The Pharisees of Perea

Chapter VII: The Pharisees of Perea

I: The Lord’s Prayer — The Two Blind Men — The Dumb Devil — The Sign from on High

Luke ix. 1-36; Matt. ix. 27-34; xii. 38-45.

On leaving of Bethany Jesus again crossed over the Jordan in order to evangelise the mountainous country of Galaäd, then under the role of Herod Antipas, and known by the name of Perea.  He is in some lonely locality of this region when Saint Luke proceeds with his narrative.  His disciples, drawing a little to one side, were standing gazing upon Him as He preserved the posture which every Oriental keeps when in prayer,— erect, with uplifted arms, and eyes raised Heavenward.  So soon as He had made an end of praying one of them approached Him.

"Lord," he said, "teach us to pray, just as John did for his disciples."

The Lord's Prayer. J-J Tissot.

Those who had been in the Baptist's company were numerous in these lands lying alongside the Jordan; apparently it was one of John's penitents who made this request of Jesus.  A newcomer among the Apostles, he had not as yet learned that Prayer which the Lord gave them upon the Mount of Beatitudes; but remembering that the Forerunner had prayed with his disciples, this one longed to have Jesus do the same.

The Master granted his wish.

"When you pray," He responded, "say: Father, hallowed be Thy Name; Thy Kingdom come.  Give us this day our daily bread.  And forgive us our sins, since we ourselves forgive those that are indebted to us; and lead us not into temptation."

This second form of the Lord's Prayer is a precious item in our inheritance: as it is given with fewer words in Saint Luke than in Saint Matthew, it shows us that Jesus, even while prescribing certain formulas for our use, left the spirit of prayer free to soar upwards unhampered.  All that seemed of the highest importance in His eyes was that we should call upon God as a Father, desiring, above all things, spiritual good things, and asking them for others as well as for ourselves, charity warm at our hearts and with the spirit of forgiveness upon our lips.

Furthermore, of such vital necessity is this duty of prayer that the Master was moved to speak more at length thereof, charging them to pray without ceasing, pray unwearyingly; for though God may seem sometimes to be deaf to our cries, it is only to make us more sensible of the greatness of His gifts, to render the soul lowlier, and to overpower it with loving kindness and tender mercies.  As He was wont to do, He puts these lessons before them in a figurative form.  Now He speaks of a father who would not give his hungry child a stone in place of bread, nor a scorpion instead of an egg, nor a serpent when he is asked for a fish; then again He tells of a poor but hospitable man who has received some wayfarer in the middle of the night; at once he hastens off to knock at the door of a neighbour's house.

"Let me have three loaves," he calls out; "for a guest has arrived at my house from off his journey, and I have nothing to offer him."

But the friend has gone to rest, his children at his side, his dwelling barred and shut for the night, and he has no mind to rise from his bed.  But his neighbour standing without in the darkness will not take any refusal; he keeps on rapping, still rapping, until the other yields to his entreaties, giving him what he needs.

"And in like manner, I say to you," the Lord pursued, "ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you."

It was about the same time, if not upon the very same day, that we are told of two miracles performed by Jesus.  He was betaking himself to a dwelling whose proffered hospitalities he had just accepted, when two blind men became aware of His passing; forthwith they set out to follow Him, crying out:—

"Son of David, have pity up on us!"

At first the Lord appeared not to hear them; publicly to accept this honourable title in Perea within the domains of Herod would have been to proclaim Himself the Messiah, and would have at once reawakened the jealousy of the tetrarch.  To evade this danger He therefore sought shelter within a dwelling; but even there the unfortunate men managed to rejoin Him.  Their faith moved the Saviour greatly.

"Do you believe," He said to them, "that I am able to do this for you?"

To this they replied, simply,—

"Yes, Lord."

Then He touched their eyes, saying,—

"Let it be done unto you according to your faith!" and upon the instant they recovered their sight, while Jesus sternly warned them "to take care and let no one know of this!" But they, listening only to the promptings of this new-born joy, spread the report throughout all that land, and thus, like so many others, only aggravated the dangers and the enmities beneath which the Master was soon to succumb.

In the Saviour's eyes it was more important to drive out the devils of passion than to heal bodily ills; for, after withstanding the blind men's demand so long, we see that He does not delay an instant to deliver a dumb man who was vexed with an evil Spirit.  This possessed mute was brought to Him at the very moment when the two Jews were leaving the house; and, when the the Demon was driven out, the man straightway began to speak.  All were thrilled with wonder and awe.

"No one," cried they, "ever yet saw aught like this in Israel."

But hereabouts, too, there were Pharisees, some of whom were well informed of those calumnies which had been circulated throughout Galilee, and they repeated them to one another of these poor people whom they knew so well how to deceive.

"Tis in Beelzebub's name," they whispered, " that he casts out devils."

Again Jesus withstood this slander with the fact that they themselves and their sons drove out the devil without borrowing the weapons of the fiend, and that, like earthly kingdoms, Hell cannot be divided against itself on peril of its own existence.  And yet if they acknowledged that the power Jesus had shown over Satan came not from Beelzebub, but from Heaven, then surely the hour foretold by Isaiah was here upon them, when the Kingdom of God would be established.  "Who shall despoil the giant of his prey," the Prophet cried; "who shall rob a strong man of his captives?" "the captives of the giant shall be reft from him," Jehovah had made answer, "and those that the mighty man has taken shall be drawn from his clutches."

The Oracle was now fulfilled.  In vain had Satan, "the stronger man armed, guarded his dwelling, and trusted that his peace was never more to be disturbed: a stronger than he had appeared, had stripped him of his armour, and distributed his spoils."

Under such warlike imagery did Jesus proclaim Himself the Vanquisher of the Devil, and announced to mankind, who by sin are become the prey and bond-servants of Hell, that He had come to break the chains of slavery, bestowing upon them eternal goods.

Yet all were not to be gladdened by such deliverance, for the people so long cherished by God had at last stubbornly rejected salvation.  Taking a possessed man as a fitting comparison, Jesus showed the headstrong blunders of the Jews and their approaching ruin.  He spoke of the Devil of Idolatry, as it came out from Israel in the time of the Babylonian Captivity, rumoured to wander amid waste and waterless spaces, through those wrecks of time where in the language of Isaiah, "their pleasant palaces are filled with dragons, where Satyrs lead their dances, and the owls hoot to one another." Not finding repose in any quarter he returns into the land of Juda, afortime his abode, finds it chastened and purified, swept clean of its idolatries, but garnished with a righteousness that is altogether of the exterior.  Whereupon, assured of new victories, he makes haste to take seven other Spirits, all wickeder than himself, and returning into Israel they there set up their abode, and her last state becomes worse than the first.

Did the Pharisees recognise how perfectly this image resembled themselves?  There is nothing to indicate that they did; nevertheless, though the bandage still blindfolded their eyes, the people put no restraint upon their own delighted wonderment, in so much that one woman, as if constituting herself the mouthpiece of the multitude, cried aloud just at this moment:—

"Blessed the womb which bore Thee, and that perhaps that gave Thee suck!"

"Ay, doubtless," responded Jesus, "but blesseder still are those who here and keep the word of God!"

By this He gave Israel of the flesh to understand that there is a blessedness more exalted than that of any earthly mother would, albeit Divine,—that of conceiving Jesus Christ in the heart by the quickening warmth of faith, and bearing Him outwardly before man in the open fulfilment of His behest and good pleasure.

Meanwhile the throngs grew denser, for after the healing of the possessed certain of the Jews had demanded some more extraordinary miracle, — "some Sign coming from Heaven." The Lord, preoccupied with refuting the Pharisees’ slanderous attacks, had not as yet refused their request, and so there were still some hopes lingering among them that they were soon to see a new and startling prodigy.  Turning toward the men who had excited these varying expectations, Jesus dealt with them as with "an accursed and adultererous race," and answered them "that there should no Sign be given them save only that of Jonas Prophet."

This was a well deserved rebuke, for it was but one more insult to the Christ that they were still unsatisfied with the marvels which He was forever multiplying on every hand.  In order to convince these hardened hearts it would indeed require the Voice of Jehovah Himself, sounding from the heavenly Heights, to confirm the miracles of Jesus as being Divine.  What wonder, then, that the Lord left these incredulous men no hope of any sign other than that one He had destined for the whole world,— His Resurrection, which long since had been prefigured in Jonas.  After three days, passed in the depths of the sea, the Prophet had emerged thence bearing salvation to Nineveh; so, too, the Christ would rest three days and three nights in the earth's dark bosom, and from thence rearise all glorious.  But this Sign, though so wondrous as to convert all Gentile nations, would leave the Jews alone in their blindness.  This Jesus now foretold to them, and thus beforehand bewailed their reprobation.

"The men of Nineveh," said the Lord, "shall rise against this race and shall condemn it, for they did penance at the preaching of Jonas, and One greater than Jonas is here.  The Queen of the South shall rise in judgment against this race, and she shall condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and there is here One greater than Solomon."

Totus tuus ego sum 

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:
Ad Jesum per Mariam