A Reflection for Monday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time
Find today’s readings here.
This is my third year in a row writing our Scripture reflection for the Monday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time and today’s Gospel about a kingdom divided against itself. The previous two years, this Gospel reading has also fallen on the day of prayer for the legal protection of unborn children, which was observed this year last Wednesday.
In all honesty, it feels difficult to face this Gospel passage again, when our societal and political divisions seem as bad as they have ever been. I want to be able to say again what I said two years ago about the illogic of “anti-mercy,” and to believe that it applies to the situation where our government is in the midst of a “shock and awe” campaign of mass deportation, words that previously were associated with literal bombardment.
I want to quote again the words of a collect from the Mass for the preservation of peace and justice, addressing God who is “peace itself and whom a spirit of discord cannot grasp, nor a violent mind receive” and pleading “that those in conflict may forget evil and so be healed.”
I still believe those words, and perhaps just as importantly, I still want to believe them. But I also know that from where we stand now, our divisions will grow deeper still before any of us forget evil and begin to be healed and reconciled.
In the background of Jesus’ words about a kingdom and a house divided against itself—those institutions that cannot stand—is the possibility of a kingdom and a house united and thus able to stand. In the background of the question “How can Satan cast out Satan?,” designed not to have an answer, is the reality that Jesus has been casting out evil.
So even as we face division that is likely to get worse before it gets better, we are still being called to unity, to reconciliation and to peace. Let us place our hope in that call.
