THE 26TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME YEAR B - 25th & 26th September 2021 - Holy Trinity Parish

by Kerry Burns - Pastoral Leadership Team

REFLECTION
Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48

In this Gospel, Jesus teaches tolerance. He asks his disciples to be tolerant. After they ‘saw someone driving out demons’ in the name of Jesus, they prevented this outsider from performing exorcisms because he was not one of the ‘official’ followers of Jesus. Perhaps the disciples were jealous or angry because the man could also cast out demons? Perhaps they thought the power to exorcise demons was a privilege given only to the followers of Jesus? We shouldn’t assume that salvation is reserved only for those of us who were baptized and believe in Christ, or that salvation only comes to those with faith, belonging to his Church and receiving the sacraments. This is not an exclusive club and we should guard against this intolerance, jealousy and anger. ‘For whoever is not against us is for us. Perhaps we need to keep this in mind and focus more on the fact that Jesus is source of salvation; the rest is just his medium.