The devil and our vocation

In today's gospel (Mark 3:22-30), Jesus crosses swords, as He so often does, with the scribes, but his argument is subtle. The principle on which it depends is that no Kingdom divided against itself can stand. Jesus applies this principle to demonstrate that He cannot be in league with the devil.

The strength of this argument, however, was probably more apparent to the onlookers that heard it. How could anyone think that Jesus was an agent of Beelzebub if they had witnessed the ways in which He had cured the sick, healed the leper, restored hope to the hopeless, and shown mercy to those on the brink of despair? The very fact that the scribes raised the question says more about them and the state of their souls than it does about Him. This is yet again an example of something which today is unfashionable to say. Although we must not judge people’s intentions, the reality is that some people do act in bad faith with bad intentions, and all the while are quite happy to lord it over others.

This, by the way, seems to be the subtext of Jesus’ final remark about those who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit. Once someone has decided that God is wicked, that God is the source of evil rather than the source of all good, how will that person ever turn again? In the case of the scribes, they were witnesses to some of the most remarkable interventions that God had made in history, and yet here they were speculating about whether Jesus was really of the devil. Sinners can only be saved by God Himself, so how can they be saved if they have said God is in fact the source of evil?

In truth, however, the kingdom of the devil, such as it is, cannot but be divided against itself. Even if it is united by the desire to pull down every effort to build God's Kingdom, it is shattered with the division that comes from the ego-centred choices that separate every fallen Angel and every fallen soul from its Creator. Those choices are wrong not just because they are oriented towards the ego and not God; they are wrong also because they are an assault on the place that God wishes to assign us in the symphony of His goodness. The diabolical is literally that which is ‘thrown across’ - something violently at odds with the path it is meant to be on. 

The failure to recognise and pursue our vocation is not just a missed opportunity.  It is literally an initiation to the diabolical path that contradicts our eternal call.