Daily Reading
First Reading
Joel 1:13-15; 2:1-2
Put on sackcloth and lament, you priests; wail, you ministers of the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God! Grain offering and drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.
Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord.
Alas for the day! For the day of the Lord is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.
Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near — a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness.
Psalm
Psalm 9:2-3, 6, 16, 8-9
I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.
When my enemies turned back, they stumbled and perished before you. The enemies have vanished in everlasting ruins; their cities you have rooted out; the very memory of them has perished.
The Lord has made himself known; he has executed judgment; the wicked are snared in the work of their own hands.
He judges the world with righteousness; he judges the peoples with equity.
The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.
Gospel Reading
Luke 11:15-26
But some of them said, “He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons.” Others, to test him, kept demanding from him a sign from heaven.
But he knew what they were thinking and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself becomes a desert, and a house falls on house. If Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? — for you say that I cast out the demons by Beelzebul. Now if I cast out the demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your exorcists cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges.
But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you.
When a strong man, fully armed, guards his castle, his property is safe. But when one stronger than he attacks him and overpowers him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides his plunder.
Reflection
Friends, in today’s Gospel, we learn of a person possessed by a demon. Jesus meets the man and drives out the demon but then is immediately accused of being in league with Satan. Some of the witnesses said, “By the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he drives out demons.”
Jesus’s response is wonderful in its logic and laconicism: “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?”
The demonic power is always one of scattering. It breaks up communion. But Jesus, as always, is the voice of communio, of one bringing things back together.
Think back to Jesus’s feeding of the five thousand. Facing a large, hungry crowd, his disciples beg him to “dismiss the crowds so that they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.” But Jesus answers, “There is no need for them to go away; give them some food yourselves.”
Whatever drives the Church apart is an echo of this “dismiss the crowds” impulse, and a reminder of the demonic tendency to divide. In times of trial and threat, this is a very common instinct. We blame, attack, break up, and disperse. But Jesus is right: “There is no need for them to go away.”