Satan Falls From The Sky

Saturday of the 26th Week in Course 2023

The prophet Baruch is acknowledged in the book of Jeremiah as a kind of protégé of the prophet Jeremiah; in fact, he certainly acted as Jeremiah’s scribe for a time. The book that bears Baruch’s name–his Hebrew name means “blessing”–was probably written a couple of hundred years after Jeremiah’s time, because it reflects the experience of the Jews who left Judea and settled elsewhere, like in Egypt or Babylon. These were the people of the dispersion, the “Diaspora,” whose scholars translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek and gave us the deuterocanonical books of Judith and Maccabees and the inspiring prayers of the book of Daniel.

If you want a simple explanation of much of Baruch, simply change the verbs from past tense to future and compare them with the curses found at the end of Deuteronomy. Baruch essentially tells his listeners, “Look, God promised that if you abandoned His proper worship to run after demons, you would be exiled from your home. That’s exactly what the Lord did to you, even after warnings without number. Now learn your lesson and stay faithful to the true God.”

Our Gospel today reflects the psalmist’s joy at the raising up of the poor and the promised salvation of Israel, fulfilled in the person and mission of Our Lord Jesus Christ. His thirty-six pairs of disciples, sent on mission to north, south, east and west, return to report the great things done by the Holy Spirit during their preaching tours. Jesus shares with them His vision of the great dragon, Satan, falling from the sky by the power of God His men displayed. But He tells them to rejoice only in their filial relationship with the Father, whose power made the miracles and exorcisms happen. He broke into spontaneous prayer to the Father, and comments on His real mission as He purposely moves toward Jerusalem: “No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” We are called into adoptive filiation by the Father, and we know what it is and how to attain it by hearing and obeying Jesus, His Son. The disciples, and we who follow in their footsteps, are privy to a message that the OT prophets and saints would have given their right arm to attain. Blessed be God’s holy Name forever.