St. Wilfrid, Our Lady of Pillar

Friday of the Twenty-seventh week in Ordinary Time

Commentary of the day
Irenaeus of Lyons : "But if it is by the finger of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you"

Reading

Joel 1,13-15.2,1-2.
Gird yourselves and weep, O priests! wail, O ministers of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God! The house of your God is deprived of offering and libation. Proclaim a fast, call an assembly; Gather the elders, all who dwell in the land, Into the house of the LORD, your God, and cry to the LORD! Alas, the day! for near is the day of the LORD, and it comes as ruin from the Almighty. Blow the trumpet in Zion, sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all who dwell in the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming; Yes, it is near, a day of darkness and of gloom, a day of clouds and somberness! Like dawn spreading over the mountains, a people numerous and mighty! Their like has not been from of old, nor will it be after them, even to the years of distant generations.

Ps 9(9A),2-3.6.16.8-9.
I will praise you, LORD, with all my heart; I will declare all your wondrous deeds. I will delight and rejoice in you; I will sing hymns to your name, Most High. You rebuked the nations, you destroyed the wicked; their name you blotted out for all time The nations fall into the pit they dig; in the snare they hide, their own foot is caught. The LORD rules forever, has set up a throne for judgment. It is God who governs the world with justice, who judges the peoples with fairness.

Lk 11,15-26.
Some of them said, "By the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he drives out demons." Others, to test him, asked him for a sign from heaven. But he knew their thoughts and said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste and house will fall against house. And if Satan is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that it is by Beelzebul that I drive out demons. If I, then, drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own people drive them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the finger of God that (I) drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. When a strong man fully armed guards his palace, his possessions are safe. But when one stronger than he attacks and overcomes him, he takes away the armor on which he relied and distributes the spoils. Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. When an unclean spirit goes out of someone, it roams through arid regions searching for rest but, finding none, it says, 'I shall return to my home from which I came.' But upon returning, it finds it swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and brings back seven other spirits more wicked than itself who move in and dwell there, and the last condition of that person is worse than the first."

Copyright © Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, USCCB

Commentary of the day

Irenaeus of Lyons (c.130-208), Bishop, theologian and martyr
Against the heresies, V,5,2 (SC 153, p.63f.)

"But if it is by the finger of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you"

Because Enoch was pleasing to God he was translated bodily into heaven, thus prefiguring the translation of the just. Elijah, too, was taken up just as he was, in the substance of his bodily shape (2Kgs 2,11), foreshadowing by this the taking up of the spiritual man. Their bodies did not in any way prevent this translation or taking up for it was by means of the same hands by which they were formed in the beginning (Gn 2,7) that they were translated and taken up. Because, in the case of Adam, God’s hands were accustomed to guide, hold and carry the work they had formed, to take it up and set it down wherever they wanted. And where was this first man placed? In Paradise, undoubtedly, as Scripture says: “And God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and he placed there the man whom he had formed,” (v.8). And it was from there that he was expelled in this world for having disobeyed… Does anyone believe that it is impossible men should remain alive for as long as the first of the patriarchs? Does he think that Elijah was not taken up in his body but that his body was consumed on the chariot of fire? Let him consider that Jonah, having been cast to the bottom of the sea and swallowed up in the belly of the fish, was cast up on the shore safe and sound at God’s orders. Ananias, Azarias and Mizael, thrown into a fiery furnace heated up seven times, experienced no harm and not even a smell of fire was about them (Dan 3,94). If the hand of God helped them and accomplished extraordinary things in them, impossible to human nature, what is astonishing if this same hand likewise accomplished an extraordinary thing by carrying out the will of the Father in those who were translated? Now this Hand is the Son of God, (cf Dan 3,92).