or was broken, then the Kingdom of God was closed to that person, for it is inseparable from the person of Jesus Himself; in that case, there could be no question of healing either. Such a person could still keep his religious convictions, but convictions and views by themselves cannot open the Kingdom to anyone. Conversely, trust in Jesus opens it even to a Gentile who, like the Syrophoenician woman who came to Him, may have had no carefully developed religious worldview at all. What matters to Jesus, it appears, is personal relationship with a particular person, or its absence, more than that person's worldview.

The episode of healing the possessed man, of freeing him from the power of dark forces, is remarkable for a detail to which the evangelist pays special attention. He writes that Jesus' disciples could not drive the demon out of the man possessed by it, and that only the Savior Himself succeeded. His words about the faithless generation, or "race," are often understood as addressed to the possessed man's relatives, first of all to his father, who had brought his son to Jesus' disciples.

Yet the question of the addressee of these words remains open. They could equally have been addressed to the disciples, who could not do what they had already had to do more than once, at least during the mission on which their Teacher had once sent them. Then, during that mission, they had had to drive out demons and free possessed people from the power of dark forces. Perhaps this is precisely why the possessed man's father turns to them: reports of healings performed by the disciples of this mysterious Man had most likely reached him.

It turned out, however, that even the disciples were not as strong as people said, and then all that remained was to turn to their Teacher. If even He could not help, then the case was hopeless. Jesus, of course, succeeds, and He pronounces those very words about the faithless generation. Later the disciples ask Him: why did it not work for us? The question was reasonable. They remembered that it had worked before, and they must have perceived their failure as an annoying mistake whose cause they needed to learn in order to avoid such errors in the future. Jesus answers by speaking about prayer, without which nothing will work.

In later editions of the Gospel text, a mention of fasting is added to prayer; it is absent from the earlier editions. But this addition, which probably existed originally as a marginal note, changes nothing essential, since fasting has meaning only when it contributes to intensified prayer. The meaning of the answer is clear: the disciples' main mistake was that they decided they had already achieved something, received something, acquired some new quality of spiritual life that was now inalienable. Jesus tells them this is not so, that all their achievements are possible only in the context of continuous spiritual movement connected with continuous prayer; only then are miracles, healings, and the casting out of evil spirits possible.

Once a person stops spiritually and falls out of this spiritual movement, he loses everything and becomes completely powerless, as the disciples were before the possessed man. This is no surprise: miracles and healings are possible only by the power of the Kingdom and its breath, and they exist only in continuous movement, which in turn is possible only with continuous conscious relationships with Christ. It is no accident that Jesus speaks of a faithless generation, for precisely such relationships are called faith, and this is what the disciples lacked.

Having seen the glory of the transfigured Jesus, the disciples “come down from heaven to earth,” both literally and figuratively. They see the helplessness of their brothers, who are unable to help the unfortunate young man; they see how lack of faith overcomes them and the boy's father more powerfully than any demon. Faith truly is a gift: it cannot be accumulated, it can be lost in an instant, and it may fail us at the most important moment of our lives. Christ's voice sounds almost despairing: “If you can believe even a little...” But even when not even “a little” faith remains, Christ does not disappear. He is an objective reality, far more real than all our moments of darkness. And so we can always cry out to Him: help me; I cannot believe, I do not know how—but You are near, You love me, and You can help.

In the story of the healing of the epileptic boy, the word "unbelief" is heard twice, so that it becomes a troubling refrain, simply the dominant note of the story. Jesus seems to address these words to everyone, not specifically to the boy's father, but still he is the main person on whom the whole weight of these words falls. And the father humbly acknowledges unbelief in himself, though just think how hard that must have been for him. For us, words about unbelief sound like something ordinary. We have already lived through the postmodern era with Hermann Hesse's words that faith and doubt condition one another like inhaling and exhaling, but then "unbelief" sounded frightening.

The risen Christ "rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart" (Mark 16:14). The Lord Himself equates unbelief with hardness of heart. And it is even worse than hardness of heart, because the apostle Paul asks: "What agreement has Christ with Belial? Or what does a believer share with an unbeliever?" (2 Cor 6:15), that is, the faithful and the unfaithful differ as much as Christ and the devil. We must understand this and feel it in order to understand what the boy's father experienced, and what the disciples experienced, since these words were addressed to them too. For we have become used to an educated tolerance of belief, and in recent years in our country people have even begun to respect atheists in a special way, as those who have not joined the majority, the crowd, the mass.

But "if we are faithless, He remains faithful" (2 Tim 2:13). Therefore the healing takes place. These words draw attention to themselves: "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. After all, Christ did not teach them medicine or magic, and everyone who heard these words understood that they had tried to drive it out by prayer. But He very simply, and in a way that allowed no objection, made them understand that not every prayer can be called prayer.

The ancient Christians, when compiling the order of church readings, most likely assigned today's passage from the Gospel of Mark to this Sunday of Great Lent because of Christ's words: "This kind is driven out only by prayer and fasting". From these words of the Savior the conclusion suggests itself that prayer and fasting are not merely important, but at times irreplaceable means of a person's spiritual life. At the same time, of course, it must be kept in mind that the word "fasting" (as in the analogous phrase in the Gospel of Matthew) is a comparatively late Byzantine insertion here, and in the original the evangelist Mark most probably wrote, "this kind cannot come out by anything except prayer."

Nevertheless, the question of why one cannot make do in spiritual life with something more convenient seems quite natural at first glance. Yet Christ's words set every accent precisely, for without prayer you can engage in moral self-improvement or charity, but that will hardly be spiritual life.

But in the evangelist Mark's account there are words that may be no less important for us in our relationship with God. These are the words of the father of the possessed boy: "I believe, Lord; help my unbelief." None of us would dare say that he believes "wholly and completely." The constant movement from trust toward confidence and hope by accumulating the experience of faith is a natural and, I dare say, necessary part of spiritual life. And in this it is very important for us to know that we can choose not to hide unbelief, shamefully pretending to be some hypothetical confident person. This man's example says that we can bring our weakness in faith to Christ and find help and strengthening in Him Himself.

Today we read some of Christ's most difficult words, words that trouble the reader: "O faithless generation! How long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?" A faithless generation is not about traitors, but about unbelieving and unsure people. About minds and hearts that, as soon as they take up a task, are already convinced that it cannot be done. About those who hide their weakness, coldness, and laziness behind constant accusation, criticism, and reproach. About those who cannot acknowledge their weakness and blindness and entrust themselves to people and to God. About those who have lost their connection with God and are always in depression and a bad mood.

In such a state, few people can even recognize this condition in themselves. But one of those struck by such despondency cried out: "I believe, Lord! Help my unbelief." He saw in Christ the One who has power, the only One who can help. And his "I believe!" is the words of a person who, in his suffering, seeks and finds support in Christ's eyes, words, and actions. And he knows that he asks Him to help because he knows no other way. He sees in his soul the absence of faith and trust. And he does not want to be an intermediary; he cannot stand on his own. But he asks not for himself, but for another.

And Christ heals the demon-possessed man at his request. And then He says that this kind is cast out by fasting and prayer. Here He is speaking about how to acquire faith, not about why the disciples were unable to heal.

Jesus’ disciples do not understand what He tells them about His resurrection. Traditional ideas about resurrection envisaged only the general resurrection on the day of Judgment, which in the minds of Jews in the Gospel era had most likely already come to coincide with the day of the Messiah’s coming and the triumph of the messianic Kingdom.

The apostles could not understand how the Messiah could rise before everyone else, any more than they could understand why He had to die at all: the messianic expectations traditional at that time envisaged nothing of the kind. According to those same traditional messianic expectations, shortly before the day of Judgment and the Messiah’s coming, the prophet Elijah was to descend from heaven. A tradition based on the testimony of Holy Scripture held that he had not died but had been taken alive into heaven. These traditional ideas were the reason for the apostles’ questions and bewilderment.

Jesus answers them rather unexpectedly. He does not reject the tradition about Elijah, but reinterprets it from a quite unexpected perspective. Jesus says that Elijah has already come but was not recognized, alluding to John the Baptist. This would seem to be an obvious allegory. Yet matters are not so simple, for in this case the allegory rests on a reality connected with the spiritual integrity and continuity of Tradition. Of course, Elijah could not be expected to return in the way the people expected him.

John the Baptist did precisely what the people expected the returning Elijah to do: he prepared them, as far as possible, for the Messiah’s coming. Of course, the Messiah and the Kingdom to which he bore witness were not those that corresponded to popular expectations.

Jesus Himself corresponded so little to those expectations that for quite a long time He even had to conceal His messiahship. The main purpose of His ministry was to bring as many people as possible into the Kingdom He had brought into the world: a Kingdom that, contrary to popular expectations, proved, in His own words, to be “a Kingdom not of this world.”

Once again we read that the Son of Man must suffer and be humiliated, and rise on the third day. The cycle of church readings is scarcely offering us precisely these passages now "by chance." The Lord Himself speaks of His Passion: "For this hour I came." The meaning and purpose of the Savior's birth in Bethlehem is not to make our life a little easier and more pleasant. He comes in order to share with us and destroy our death.

That is why the celebration of the Nativity has, since ancient times, had a number of features in the Eastern Church that bring it close to Pascha. In a certain sense, the whole life of Christ from the very beginning was the way of the Cross and Resurrection. And as we are moved and rejoice in Christ the Infant, we must not forget this.