Sunday, January 28 : Saint Jerome

“In their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit”. That spirit could not bear the Lord’s presence for it was the same impure spirit who had led all men into idolatry… “What accord has Christ with Satan?” (2Cor 6,15); Christ and Satan could not be linked together. “He cried out, ‘What have you to do with us?’” The man who thus cried out was an individual expressing himself in the name of many; this proves he was aware that both he and his own kind had been overcome. “He cried out: ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?’” Even in the midst of his torment, and in spite of the sharpness of the sufferings that forced him to cry out, he did not forsake his hypocrisy. He is constrained to speak the truth, suffering squeezes it out of him, yet malice prevents him from telling the whole truth: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” Why not acknowledge the Son of God? Is it the Nazarene who is torturing you and not, rather, the Son of God?… Wasn’t Moses one of God’s holy ones? And Isaiah and Jeremiah, weren’t they holy ones of God?… Why not say to them: “I know who you are, holy one of God”?… Don’t say “Holy one of God” but “Holy God”. You imagine you know but in fact you do not, or if you do know, you keep silent out of duplicity. For he is not just God’s holy one but the Holy God himself.
Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team