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The Lord be with you.
With your spirit.
A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Mark.
Glory to you, Lord.
Then they came to Capernum, and on the Sabbath day Jesus entered the synagogue and taught.
The people were astonished at his teaching, free taught them is one having authority and not as the scribes.
And their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit.
He cried out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?
Have you come to destroy us?
I know who you are, the holy one of God." Jesus rebuked him and said, "Quiet, come out of him." The unclean spirit convulsed him and with a loud cry came out of him.
All were amazed and asked one another, "What is this?
A new teaching with authority?" He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.
His fame spread everywhere throughout the whole region of Galilee.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
So there's a lot of different ways that you could categorize the different manners in which the Lord has revealed Himself over the course of salvation history.
But one of those, and I think one of the most interesting, is you can categorize the different ways in which the Lord revealed Himself by how quick or abrupt they are.
Because sometimes the Lord works very slowly and gradually.
You could say that this was generally mostly the case over the course of most of salvation history.
It took thousands of years from the time of the fall to the time of Jesus when everything was revealed in its fullness.
That's a long time.
But there's moments when God sort of slams on the accelerator and starts revealing things very quickly.
So if you want some examples of this, we can look at the slow style of revelation in prophets like Jeremiah.
To my knowledge, I don't remember Jeremiah ever doing a miracle to teach people things.
He mostly just preached over the course of his entire life and he was ignored most of the time.
It was a very gradual process of revelation.
You can contrast that with a prophet like Moses, in which the revelation happened a lot quicker, a lot more abruptly.
Moses who had plagues and pillars of fire and trumpets from heaven and all that stuff.
And we've heard in our first reading, our first reading references of time, which the people of Israel kind of like were a little bit freaked out by how fast things were happening and said to Moses, like, all that trumpets and fire and stuff like you deal with that and just tell us about it.
And similarly, if we look to the life of Jesus, most of Jesus's life, we see the slow style of revelation at work.
Most of Jesus's life for like the course of 30 years of his life, more or less, things were very slow in behind the scenes and not very obvious that he was trying to say something new.
Then we get into today's gospel and once again, he slams on the accelerator.
He's casting out demons in front of everybody and they're realizing very quickly, like, oh boy, like something is very new here.
You know, I was talking about these the other day with a priest friend.
We're talking about these different ways in which the Lord shows up in scripture, but like more concretely, the Lord uses these different ways to show up in people's lives.
You know, I was realizing how most of the time when somebody is talking to be who is really struggling with something, like carrying a really heavy cross and really struggling with it and very much like praying for an experience of resurrection.
Most of the time, how I handle that is I try to prepare them to receive this experience of resurrection from the Lord through the slow style of revelation.
I usually try to prepare people to receive the Lord's help through gradual and ordinary ways, like through the help of other people who the Lord brings into their life, through ordinary circumstances that the Lord puts in their way in order to help them.
But as I was talking to my friend, he reminded me that that's not the only way that God works, right, even for us ordinary people, sometimes the Lord kind of slams on the accelerator.
Even for us ordinary people, sometimes the Lord does work in the fast style of revelation.
And he's done that for me in my life.
I remember there was a particular time in my life when I was as many people do, as I would say, probably most people do at some point in their life.
I was wrestling with the reality of evil in the world and trying to make sense of it.
I mean, both the reality of like injustice and suffering in our world and how all that is possible given to God, but also wrestling with my own faults that I felt powerless to overcome.
I during this time, God seemed really absent and prayer.
I would go to pray.
I would go to pray every day and I would sit there and it just felt like talking to a brick wall.
It didn't feel like anybody was there.
And I just couldn't make heads or tails of how a good God could be present in a world with so much suffering and injustice and difficulty.
You know, when all this kind of came to a head, I was traveling at the time.
I think it was maybe South Carolina, somewhere around the East Coast.
And I was really troubled by this stuff.
I couldn't sleep.
I was going for a walk at like three in the morning, out by the shore, which looking back on it was kind of a very sacramental moment, right?
Standing in front of an ocean, something immense and powerful that I could only see a fraction of, it kind of set the scene pretty well.
But basically what happened is I just kind of, I let it all out.
I just kind of, in a moment of very sincere prayer, I just kind of really like, raged at God and let out all of my frustrations and anger and especially fear, right?
Fear of the world that I was living in, fear that I couldn't overcome my own faults, fear that I was alone to face a very cruel world without a God who cared enough to do anything about it.
I just kind of let that all out.
I just ranted to God as much as I could until I had just completely got tired of it.
And it's kind of hard for me to describe what happened next, but the way I usually talk about it is, it's kind of similar to what happened at the end of the book of Job, if you guys remember that one.
And since Job lets out all of his frustrations, which were likewise, mostly worries and considerations about evil in the world and the evil that happened to him, right?
He lets it all out, all of his complaints, all of his questions.
And God responds, "What's interesting is God doesn't directly answer any of the questions that Job asks, but God does show up and somehow that's enough for Job." He says, "I had heard of you, but now my own eyes have seen you." And after that, he's got no more to say.
Some of the very similar happened to me, right?
I didn't have any of my questions directly answered that night.
I simply ranted as much as I could until I was completely tired of it.
I had nothing more to say.
And I sat there, right?
This ocean that was right in front of me was still in front of me, unchanged, no different than before.
And it was something that kind of clicked.
Like, in that moment, Jesus was there.
Unchanged, as he always was, just like that ocean, always there, even when I can only see a fraction of the reality at any given time.
He was there, and he showed up, and somehow that was enough for me.
It's not something I could explain, not something anybody could explain, not something I can easily give words to.
But that was one of the rare moments in my life in which Jesus worked through the very fast style of revelation, right?
He showed up in that moment in a very powerful way that I can't explain.
Nobody could explain that he was there in that moment.
I think what was really beautiful about this for me was that that experience wasn't opposed to the slow style of revelation.
As after that happened to me, in the couple of weeks following that, the Lord gradually guided me to realize that he had also been working very slowly in my life behind the scenes, gradually.
He guided me to realize that the faults I was struggling with, and I felt powerless to overcome, like over the last 10 years or so prior to that, he had been gradually placing people in my life who were helping me with those, who were guiding me and mentoring me.
He maybe realized that all that evil and injustice and suffering in the world, I was so preoccupied with, he gradually led me to realize all of the saints and heroes throughout history that he had raised up, right?
Repair those damages in the world that people had caused through their free choices to reject him.
It was a beautiful experience of seeing that fast style of revelation in the slow work hand in hand.
For each of us, concretely in our own lives, not just in the Bible, not just in our history of the world, but concretely in our own lives, Jesus shows himself slowly sometimes, and Jesus shows himself very quickly sometimes.
We may wish for one or the other, we may wish for the slow way, like Moses' followers did, we may wish for the fast way when things just seem way too slow and inefficient, and we want answers now.
We may wish for one or the other, but at the end of the day, at the end of the day, that's not something we get to choose, and at the end of the day, they always go hand in hand, they always work together.
And the point is, Jesus reached me with both.
Jesus can reach anyone with either.
I truly believe anyone who opens their heart to him, he will reach them with whatever is best for them.
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