The promise of Advent, the joy of Christmas and the enthusiasm of Epiphany have yielded to what the church’s liturgy labels rather blandly Ordinary Time or, in some other languages, Numbered Time.
The ordinary in Ordinary Time does not mean commonplace or run-of-the-mill as that word so often connotes in English usage. The word ordinary as used here implies orderly or numerical time as the names of the Sundays from now until the Solemnity of Christ the King indicates: First Sunday in Ordinary Time, Second Sunday in Ordinary time, et cetera. How these colorless designations are an improvement over the former “Sundays after Epiphany” and “Sundays after Pentecost” is baffling. Yet these lackluster titles must not obscure the excitement of Jesus’ public life which will be proclaimed to the faithful Sunday after Sunday during the liturgical year and which this Sunday’s encounter with the demon in the Capernaum synagogue is a fine example. The struggle with evil, or better, the struggle with the evil one, is integral to the mission of Jesus Christ and is certainly instructive for believers who must face their own personal demons everyday as well as the evil that sadly permeates society.
Over the past half century, Western society has clearly grown more sensitive to the oppression of minorities, the stereotyping of women, the abuse of children, the neglect of the environment, diseases and poverty in the Third World, the challenge of migration, and numerous other contemporary challenges. These largely social justice issues that rose to the fore in the 1960s and 70s are rightly a concern for both thinking and believing people. Yet sensitivity toward society cannot excuse the neglect of personal morality that has grown apace during the last half-century. The 65 percent of Catholics who attended Sunday Mass in 1966 has been reduced to 17 percent in 2011. The worship of God has generally become a matter of indifference especially in the heavily Catholic Northeastern United States. Although the frequency of divorce has leveled out somewhat since the 1990s, the marital union has generally fallen on hard times thanks to cohabitation, same-sex unions, and a casual attitude toward sex in the media. American society is more alert to the problems of war and capital punishment yet it has become almost completely desensitized to the evils of abortion, fetal experimentation and some fertility procedures. The 20th century certainly blessed American society with an abundance of material goods and comforts. But greed in high places is sadly matched by acquisitiveness within the average household. Families purchase before they can provide, leading to some disastrous consequences.
St. Mark’s Gospel which will be read from Catholic pulpits during this liturgical year will make no less than 34 references to demons and demon-possession as the evangelist recounts the public life of Jesus Christ. This is in great contrast to the Gospel according to St. John, which relates no encounters with evil spirits or incidents of exorcism. While St. John is being rightly positive about the transforming power the glorified Christ shares with his believing people, St. Mark is equally correct in reminding all believers that the devil, sin and wickedness are inevitable in human history and inevitable in an individual’s personal life until kingdom come. Mankind, the church, and the individual believer must come to grips with both public evil and personal sin. The naïve optimism that allows today’s man or woman to dismiss individual sins as mere foibles and quirks that vanish when contrasted with the greater evils that confront society deprives society itself of its strongest resource – the mature, virtuous, disciplined person.
It is no coincidence that the average Catholic’s diminished awareness of personal sin has been accompanied by a decreasing use of the sacrament of penance. Since nobody sins anymore, nobody confesses anymore. Yet every reader of this column can recognize the foolishness of this situation. Clearly modern man sins – and sins “greatly” as the revised Mass warns. Pride, envy, greed, lust, gluttony, sloth, and anger are just as present now as they were in our parents’ and grandparents’ eras. It is today’s conscience, not today’s sinfulness, which has grown dull.
