Master·evangeli.net
Today's Gospel + short theological explanation
The demon is a "number"
EDITORIAL TEAM evangeli.net (based on texts by Benedict XVI) (Città del Vaticano, Vatican)Today, Jesus Christ speaks of God’s "adversary". The beast, the power opposed to God, has no name but a number: the seer in “Revelation” tells us "666 is this number". This time, he introduces himself as a "legion". But it is a number, and it makes men numbers.
A signal? While the demon "cannot be proven", those who lived through the world of the concentration camps know what that means: the terror of that world is rooted in the fact that it obliterates men’s faces, it obliterates their history. It makes man a number, an exchangeable cog in one big machine. He is his function, nothing more. And if functions are all that exists, man, too, is nothing else but a function. Whatever is not a function is nothing. The beast is a number and it makes men numbers.
—O Lord, because You have a name and give me a name and call me by my name, I am not for You some function in a cosmic machinery. I am Your son!
September 1st
Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)
Gospel and commentary video
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