Videos from Fr Claudio Doglio
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The miracles
Teaching in parables is a hallmark of Jesus. In chapter 4 of his story, the evangelist Mark collected some emblematic parables from Jesus’ teaching. The first, almost programmatic, is the parable of the sower, followed by another short, exclusive account by the second evangelist. Only Mark presents the parable of the seed that grows by itself.
“Jesus said, ‘This is how it is with the kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land, then sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Of its own accord, the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come.’”
This is a parable of grace. It announces God’s extraordinary intervention, which produces fruit even when no one knows how it happens. The farmer, after sowing, can sleep or stay awake, and his knowledge of botany does not determine the result. The evangelist Mark emphasizes that grace produces extraordinary effects for those willing to accept the Word.
Let us not forget that Mark primarily addresses beginners, catechumens, those fascinated by the person of Jesus, and those interested in knowing his message and meeting him. Therefore, at the beginning, it is necessary to announce, above all, the grace of God. It is He who acts; it is He who takes the initiative.
The mustard seed teaches that the small initial word can become a tree; it can welcome the birds of the sky and become a custodian and protector. Jesus does not compare the kingdom of God to a speck of dust to indicate that the speck of dust is small. The speck of dust always remains as it is; it does not change.
In contrast, the mustard seed is very small; when placed in the palm of your hand, it is barely visible as a black dot, yet when sown, a plant of almost three meters tall emerges.
The decisive element is the process; it is the change; it starts small but grows; it transforms into a tall shrub. This is the kingdom of God. If you welcome it, he enters your life and transforms it.
“With many such parables, he spoke the word to them as they were able to understand it. Without parables, he did not speak to them, but to his own disciples he explained everything in private.”
Mark does not say that Jesus spoke in parables to simplify things; the evangelist already told us otherwise. The disciples need an explanation. It is not true that the parables are elementary. They could understand Jesus’s great message in an illustrative way: barelytouching reality and provoking the listener to reason, understand, enter history, and become the story’s protagonist. The disciples privately asked Jesus for explanations because they did not understand the parables.
Parables are not simple tales for the simple or ignorant. They are elegant, learned elements born of sapiential reflection. They are intended for intelligent people who use their heads and hearts to enter into dialogue with the Lord. You can understand his teaching not only because you have listened to it, but also because, remaining with the Lord, you can ask him for an explanation, and the teacher explains everything to those with him.
But after narrating the parables, the teaching done with words, Mark emphasizes Jesus’s actions. His word is effective and powerful; he makes good on what he says. So we find a series of miracle tales at the end of chapter 4 and throughout chapter 5. On that same day, the preaching of the parables on the beach of Capernaum ended. When evening comes, Jesus invites the disciples to cross to the other side of the lake.
“Leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A violent squall came up, and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up.”
The Lake of Galilee, surrounded by hills, especially the heights of the Golan to the east, often allows violent currents of air to pass through, causing sudden storms on the lake. It’s a windstorm. Jesus, tired after a day of teaching without the means of amplification we are accustomed to outside, which requires an enormous commitment of strength, falls asleep on the boat. On the other hand, the disciples are busy rowing, holding the rudder, and raising and lowering the sails, and the wind blowing against them scares them. The boat fills up with water.
The story that Mark tells us likely derives from hearing St. Peter preach directly. Remember that we said at the beginning that Mark was a disciple of Peter. He grew up with him and learned the Gospel by listening to the stories of the disciple Simon, who recounts his angry reaction toward Jesus.
“He (Jesus) slept on the stern on a cushion,” Mark reports that particular useless detail about the pillow. The image must have impressed him, having heard Simon Peter recount the episode many times. While Simon Peter, an expert fisherman, works hard to steer the boat, he does not see Jesus. Then he glimpses him on the opposite side, sleeping on a pillow. Peter has a very difficult job to do … and Jesus sleeps. Have you ever had an experience like that, being super busy and seeing someone else doing nothing?
Peter gets nervous, confronts Jesus, wakes him up, and says, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” It is as if saying, “Do you sleep and leave everything to us?”
“He woke up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Quiet! Be still!’ The wind ceased,and a great calm fell. Then he asked them, ‘Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?’”
The disciples still have no faith. They are afraid in the middle of that stormy night. The disciples are scared; they don’t trust Jesus. They scold him for sleeping: “You don’t care about us.” This is a very human question for those who find themselves in difficulty, and they appeal to the Lord, reproaching him for “leaving me in this situation, you don’t care about me.” I am afraid because I do not trust him. After all, despite all the words, there is still no strong faith that he would save me, even though he is the one who handles reality. The disciples are amazed because, as soon as Jesus gets up, he does not put himself at the rudder, at the oar, or at the rope of the sail, but he speaks to the wind and the sea, and the wind and the sea immediately obey Jesus, not the disciples.
And, particularly, very important, the forces of nature obey Jesus, while the disciples resist him. Jesus’ relatives consider him mad; the scribes maliciously judge him as an ally of the devil. “And the disciples were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?’” But they have not yet answered the question: Who is Jesus? Who is he? A very powerful man? Obviously, one who has made the stormy wind and the rough sea obey him. And those fishermen knew about situations like this.
Mark cleverly poses important questions throughout his Gospel: Who is he? Remember him in the synagogue of Capernaum, where, when Jesus begins his ministry, people ask themselves: “What doctrine is this? This is something new, united with authority.” Now the disciples ask the same question.
In the first part of Chapter 5, they meet a strange character on the other side of the lake. We find the story of the liberation of the possessed man from Gerasa. It is a story that Mark expands considerably compared with Matthew’s parallel narrative in chapter 8; you will notice how much longer Mark’s story is. Therefore, it is incorrect to say that Mark summarized the Gospel. Mark’s Gospel contains fewer episodes and far fewer words than Matthew’s, but it is not a summary of those episodes. He tells them in a much more detailed way than Matthew.
This is a typical case: the man dominated by evil is a victim of the devil. He is a man who lives in tombs, dominated by an impure spirit. He describes it with great emphasis:
“The man had been dwelling among the tombs, and no one could restrain him any longer, even with a chain. They had bound him with shackles and chains, but he had pulled the chains apart and smashed the shackles, and no one was strong enough to subdue him.”
He is an irrepressible man, a fury that lives amid the tombs. It is an image of humanity, of this poor humanity in the grip of sickness: it is furious and indomitable. As soon as Jesus sets foot on the shore, he is attacked by this furious man, who yells insults at him:
“What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me!” (He had been saying to him, “Unclean spirit, come out of the man!”)
It is the same thing we have already seen in the synagogue of Capernaum at the beginning of the ministry. Jesus commands the wind and the sea: “Calm down!” And now he orders the unclean spirit: “Get out!” And there is this evil power that dominates man; it hurls itself against Jesus and refuses to be tormented.
Jesus speaks to that man and asks him questions. “He asks him: ‘What is your name?’He replies, ‘Legion is my name. There are many of us.’”
The Greek text says: ‘Λεγιὼν’ = legion. It is a Latin word, a military term that recalls the Roman occupation army. There is a ‘legion’ occupying a man. There was a military-political problem affecting the people of Israel in those years. Still, another type of occupation is far more worrying than that of the Roman legions occupying the territory of Israel. There is an occupation by diabolical legionaries; the world of evil corrupts man, and the strength of Christ frees this man with a particular gesture.
That legion of devils enters the pigs grazing in that region, and the pigs fall into the sea, a somewhat strange narrative for our thinking. First of all, let’s not forget that pigs were considered impure, and therefore, there were no pigs in the territory of Israel. If there are herds here, it means they are abroad. The other part of the coast of the Lake of Galilee belongs to the Decapolis, inhabited by Greeks rather than Jews.
Reference is made to the city of Gerasa, which was about 20 kilometers from the lakeshore and the main city of that region. We are in a pagan environment abroad. The pigs raised by these people evoke a world of corruption. Those who have heard the news arrive. They see the man, now possessed by the legion, healthy, calm, dressed, and sitting quietly; he has been released. However, Jesus not only did good to that man but also harmed the pig farmers who invited Jesus to leave their region.
To make myself understood, I try to imagine the situations. Think about the big gains drug dealers make, and how their earnings depend on having many customers. If someone undertakes to recover people from drug addiction and get them out of the drug dealers’ loop, these people do good for humanity, but they harm the pig farmers. We often hear news of women who come from poor countries and are exploited, held in situations of actual slavery, and used as prostitutes. If someone undertakes to free these women, it causes damage because those who manage them gain from having them as slaves. Evidently, those who undertake to take people away from these systems of exploitation produce economic damage to the pig farmers.
These invite Jesus to go away. A genuine commitment to man annoys those the evangelist, in the symbolic language of the East, calls pig breeders, those who play the sinister game of keeping man under pressure.
“The one who had been possessed by a demon asked him to allow him to accompany him. But Jesus did not allow him. Instead, he said: ‘Go home to your family and announce to them all that the Lord, in his pity, has done for you.’”
This is a mission. He, who was demonized and is now healthy, the free man from the power of evil, becomes a missionary. An evangelizer, “Go home to your family and announce to them all that the Lord in his pity has done for you.” That is, the power with which the Lord freed you is your human experience of liberation, which you must testify to, not a theory but a concrete experience you have experienced firsthand.
The other miraculous episode that immediately follows the rest of chapter 5 includes two stories of healing and resurrection, one embedded in the other. The head of the synagogue goes to call Jesus because his 12-year-old daughter is dying. Jesus agrees to go with him, and along the way, he is touched by a woman suffering from bleeding. She commits an illegal act because she knows she is impure; she should stay away from people, much less touch a rabbi, but thinking that this man can heal her, she instead secretly touches the fringe of Jesus’ cloak from behind and feels a power in her that heals her, and Jesus feels a power too.
In this case, Mark points out that no one had managed to heal that woman, who had tried many things, seen many doctors, spent a lot of money, and still was not healed. Indeed, it had gotten worse. It is an almost ironic brushstroke by Mark; just as no one could bind the possessed person, no one could heal this woman.
Once at the house of the head of the synagogue, the child is now dead, and Jesus calls her back to life. He says to her father: ‘Continue to have faith, trust even when there is no more life (because as long as there is life, there is hope … we say). Now there is no more life; continue to have faith because Jesus accomplishes what is impossible and goes beyond expectations.’
Mark informs us of the word of Jesus, ‘ipsissima verba Jesu,’ as the biblical scholar Joaquin Jeremias would say: the very words of Jesus, “Talitá kum” (talita – girl; kum – get up). Also, Mark adds, “I tell you,” to convey the tone of Jesus’ voice. He says with a strong command: “I tell you, get up!” Jesus commands the wind, the sea, the devil, and death. He commands, and they obey him. Everyone is amazed at Jesus’ great power.
He returns to Nazareth, his country. Among his people, there is a flop, a failure. His people do not believe him; without faith, Jesus cannot perform prodigious signs. He cannot free those who do not trust him. We are once again in a dimension of rejection and polemical opposition. Thus ends the second part of the first great section told by the evangelist Mark.