Hebrews 6:13-20; Mark 9:17-31
In kneeling before
the Lord and struggling to believe that Christ could deliver his son from a
life-threatening condition, the father revealed the true condition of his
soul. He was bitterly disappointed that
the disciples had not been able to help and did not fully trust that the Savior
could do anything more. Nonetheless, he
could muster enough faith to offer the young man to Christ for healing, even as
he pleaded for Him to “help my unbelief!”
That humble, heartfelt plea was sufficient for his son to receive the
Lord’s merciful healing. Despite his doubts, that blessed man still had enough
faith to receive healing for his son. He
entrusted himself and his beloved child to Christ as best he could, despite his
imperfect faith.
The word given
by God to St. Silouan the Athonite applies to him as much as it does to us:
“Keep your mind in hell and do not despair.”
On the one hand, we must not fool ourselves with an illusory,
superficial spirituality that distracts us from experiencing the true state of
our souls before God. Instead, we must know
from our hearts how far we are from fully embracing our Lord’s gracious healing
and entrusting ourselves and all our earthly cares to Him. On the other hand, even as we confront the
grave tension between the infinite holiness of God and our corruption, we must
refuse to despair by accepting the lie that there is no hope for us, our loved
ones, and our world in the mercy of the Lord. Far better is the way of the father in today’s
gospel lesson, for he confessed the weakness of his faith even as he
paradoxically showed great faith in asking for Christ to save his son.
He provides us a
much better example of honest faith than did the disciples, for they lacked the
spiritual strength to deliver the young man from the demon. The Savior told them, “This kind cannot be
driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.”
He said that because they were spiritual weaklings who had neglected the
most basic spiritual practices for opening themselves to receive Christ’s
healing strength. Not one of them got the point when the Lord said, “The Son of
man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and after
He is killed, He will rise on the third day.”
At this point, they had a superficial faith focused on acquiring earthly
power for themselves, not on commending themselves to the God-Man Whose Kingdom
remains not of this world. It was only
after the horror of the Cross, the complete shock of the empty tomb, and the
appearance and teaching of the Risen Lord that they acquired the faith
necessary for them truly to believe.
The deliverance
of the young man certainly did not come easily, for the demon convulsed him and
most of the bystanders thought that he was dead. That is an interesting detail, for we often naively
assume that Christ’s healing comes with only sweetness and light when, in
reality, embracing His healing can seem impossibly difficult. That is especially the case for finding the
strength to resist the temptation to gratify passions that have taken deep root
in our souls. Wrestling seriously with
our besetting sins is a battle that causes us to die to so many illusions about
ourselves.
As we continue the Lenten journey this year,
let us persist in the inner struggle necessary to intensify our prayers, to
deny ourselves, and to give generously to our neighbors as we take the small
steps that we presently have the strength to take in reorienting our lives to
toward the Lord. When the battle even to take those small steps
reveals our weaknesses and seems like a lost cause, that is not the time to give
up, but instead to obey the command: “Keep your mind in hell and do not
despair.” It is only by doing so that we
may gain the spiritual clarity necessary to cry out from the depths of our hearts,
“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” Indeed,
it is really the only time in which we can begin to see the state of our souls
clearly, which is necessary in order for us to follow our Lord to His Cross and
empty tomb through humble confession and repentance of our sins. In the
remaining weeks of the Fast, let us refuse to be distracted by anything that would
keep us from entering as fully as possible into the holy mystery of our
salvation, for “The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and
they will kill Him; and after He is killed, He will rise on the third day.”