Lk 11:14-23
One day, Jesus was driving out a demon, which was mute. When the demon had been driven out, the mute person could speak, and the people were amazed. Yet some of them said, “He drives out demons by the power of Beelzebul, the chief of the demons.” Others wanted to put him to the test, by asking him for a heavenly sign.
But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to them, “Every nation divided by civil war is on the road to ruin, and will fall. If Satan also is divided, his empire is coming to an end. How can you say that I drive out demons by calling upon Beelzebul? If I drive them out by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons drive out demons? They will be your judges, then.
But if I drive out demons by the finger of God; would not this mean that the kingdom of God has come upon you? As long as a man, strong and well armed, guards his house, his goods are safe. But when a stronger man attacks and overcomes him, the challenger takes away all the weapons he relied on, and disposes of his spoils.
Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me, scatters.
REFLECTION
There is something almost pathetic in the way some of the enemies of Jesus are so desperate in their search for means of discrediting him that they are reduced to grasp at straws and fall back on such ludicrous reasonings that even a child would see through them and point out their lack of logic.
In today’s gospel reading these enemies of Jesus, unable to deny that he does indeed successfully perform public exorcisms that everybody can witness, resort to a ludicrous explanation of these phenomena, attributing the exorcisms to Beelzebul’s power (the prince of demons) acting through Jesus. The latter easily refutes this with a common sense argument. Why would Satan kick his own demons out of humans? It would be like General X ordering Captain Y to shoot the men of his own army!
Only a deep lack of honesty can bring people to resort to convoluted arguments for rejecting the truth when it is staring them in the face. Let us examine ourselves in this respect. Do we always call a spade a spade—or do we often not try to call it something else?
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