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Commentary from
THE ANNOTATEDBOOK OF
COMMON
PRAYEREdited by JOHN HENRY BLUNT
Rivingtons, London, 1884
THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT
The dangerous sympathy which exists between human nature and evil is
set forth on this Sunday with fearful intensity of expression. Our
Lord had cast out another of those evil spirits which were permitted in
His time to exercise their utmost power over men, that His glory might
be shown in overcoming them; and some of those who witnessed the occurence,
finding no other way of explaining it, attributed it to "Beelzebub, the
prince of the devils." This foolish and wicked way of accounting
for the marvel our Lord met by two arguments. [1] Satan would not
act against himself; [2] If Satan cast out Satan, then "the children" of
the Jews, i.e. the Apostles, to whom "the very devils were subject" through
Christ's name, could only have cast them out by the same evil power.
In the parallel passage, Matt. 11:31, He also goes on to show how this
wicked accusation was in danger of becoming the unpardonable sin; the Jews,
in reality, calling the saving work of the Holy Spirit a "soul-destroying"
work, that of the Destroyer of souls. Then the Lord declared that
it is He alone Who can cast out Satan; He being stronger than the strong
Evil One. From His words we may deduce the truth that all driving
out of the Evil One is the work of Christ, as all sin is ultimately the
work of the Enemy. He is the Stronger than the strong Who drives
evil from our nature, by purifying that nature in His own holy and immaculate
Person; from each individual by the work of the same Person through the
grace given in sacraments: and His power extends over every form of Satan's
power, physical or mental infirmity, or spiritual disease. This personal
power of Christ is illustrated by the words of St. Paul, "O wretched man
that I am," through this power of Satan over me, "Who shall deliver me?"..."I
thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord."
After this comes that awful truth respecting repossession which illustrates
so fearfully the abiding sympathy of our nature with evil, and the intensification
of Satan's power through every unresisted submission to the influence of
it. This was spoken first of the generation of Jews among whom our
Lord had come, and has its application to later times in the falling away
of churches into heresy and worldliness. Satan was driven out from
every position which he had taken up as soon as Christ appeared for the
purpose of opposing him. But the sympathies of the nation were towards
evil, and after their rejection of Christ and His Apostles their spiritual
condition became far worse than it was even in our Lord's time when He
called them a "generation of vipers." The vanquished strong man returned,
and the horrors of sin among the Jews between our Lord's Ascension and
the final destruction of Jerusalem, --the hardness of heart, the blindness,
the cruelty, --were never exceeded. It is probable that the sway
of Mohametanism in the East and in India is a return of the "Strong man
armed," with "seven others more wicked than himself," to nations among
whom the Church had been received as a cleansing and garnishing power for
a time, but was afterwards rejected when the new unbelief aroused old sympathies
with evil.
The application of the same truth to individuals is obvious. The
sense of Satan's power was so strong in the early Church as to lead it
to make exorcism an ivariable preliminary of baptism. Every act of
penitence is a kind of exorcism, and every Absolution is the conquest of
Satan by Christ. But unless the swept and garnished soul is preoccupied
with good, evil will return to it. In all Lenten discipline, therefore,
the occupation of the soul by the sevenfold gifts of the Spirit is the
true bar to the entrance of the seven evil spirits, and works of mercy
will guard against the dangers and deadly sins to which inactive devotion
makes it liable.
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