Today marks beginning to Ordinary Time in the Catholic Liturgical year. Today’s first reading comes from the book of Samuel when his mother, Hannah, goes before the Lord and high priest, Eli, to pray for a child. After speaking before the priest, Hannah stays in silence—praying still—and the priest mocks her, thinking her something other than what she is when all she’s doing is speaking and praying spirit in silence.
Rebuked and humbled by Hannah standing and speaking on her behalf, the high priest speaks, “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him.”
Answered, Hannah gives birth to a son, Samuel—name meaning “God has heard.”
In today’s gospel, Jesus arrives, speaks, and heals on the sabbath. He rids unclean spirits who, seeing him for Who and What Jesus is, they cry, “What have you to do with us?…Have you come to destroy us?…I know who you are…” and despite the cries and resistance, Jesus draws the unclean from the possessed.
What do these teachings mean? What do they have to say of ordinary time?
Maybe it speaks, through all the time between, how little man and life have changed—in essence and matters of the spirit. We pray for the same longings. We battle the same spirit-states.
Now, as then, God hears.
We still war with possessions; whatever name we call them. All of mental health and psychology is nothing more than addressing what exists in our spirit that is out of balance with our essence; and maybe if we prayed a little more and worried a little less, the beings of instability—whether demon, thought, energy…whatever they are—would be rid and a spirit-peace restored.
Same as in every age and page of the Bible, we are still ordinary people with ordinary problems leading ordinary lives with opportunity for extraordinary experience.
Now, as then, God hears: gifting ordinary blessings and ordinary miracles that, to receiver, are anything but that.
