NOTES for Mar 1:21-34

Very often we completely forget that in Russian one of the days of the week, the sixth in order, and a day given to God are homonyms: words with different meanings but the same pronunciation. Both concepts are called by the same word, subbota. This does not mean that these two essentially different days must merge for us into the same day of the week. It merely shows that the Russian language is very young and that many words appeared in it only after the adoption of Christianity. Languages that arose before Christianity was adopted, or even before Christianity appeared, do not have this feature: the sixth day of the week is called by one word and the day given to God by another.

The Bible tells us briefly and clearly: “...the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.” In other words, Sabbath is not the name of a day but the substance of what happens on that day: one day out of seven is given to God. Christians, like Jews, give their Sabbath to their God, and this takes place on the seventh day of the week. In Russian, that day is called voskresenie, “resurrection” or Sunday. This is again a mark of the youth of our language, since languages that arose earlier contain no reminder of Christ’s Resurrection in the name of the seventh day.

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.

There is, of course, nothing surprising in the fact that the sick and the possessed long for healing and deliverance. Something else is interesting: exactly how the evangelist describes such events. He tells some of them in detail, for example the healing of Peter's mother-in-law; others he mentions briefly, as he mentioned the many healings Jesus performed in Capernaum. Of course, this difference could be explained in purely literary terms: by speaking of an event in detail, the evangelist thereby sets it apart, while in general terms he speaks of events that turn out to be a kind of background for the separate episodes. But in the Gospel there are no unimportant or insignificant parts; even the background matters here. And what first catches the eye in descriptions of such background events is the mass, the crowd, the multitude.

It is quite possible that all these healings did not happen at one single moment, that the brief mention of many healings is brief only in the evangelist's description, while in reality the healings described took more than one day. But even if that is so, the difference in how the events are described is still obvious: on the one hand, a single event; on the other, something mass-scale, where the individual person cannot be distinguished.

But perhaps the issue here is not literary composition alone. Perhaps it is the very nature of the Kingdom: the Kingdom in which there is no place for illness or possession, and therefore everyone it touches is delivered from both one and the other, if only he has even a drop of trust in the One who brought this Kingdom into the world. But deliverance from illness is only the first step. After that life begins, that new life in the Kingdom in which nothing simply happens by itself anymore, where one must serve so that this life becomes for the person who has shared in it not only an external fact, but also the inner content and meaning of his own existence.

And this is already a strictly individual and deeply personal process. Here it is not enough simply to come into contact with the Kingdom; what is needed is a spiritual process that cannot take place without the person's own conscious and purposeful participation. And while there are always many who want to be healed and freed from the power of dark forces, there are generally far fewer who make the effort to move forward on the spiritual path.

This is why, perhaps, there are not so many Christians among those healed by Jesus. Healing, after all, is only the beginning. It is a beginning that requires continuation. Otherwise the life of the Kingdom will never become reality for the one who has been healed.

The brief Gospel reading is a summary of what God chiefly does when He comes to people. Prayer, preaching, and immediate, prompt help in everything. The sick, the infirm, the demon-possessed - all come to Jesus for liberation. The city gathers at the house where He is staying because this encounter grants healing, the recovery of lost wholeness. There is no other way to receive it.

What happens after health, soundness of mind, and new life return? How do people behave when they receive what they wanted most? Some leave, some stay to watch what is happening, some follow Him everywhere. But Peter's mother-in-law immediately begins to serve the One who entered her house and, by touching her, healed her.

Today's Gospel reading is devoted to Jesus' confrontation with evil: possession and sickness. The world was created by God in wisdom and perfection; there was no place in it for death and disease. The Book of Revelation says that at the end of time death and disease will be conquered. Today's passage tells of the beginning of this battle. We see that Jesus does not remain indifferent to the fate of suffering people, but conquers sickness and frees a person from the power of dark forces.

The Kingdom of God and evil are incompatible. This excludes every defense of death and sickness as some kind of good that God brings upon people for their correction. God permits the existence of evil as a consequence of the sinfulness common to humanity, but He does not create evil; He conquers it. We too must take part in this victory if we want to be co-workers with Christ. The sickness and bondage of people are a task for us as well. We must "overcome evil with good": relieve the sufferings of our neighbors, free ourselves from the power of sin, and free the world from it.

Today we read in the Gospel of Mark about the calling of the disciples and their response to that calling. This is far from being about an ability for spontaneous actions: apparently, these four already knew Jesus. That is how John 1:35-51 can be understood. After all, we ourselves are not reading these lines for the first time. What is surprising here is something else: how briefly the evangelist speaks about it. Indeed, calling and conversion are only the very beginning of the way. The words and deeds of Jesus, the disciples' wavering and denial, and the joy of the Resurrection will be described in much greater detail. On the other hand, without this episode there would have been no whole Gospel. What would have happened if no one had followed Jesus?

In our time Christ's action in this world continues. And the disciples without whom nothing would have happened are, this time, us. Therefore today it is so important for us to realize once again that the Lord has called us to follow Him and to find in ourselves the courage to climb out of the boat and follow after Him.