Brothers and sisters in Christ—
In today’s Gospel reading, as the Lord Jesus is leaving the house, His disciples bring to Him a man, who is possessed by a mute spirit. The man, in other words, could not speak, but gave other signs of being demon-possessed. The Lord casts out the demon, and the man begins to speak. The crowd, which is witness to what has happened, is amazed, and begins to ask whether Jesus could be the promised Messiah.
The Gospel says nothing about the manner in which the Lord Jesus casted out the demon. This is the case, because the Gospel of St. Matthew has covered this territory before. At this point, St. Matthew simply states that the Lord Jesus casted out the demon without any further comment. We know from this that He did what He had always done before. He did not invoke anyone else’s name, or quote the Scriptures. He simply told the demon to leave, and it left. This clearly shows the majesty of the Lord’s divinity. Immediately, after the demon has left, the man speaks (thus showing that the demon had departed.
But who is the mute spirit? Why is he mute? He does not want to be known. He does not want anyone to know his name, or to have any certain knowledge about him. In ancient culture, particularly in Hebrew culture, knowledge was power. To possess the name of another person was to have power over him.
Each of us, in a sense, has the same mute spirit. Very often, even if we are aware of our individual sins (enough to make a good confession, for example) we remain ignorant of any real self-knowledge. The universe of our faults and vices remains unknown and invisible to us.
At the same time, however, we know that, in order to make any real progress in the spiritual life, we need to have personal knowledge of our faults. Particularly, we need to have firsthand knowledge of our predominant fault. Progress in the spiritual life requires that we first identify our predominant fault, then labour to build the opposite virtue.
The mute spirit of our predominant fault wants to hide, so that it will not be discovered, because knowledge of it reveals its opposite virtue, which in turn shows us the way forward towards greater perfection. In order to discover this “mute spirit” we need to search it out. We search out our predominant fault through the daily practice of the examination of conscience. The Church encourages us to examine our conscious every evening before we retire as a means to greater spiritual growth. This encouragement is very apt, because without it we cannot uncover that fault or faults, which is the source of our sins. At the end of the day, we consider our thoughts during the past day. We begin by examining those thoughts on the basis of the seven cardinal sins: pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony and sloth. That category, which is most frequent and active in our thoughts, is likely to be our “predominant” fault, or, in other words, the area where we are most susceptible to temptation. This area will play a central role in the all of our subsequent examinations. A predominant fault in any one of these areas will then lead us to a resolution to practice the opposite virtue. If, for example, we notice that our predominant fault is pride, then we resolve in concrete ways to exercise the virtue of humility through some sort of mortification.
Lastly, since we are resolving to take seriously the science of the spiritual life, we ask Christ to help us to combat our predominant fault by giving us an abundance of grace, so that we can exercise the contrary virtue. We acknowledge that we cannot do it without Him. Although He commands us to be perfect, nevertheless, we cannot fulfill His commandment unless we put all of our trust in Him, for He is the vine and we are only the branches.
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