The Gospel for the memorial of St. Gregory the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church, is taken from Luke 4th, chapter 31 37. Jesus went down to Capernaum, a town of Galilee. He taught them on the Sabbath, and they were astonished at his teaching because he spoke with authority. In the synagogue there was a man with the spirit of an unclean demon. And he cried out in a loud voice, what have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?

Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. Jesus rebuked him and said, be quiet, come out of him. Then the demon threw the man down in front of them and came out of him without doing him any harm. They were all amazed and said to one another, what is there about his word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits and they come out.

And news of him spread everywhere in the surrounding region. It’s fascinating to me that Jesus always played down his divinity. And we see in this particular passage the demon revealing who Jesus really is. And he says, be quiet. There’s something about his needing to be ordinary, his needing to be one just like us, that was so essential to his teaching. But the one he had that was so unique and different from us is the fact that whatever he said was true and whatever he asked for was done.

Please take a few moments to reflect upon these images, and then I will close with a prayer. Sa sam Sa foreign closing prayer. Father, if we see Jesus as one like us, doing extraordinary things, it’s easier for us to imagine God using us, our ordinariness, our brokenness, to do the things that he calls us to do. So help us to focus more on what God does through us rather than who we have to become in order to please Him. And we ask this in Jesus name. Amen.