NOTES for Mar 1:23-28

²³And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out,

²⁴Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God.

²⁵And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him.

²⁶And when the unclean spirit had torn him, and cried with a loud voice, he came out of him.

²⁷And they were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned among themselves, saying, What thing is this? what new doctrine is this? for with authority commandeth he even the unclean spirits, and they do obey him.

²⁸And immediately his fame spread abroad throughout all the region round about Galilee.

What is this "unclean spirit"? This question often gives us no peace. Often the question of fighting the unclean spirit becomes the central point of spiritual books and of spiritual life as a whole. For many people today, when the traditions of ritual purity regulated by the book of Leviticus have receded into the distant past - and that is the book with the highest concentration of the word "unclean" in the whole Bible - the fear of being defiled has not disappeared at all; it has simply shifted from certain concrete things to an unclean spirit understood in some particular way.

And this is a very dangerous path. Because the center of our life should be not the struggle against the unclean spirit, but Christ. This may be the most important seed of meaning that today's reading gives us. The mere appearance of Christ in our life is enough for the unclean spirit to "cry out with a loud voice and come out" of us. We only need truly to let Christ into our life, and this is possible only through reading and prayerful meditation on the Word of God.

But how often one sees a person who, instead, plunges into reading penitential canons and prayers from a very particular Byzantine monastic tradition, for which we are, of course, endlessly grateful because of its amazing example of communion with God, but which cannot be copied mechanically for our own communion with God, because our life is completely different, and simply because communion is a living, dynamic process that accepts no ready-made patterns or formulas.

But when one sees such a person, it becomes very sad. His life has truly turned into a struggle, and even, it would seem, a struggle against evil; but what is the fruit of this struggle, and who is made better by it? Yet all that is needed is to let Christ into one's heart, to make Him the center of one's life, and the problem will resolve itself.

Yes, but evil exists; we must not close our eyes to it. We should not close them, but let us look straight at Christ, and at everything else with peripheral vision.

Other notes

For Mar 1:21-34

²¹And they went into Capernaum; and straightway on the sabbath day he entered into the synagogue, and taught.

²²And they were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes.

²³And there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out,

²⁴Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God.

²⁵And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him.

²⁶And when the unclean spirit had torn him, and cried with a loud voice, he came out of him.

²⁸And immediately his fame spread abroad throughout all the region round about Galilee.

²⁹And forthwith, when they were come out of the synagogue, they entered into the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.

³⁰But Simon's wife's mother lay sick of a fever, and anon they tell him of her.

³¹And he came and took her by the hand, and lifted her up; and immediately the fever left her, and she ministered unto them.

³²And at even, when the sun did set, they brought unto him all that were diseased, and them that were possessed with devils.

³³And all the city was gathered together at the door.

³⁴And he healed many that were sick of divers diseases, and cast out many devils; and suffered not the devils to speak, because they knew him.

In describing the events of the Savior's earthly ministry, Mark is very restrained and sparing with details. The preaching in Capernaum, the healing of a possessed man, the healing of... Read more

In describing the events of the Savior's earthly ministry, Mark is very restrained and sparing with details. The preaching in Capernaum, the healing of a possessed man, and the healing of Peter's mother-in-law follow one after another; the scenes change as in a kaleidoscope. This flickering of events is a feature of the author's perception. It happens, and if not everyone, then many people know this experience. As a rule something similar occurs when a person inwardly distances himself from what is happening.

For example, he goes through some event that is very important for him, and its result is a special inner state that takes in the whole person and creates around him a kind of shell through which he interacts with the surrounding world. The shell may be absolutely transparent, but it almost always becomes a kind of lens that changes the person's perception of what is happening outside. Such a shell is in itself a psychological structure, but its origin can be very different, from purely physiological to spiritual. Any contact with spiritual reality changes a person's perception, at least for the duration of the contact, and sometimes for a much longer time.

Most often the change has to do with the scale and speed of events in the outer world: they seem to move farther away, the flow of time that contains them speeds up, and that very kaleidoscope effect appears. At the same time, if the psychological shell that produces this effect has a spiritual origin, if it is connected with spiritual processes in which the person is caught up, it also functions as a kind of filter, singling out in the swiftly running stream the events that are related to the spiritual process that produced the shell.

In this way, from the stream of events those are singled out that are connected with a person's spiritual state; he begins to see more clearly what corresponds to his state. A person who has experienced a revelation of the Kingdom can in this way see the stream of events both in the present and in the past, insofar as the past has been preserved in his memory. This is how the evangelist sees events: for him, after all, the meeting with Christ became a revelation of the Kingdom, and he experiences the Kingdom as the reality that changes his perception of present events and of past ones, as far as he remembers them.

For Mar 1:16-45

¹⁶Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.

¹⁷And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men.

¹⁸And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him.

¹⁹And when he had gone a little further thence, he saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the ship mending their nets.

²⁰And straightway he called them: and they left their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, and went after him.