This blog follows the daily bible readings of the Catholic Church

Reading 1, 1 Corinthians 2:10b-16

The gifts of the spirit are not out-of-this-world experiences; they are the best human qualities.

10 to us, though, God has given revelation through the Spirit, for the Spirit explores the depths of everything, even the depths of God. 11 After all, is there anyone who knows the qualities of anyone except his own spirit, within him; and in the same way, nobody knows the qualities of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now, the Spirit we have received is not the spirit of the world but God’s own Spirit, so that we may understand the lavish gifts God has given us. 13 And these are what we speak of, not in the terms learnt from human philosophy, but in terms learnt from the Spirit, fitting spiritual language to spiritual things.

14 The natural person has no room for the gifts of God’s Spirit; to him they are folly; he cannot recognise them, because their value can be assessed only in the Spirit. 15 The spiritual person, on the other hand, can assess the value of everything, and that person’s value cannot be assessed by anybody else. 16 For: who has ever known the mind of the Lord? Who has ever been his adviser? But we are those who have the mind of Christ.

Gospel, Luke 4:31-37

31 He went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and taught them on the Sabbath. 32 And his teaching made a deep impression on them because his word carried authority. 33 In the synagogue there was a man possessed by the spirit of an unclean devil, and he shouted at the top of his voice, 34 ‘Ha! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are: the Holy One of God.’

with authority

35 But Jesus rebuked it, saying, ‘Be quiet! Come out of him!’ And the devil, throwing the man into the middle, went out of him without hurting him at all. 36 Astonishment seized them and they were all saying to one another, ‘What is it in his words? He gives orders to unclean spirits with authority and power and they come out.’

37 And the news of him travelled all through the surrounding countryside.

To understand what Paul means by the Spirit, we can start with the story of Jesus healing the man with the unclean spirit. People are possessed by evil because of what they’ve done and/or because of what’s been done to them. Their whole being is taken over and distorted by what we might call transpersonal social forces but the bible simply designates as evil spirits. It might be a spirit of greed, or fear, or shame, or isolation or violence, or indeed mixtures of all these and others. Jesus speaks with authority, that is, out of his own experience and for God. He is completely unable to believe that God might not want to cure this person. By means of his healing authority, the alien spirits are expelled leaving the person whole.

This expulsion of alien worldly powers is also part of what Paul calls the gift of the Spirit. The worldly patterns of thought and behaviour, which have been so well learned, must be forcibly expelled from the believer’s life.

What about the in-dwelling of God’s Spirit? We must never make the mistake of thinking that God’s Spirit behaves just like an evil spirit, only it’s good. God does not “take possession” of a person, nor establish himself as a “force within.” God is not alien, and already dwells in the created being of all creatures and their shared life. God is already at home, it’s we who allowed disruptive tenants to take over the house. Once they’ve gone, we have to cultivate the presence of God, who awaits us in our individuality and our shared relationships. So our houses are not merely cleaned and swept-a standing invitation to alien squatters-but occupied by our true selves.

This is so different from the experience of worldly people –some of whom are also religious and even charismatic-that it will be easily dismissed. There are religious people who want God to behave like evil spirits do, dominating and demonstrating his presence. They have their reward.