A Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Deuteronomy 18:15-20 1 Corinthians 7:32-35 Mark 1:21-28
Do you think that we are alone? That we are the only intelligent beings that exist?
It matters a great deal how the question is posed. For example: Are we the only intelligent beings in the universe? Put it that way, and those who would identify as non-believers might shift on the question. Given the virtually unlimited size of the universe, it might not seem rational to them that there should not be other forms of intelligent life, beyond the reach of our sight.
And of course, it is now common to speak of artificial intelligence. Some very bright people now use that term, and the rest of us follow, as we usually do, lest we be left behind. “Sophisticated programming” might still be the better term because computers have not produced anything remotely resembling the human will. And should we not ask if intelligence can exist without volition? Is it knowing if it evinces no desire to know?
Are we alone? Ancient peoples were united in saying no. They believed in non-corporeal intelligences, what we today would call spirits and angels.
It seems an unwarranted prejudice to say that they were wrong. In the early modern age, trusting your eyes alone made a certain sense. It washed away a lot of nonsense. It does not make as much sense in the age of satellites, microscopes and computers. Saying I will not believe in what I cannot see, what I cannot explain for myself, shuts one off from most of the modern world.
Indeed, the time for our contemporaries to reconsider non-corporeal intelligence may have arrived because there are questions today that do not seem well answered by saying that this is just how we human beings are.
Take the Middle East for example. Do the ongoing injustices suffered by Palestinians justify the Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis? And does that massacre justify the death of 25,000 people in Gaza?
And one does not need to look far from home for evidence that some malign intelligence holds sway over humanity. Why, even in the wake of spiraling mass shootings, do some Americans insist that the sale of assault rifles remain unrestricted? Palestinians, Israelis, Americans: We all allow innocents, women and children to die rather than to question our rationales.
We may disagree on its boundaries, but there is a madness in this world that seems bigger than we are. We are not its masters. Indeed, it is so often impervious to good intentions. And if only it were madness, sheer insanity, but it appears to pass over into malign intent. Evil is not simply something we choose. It appears to claw at us. Should an unprejudiced mind not at least entertain the notion that evil exists outside ourselves, that it is perhaps greater than we are?
This is the evil that Christ confronts in the Gospel of St. Mark, where his first act of power is an exorcism. In Mark’s first chapter, Jesus enters the synagogue of Capernaum and preaches. (Any Jewish male conversant with the Scriptures could comment upon them.) St. Mark tells us that:
The people were astonished at his teaching,
for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes (1:22).
His listeners are not alone in recognizing his authority.
In 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!” (1:23-24).
St. Mark does not think that we are alone, that we are the only intelligent beings in the universe. Indeed, he does not even present us as the highest form of intelligence. Demons recognize Christ, the presence of God in Israel, before his listeners do, even before his disciples do.
Yet knowledge alone, the sheer strength of demonic intelligence, is insufficient. The unclean spirit lacks the will to submit, to be attracted toward and to surrender to a presence and a power greater than its own. It will not accept Christ; it will not open itself to his love. As St. Augustine put it, “the demons had much knowledge but lacked love” (City of God, 9.21).
Yet the good news of the Gospel contains an implicit warning for all intelligent beings. God is freely offering everything: God’s own self, God’s love, in the person and presence of Christ. So to reject Jesus is to reject the only possible fulfillment that we can know.
I wonder. Are there alien intelligences, far above our own, at a place in the universe far from us? Do they watch what unfolds on earth? If so, do they gaze upon us with a certain sadness, a tinge of pity, because we think that intelligence alone will win through, will carry us into a bright tomorrow?
Have these aliens long ago realized that intellect unguided by the will, a mind closed to love, remains infertile? That it must be drawn to something greater than itself in intellect and will, in both mind and heart? Do they know what we must still learn? That without a desire to love and be loved the essential sterility of the mind becomes unstable, and it spirals down to its own demise.
