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It
has often been remarked that “life is for the living”,
and so it is. And it has also been remarked that
“we can have the experience but miss the meaning”.
How true that is as well. Both these statements
offer us an approach as to how we should think about
life and, if we ever do that, to seek something
more than perhaps we currently live for.
We
do manage to get by from day to day, nevertheless,
but sometimes things happen to us which make us
pause or question our lives: who we are and what
we are doing. This is all very normal and good.
It is particularly interesting when, upon reflection,
we spot something we hadn't noticed before. We may
have wanted a certain job or thing, for example,
and then discover, after the experience of it, that
there was another reason why we sought it. In these
instances we say we found a deeper reason for wanting
it; a reason we were not aware of before, since
we thought we wanted it for the first reason, but
we now think differently and realise that there
are other reasons which influenced our actions.
Very often such underlying reasons only emerge after
some time and reflection. They tell us that our
initial thinking is not the whole story about us
but that we can operate out of other hidden reasons
which are not apparent to us straight away.
This
brief example illustrates that we are persons who
exist at different levels: we act for one reason
and then realise we acted for another underlying
one about which we were unaware when we first acted.
If you like, we become aware of two levels of reasoning.
These different levels exist within us and as our
lives go on we can at least be aware that they exist
and allow ourselves the time and reflection needed
to try to be more conscious of them. Many spiritual
writers, not least our own St Ignatius Loyola, regarded
such reflective activity as vital to deepening our
lives in God.
The
late Cardinal Dulles wrote about different models
of thinking about the Church but another, more interesting
avenue is to think about her different levels
. A recent book by a Russian Orthodox bishop
talks about the “empirical” Church, that is, the
Church which we can see, and the “deep structure”
of the Church: that which we can't see. And he took
pains to emphasise that it is the latter and not
the former which is of real importance. To follow
the example above analogously, it is the underlying
level of the Church that is the most real, not the
surface level. So, as human being have different
levels, the Church herself exists in a similar way,
at different levels, some of which become apparent
only over time and reflection.
Today's
gospel gives us an account of Jesus dealing with
this phenomenon. It first becomes apparent to those
who listen to him in the synagogue that he is not
reading what he says out of a book, nor is he throwing
out ideas off the top of his head but that what
he says is coming from within him and from a level
they are not used to listening to. They then comment
that he speaks with authority, that is, with a quality
emanating from a deeper level within him than they
are used to from other rabbis. Jesus also meets
head on and faces down an unclean spirit which has
possessed someone; a spirit who recognises the deepest
level of Jesus' human existence, namely, his divinity.
St Mark consistently and from the outset has Jesus
confront and overpower these demonic spirits since,
for St Mark, it is this level of human life which
is the most dangerous and threatening and which
only Jesus has the power to overcome. Let us then
take most seriously these different levels of our
own lives and ask God to help us in the struggle
against the enemy of human nature.
James
Campbell SJ
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