Gospel: Mark 3: 20-35
Most Christians are unconscious of the Gnosticism they often assert, especially when it comes to the figure of Satan. Qualities of God are often given also to this creature: omnipresence, omnipotence, and eternality. Many act as if there are two equally powerful beings in the universe - one good, the other evil - and that we humans are in the midst of this cosmic battlefield between them. All of this was rejected categorically by early Christianity, yet it persists among us because of our lack of faith in the one God.
In today's Gospel portion Jesus dismisses this prevailing Gnosticism. Satan's kingdom cannot last, for it is not a kingdom built upon unity but one built upon dissention. Only the kingdom of God will persist and last forever because it is built upon the authentic unity of love, love that is God in God's very essence, love that is shown to the world in the person of Jesus. This love, this power of God, is far greater than Satan's realm and any other kingdom on this earth.
It is unfortunate that Christians really do not believe this, or that we act as if we do not. We find ourselves clinging to the strong men of this world, to political ideologies, and to these false ideas about the figure of Satan. If we really believed in the one God, in the love that is God and that forms the only lasting kingdom we would live entirely different lives as individuals and as communities.
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