Fathers For Good

Did Jesus Laugh?

In keeping with last week’s blog on laughter, let us continue the theme. There once was a debate in Scripture circles about whether Jesus ever laughed. I remember listening to a Christian radio station with the host saying that Jesus did not tell jokes or laugh, based on what we read in the New Testament. Jesus was deadly serious and came to suffer and die and pay for our sins on the cross.

Callers into his radio show tried to say that Jesus was being humorous in this particular passage or another, but the host would not budge. We know that Jesus wept, he said, giving the chapter and verse, but the Bible never says he laughed.

Not tied so much to the chapter-and-verse interpretation of Scripture, Catholicism takes a slightly different view, more open and refreshing. We leave room for reason and plain old common sense. I remember when I brought up the laughter issue with a Scripture scholar, he asked, “Was Jesus human?” The answer, of course, was yes. “Then Jesus laughed. At the very least, he laughed as a baby.”

Case closed. So we can all keep those pictures of Jesus laughing on our walls. There’s even a website, www.jesuslaughing.com.

More recently a friend asked me who said this in Bible? “Later you will laugh.” I was stumped. I guessed one of the psalmists. Wrong. While there is reference to laughter in the Psalms, it was Jesus who uttered the laugh line. We find it in the Gospel of Luke chapter 6, verse 21, as part of the Sermon on the Plain. It is sort of a shorthand version of the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus presents some stark contrasts or antitheses. “Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who now weep, for later you will laugh.”

Jesus does refer to laughter. I think so many of us miss these words because of the familiar cadence of the contrasts: hunger – filled. Weep – laugh. We don’t focus on what is said. Of course, a few lines later, Jesus warns those who are now laughing that later they will weep, so he doesn’t give an unqualified endorsement of earthly amusement.

The point is that Jesus presents laughter as a reward, a fulfillment, that will make life more livable. Laughter is good. Laughter is Catholic. There is a rhyme attributed to the early 20th century Catholic controversialist Hillaire Belloc that tidily sums up the Catholic ethic when it comes to food, drink and laughter. He wrote against a cheerless Calvinism that is always threatening some strains of Catholic thought:

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There’s always laughter and good red wine.

At least I’ve always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!

Driving Out Demons

We don’t like to talk about demons. When is the last time you brought up the subject of evil spirits at home with your family or at work with your colleagues? Have you ever heard a homily about demons, even when they appear in the Scripture passage at Mass?

 

This is not to say that we are not fascinated by the subject. The long lines at horror films and the mega sales of ghost and occult stories show an appetite in our culture for exploring what is dark, hidden, forbidden and frightening.

 

I thought of this the other day when demons played a prominent role in the weekday Gospel reading.  In the first chapter of his Gospel, Mark describes the early public ministry of Jesus: Simon Peter’s mother-in-law is sick and Jesus “grasped her hand and helped her up, and the fever left her.” When news of this healing spread, the whole town flocked to the house and “brought to him all who were ill or possessed by demons.” Jesus cured the sick and “he drove out many demons, not permitting them to speak because they knew him” (Mark 1:29-39).

 

Every once in a while a word or phrase in the Bible jumps up and grabs your attention, as though you had never come across it before. These words hit me: “not permitting them to speak.” There has been much written and said about why Jesus did not want the demons to speak; basically, he didn’t want his identity and ministry to be revealed yet. But that’s not what intrigued me about those words.

 

What struck me was the fact that these were really demons – evil spiritual beings with an identity and a voice. You see, I had been educated in the modern skeptical tradition, by Catholic scholars who thought themselves smarter than the tradition of the Church. I had been told that the demons in Scripture were not really personal beings; they were really manifestations of some sort of psychological illness that people at the time did not understand. People who were thought to have demons really had epilepsy or some sort of psychosis, and Jesus healed them not by driving out these demons, but by affirming their humanity and reintroducing them to the human community.

 

I never really bought this explanation, but there seemed to be some truth in this way of reading Scripture. After all, the evangelists wrote their Gospels in the language of the time, using the idioms and understandings of their readers to communicate a deeper spiritual message; just as the Genesis authors used the concept of “days” to describe the creation of the heavens and the earth – the message being that God is the Lord of all manner of time, matter and beings.

 

Yet this phrase in Mark’s Gospel, “not permitting them to speak,” stuck in my mind. Mark did not write that Jesus forbade the afflicted persons to speak; Jesus forbade the demons to speak. Once separated from the possessed, these demons had a voice of their own, and a will and a personality of their own – they knew Jesus and he knew them. Clearly, the Gospel is not describing a psychological illness or epileptic siege. These are demons.

 

Exorcists say that demonic possession can often accompany mental illness, and mental illness can often give the appearance of possession or “obsession” by demons. So they must always rule out physical and psychological causes before deciding that demons are truly involved in the life of a troubled person. But they also are clear that demonic possession does occur. Demons are real. They are personal, individual spiritual beings who are smarter than humans and intend to do us harm.

 

I think we all know or suspect this fact. Demons are more than things that “go bump in the night.” A friend of mine recalls an exorcist saying: People may scoff at the existence of demons or the devil, but when they see a possessed person walking on the ceiling, they tend to believe.

 

I write this not to scare anyone, but to wake us all up to the reality of this evil. Demons, of course, have no direct power of us, and we can combat them through prayer, sacraments and the power of the name of Jesus Christ and his Precious Blood. God’s love and mercy expressed through his Church is stronger than even the devil himself, who is the biggest loser of all time.

 

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle!

Alabama Here We Come!

Readers familiar with the Fathers for Good website know that I am preparing for a big appearance on EWTN's "Life on the Rock" show on Thursday, Dec. 3, to talk about the Knights of Columbus program called Fathers for Good. Make sure to visit www.fathersforgood.org to see the jazzy pop-up notice our web designers have produced.

Joining me on the show will be Patrick Kelly, Vice President for Public Policy for the K of C, who is in charge of the Fathers for Good initiative. Patrick and his wife, by the way, are expecting to deliver their first child in January 2010, and I hear that Patrick may be showing a sonogram of his unborn baby on the air! So tune in just for that, if nothing else.

We look forward to meeting with hosts Father Mark Mary and Doug Barry, and to discuss with them the issues of fatherhood, family life and the challenges to both in the modern culture. I've never done an hour live show before, so please pray that I do well!

Patrick and I will be landing in Birmingham, Alabama, on Thursday morning and will go live from the EWTN studio at 8 PM (Eastern).

This is the first time Fathers for Good will be going live on a worldwide broadcast, and it's exciting to think about our website drawing more and more readers in the days and weeks to come.

The Knights of Columbus has been a big supporter of Mother Angelica and her Eternal Word Television Network from the start, and we are proud to be able to spread the word of our new fatherhood initiative through her popular cable network.

In addition to appearing on the "Life on the Rock" show, we will get a tour of the EWTN headquarters, have an opportunity to meet with the staff, have dinner in the dining hall and sleep over Thursday night in one of the guest houses.

I will have a full report of the trip when I return over the weekend.

Meantime, go to www.fathersforgood.org after the show to watch a taped version, and refer it to your friends.