Daily word, 09 Jul 19

14^th Tuesday of the Year (09 Jul 2019)

Gn 32. 23-33; Ps 17; Mt 9. 32-38

Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J., Spiritual Directors Workshop

Names and Power

Names and power were close relatives in the ancient Mediterranean world. Entrusting names to others was never casual: names bestowed power. Even elemental powers had names. These ‘a-b-cs of the universe’ produced effects good or harmful. Those that harmed humans were called demonic powers or spirits.

To release people from demonic harm rabbis first learned demons’ names. Knowing their names empowered rabbis to drive them out from people. Spirits that rendered people mute had an advantage: mute spirits prevented rabbis from learning their names.

This helps us appreciate the brevity of the description of Jesus’ miracle and both kinds of amazement to it. About brevity: Jesus did not need the mute spirit’s name to expel it! About amazement: The Pharisees accused Jesus of being in league with demons because Jesus did what they could not: envy soured their amazement. The crowds recognized Jesus as the one Isaiah had promised: He took our illnesses & carried our diseases.¹

Names also figured large before Jesus. The chro-nicles of Isaac’s twin sons illustrate men and women trapped in the web of unfulfilling human affairs: rivalry; deceit; fear; mistrust; dissatisfying striving. Jacob so feared his brother Esau he fled from him for 20 years. Early in those years God favoured Jacob with a revelation of divine care. Yet Jacob chose to remain self-centred rather than God-centred. His prayer reflected that: If God will be with me, & keep me in this way that I am going, and give me bread to eat and clothing to put on, so that I come back to my father’s house in peace, then the Eternal shall be my God.²

At the end of his 20-year exile Jacob returned to Esau but first set things right. “The time [had] come to face the past and, in doing so, to secure the future.”³ Jacob remembered the Eternal’s promise to care for him: he had grown less self-centred. ‘Less’ is the key word because from his great wealth Jacob lavished gifts on his brother ahead of their meeting. Jacob had grown willing to surrender every thing; yet he could not surrender himself to God.

At God’s initiative—yet again!—Jacob contended with God and in the process with himself. The no-holds-barred struggle with God won Jacob a new name: Israel, God makes straight⁴; a new life; a new identity. A physical reminder kept Jacob alert to his new identity in God.

How we struggle with God; how we let God free us; offer us new life, even a new identity: all these vary for each of us. God ever offers us new life. As you continue your retreats: don’t be mute in prayer; tell God everything. Surrender your entire self to God. Ask for courage to let God love you to bits; when we do God reassembles us more closely into the individuals God has created us to be.

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1. Matthew 8.17. The citation of Isaiah interprets the miracles in chapters 9-10.
2. Genesis 28.20.
3. W. Gunther Plaut & David E. Stein, eds., The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Revised; Accordance electronic ed. (New York: Union for Reform Judaism, 2006), 218.
4. The Torah: A Modern Commentary, 122.

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Wiki-images: Jesus heals one possessed by a mute spirit PD-US; Jacob wrestling with angel PD-US