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Master·evangeli.net

Today's Gospel + short theological explanation

Monday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
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Gospel text (Mk 9:14-29): As Jesus came down from the mountain with Peter, James, John and approached the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and scribes arguing with them (…). He asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?” Someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I have brought to you my son possessed by a mute spirit. Wherever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, grinds his teeth, and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive it out, but they were unable to do so” (…).

Jesus, on seeing a crowd rapidly gathering, rebuked the unclean spirit and said to it, “Mute and deaf spirit, I command you: come out of him and never enter him again!” Shouting and throwing the boy into convulsions, it came out (...). When he entered the house, his disciples asked him in private, “Why could we not drive the spirit out?” He said to them, “This kind can only come out through prayer.”

In the prayer of Jesus we perceive God’s concern for humankind

EDITORIAL TEAM evangeli.net (based on texts by Benedict XVI) (Città del Vaticano, Vatican)

Today, we are again considering the prayer of Jesus linked to His miraculous healing action. Various situations are presented in the Gospels in which Jesus prays while He contemplates the beneficial and healing work of God the Father who acts through Him.

This is a form of prayer which, once again, demonstrates His unique relationship of knowledge and communion with the Father, while Jesus lets Himself be involved with deep human participation in the hardships of His friends or of the many poor and sick people to whom He seeks to help. With His prayer, Jesus wants to lead us back to faith, to total trust in God and in His will. And He wanted to show that this God who so loved man —to the point of sending His Only Begotten Son— is the God of life, the God who brings hope and can reverse humanly impossible situations.

—My trusting prayer as a believer is a living testimony of God’s presence in the world and of His concern for humankind.