The resurrection of Lazarus |
The preceding question dealt with miracles, with the Lord in general; the present one treats of the diverse classes of those miracles, that are four: miracles on the demons, on the celestial bodies, on the sick and on the dead and, lastly, of the miracles on the terrestrial material things.
The ancient peoples lived in a
continuous panic because of the spirits, to whom they attributed all the evils
that afflict humanity, especially diseases. The plastic representations
that the Assyrians and Babylonians have left us of the spirits, show us very
clearly the idea they had of them. A good part of religion was reduced to
fighting evil spirits through spells and exorcisms. This idea spread
widely in the western regions;
There is no doubt that there was a
lot of superstition in this, but that there was also a good dose of truth is
shown by Sacred Scripture, especially the New Testament. There are several
names by which they are usually designated: Satan, adversary; Devil,
accuser, slanderer; Belzebub, Belial. In the third chapter of Genesis
we are told how the serpent, the most cunning animal of all those God had
created, seduced the woman, making her eat “the forbidden fruit and break the
divine precept. To which the divine sentence was followed by cursing the
serpent and enacting the perpetual struggle between the serpent and the woman's
offspring until she crushes his head, obtaining a complete victory. Under
the image of the serpent, which had so much In ancient
superstition, the sacred author, an eminent poet, tells us
about the evil spirit; The
struggle that is predicted here is verified in the
history of humanity, both in primitive
peoples and in the most cultured,
ancient and modern. Proof of this is the
fascination that the people suffered, by virtue of which
they gave oblivion to the true God, to
embrace faith in the most absurd gods and in the value
of the most barbaric cults. The history of Israel is almost all of
it a struggle between the cult
of their God, who had so clearly revealed himself
to them, and the Canaanite, Phoenician, Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek
cults. In this fight the spirit of evil is always hidden. Sometimes
it appears under the name of Satan, as in Job 1,6.9.12; Reg 1
Pair 21.1; in the prophet Zechariah 3,1s, and in 1 Reg. 2.22ss, where
he inspires the false prophets to deceive the king of Israel. But he is,
above all, in the gospels and in the rest of the New books.
Testament where Satan's temptation is
discovered; that he begins by tempting Jesus to find out if he is, in
fact, the Son of God, the Messiah, and to separate him from the divine plans
and even subject him to his own, demanding that he pay homage (Mt. 4, ss). Confused
with the response of the. Sir, he retires, awaiting a better
occasion; but in the meantime he does not give up his commitment,
acclaiming Jesus as the Saint of God (Mk 1,24), the Son of God (Mk 3,12), the
Messiah (Lk 4,41), with in order to excite the enthusiasm of the crowds and
induce them to create difficulties for the ministry of Jesus, who for this
reason forced him to remain silent. Other times they complained about the
Savior, who had come to make war on them (Me. r, 24). And, effectively,
Jesus did it, not only enlightening souls and taking them out of the darkness
of their errors, but also ridding the bodies of diabolical
possession. The results of this struggle are declared by the words of
Jesus to the seventy-two disciples, who, sent to preach, returned elated
because even the spirits obeyed them in the name of Jesus: I saw, the divine Master
tells them, I saw Satan will fall from heaven like lightning. I have given
you power to walk over serpents and scorpions and over all enemy powers, and
nothing will harm you (Luke 10, I8S). The Pharisees, impressed by this
power of Jesus, attribute it to that of Belzebub, prince of demons, with whom
Jesus would have made a pact; but the Master replies by showing them the
absurdity of such an explanation and declaring that, if the empire of Satan
recedes, it is a sign that the kingdom of God is progressing. At the last
supper that Jesus celebrated with his disciples, the divine, Master
declares to them saying: Simon, Simon, Satan is looking for you to lie in wait
for you like wheat; but I have prayed for you so that your faith does not
fail, and you, once converted, confirm your brothers (Luke
22,3is). Allusion is to what will happen in the passion of
Jesus. However, from this prayer, Satan managed to win over the traitor
and put him at the service of the enemies of Jesus and ministers of the prince
of darkness (Luke 22, 3s; Jo. 13, 2.27). But, by the death of Christ, the
power of the devil will be undone and the ancient prophecy will be fulfilled:
She (the woman's offspring) will crush your head. Indeed, we read in Saint
John (12,31): Now the prince of this world will be thrown out. And further
on (16,1.1): The prince of this world is already judged. Such is the
meaning of the expulsion of impure spirits from the bodies of the
possessed. Saint Peter remembered this work of the Lord speaking to the
centurion Cornelius and to his house, saying: You know what happened; in
all Judea... how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with
power and how he went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the
devil, because God was with him (Mt. 10:30). The same apostle warns the
faithful that our adversary the devil, like a roaring lion, prowls around and
seeks someone to devour, whom we must resist armed with faith (1 Petr.
5,8s). The apostle Saint Paul also speaks to the Ephesians about the dark
powers to whom they lived subject and with whom they still have to fight (Eph.
2,2; 6,16); for, although defeated by Christ, He does not want to
admit his defeat and until the end he will continue in the fight. To the
Thessalonians he speaks of how the devil will confer his powers on the wicked,
on the man of iniquity, on the son of perdition, who rises up against all that
is divine (2 Thes. 2,3s).
But above all it is Saint John who
paints for us in the Apocalypse the struggles of the Church with the devil,
embodied in the persecuting pagan empire, Rome and her helpers. He begins
the struggle with the very mystery of the incarnation. When the woman
appears in the sky who, in the midst of labor pains, is going to give birth to
the Messiah, another figure is seen, that of the dragon, ready to swallow the
woman's child as soon as it comes to birth. But he did not achieve what he
intended, and so he gives himself to persecute his mother, who also flees into
the desert, far from the reach of the dragon, The Lord had seen Satan fall from
heaven, like lightning. It was victory over Satan. Saint John paints
for us a battle in heaven between the angels of God and the dragon with
his. They were defeated and thrown to the ground. It is the victory
of the faithful who overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their
testimony. But the dragon, furious, persecutes the children of the woman,
the faithful of Christ. Woe to the earth and the sea!, because the devil
came down to you animated with great fury, because he knows that he has little
time left (Apoc. 12,12). This fight ends in the battle of Armageddon, the
mount of Megiddo, where the Word of God, the faithful and true in fulfilling
his promises, comes together, followed by the heavenly armies, and the Beast,
accompanied by the kings of the earth with their armies, to give the decisive
battle. The author does not stop at the description of the fight, because
against the Word of God, who can fight? A breath from his mouth is enough
to undo the mightiest armies. And, in fact, that's how it
happened. the Beast and the false prophet being imprisoned, killed and
handed over to the birds of prey as many as followed them (19.1-21). And
the dragon, the ancient serpent, which is the devil, Satan, was caught and
condemned for a thousand years (20,1). During them Christ will reign on
earth with his saints, after these thousand years, Satan will be released
again, who will gather all the kings and nations of the earth and will come to
surround the camp of the saints, the beloved city. But he will come down
fire from heaven and devour them (20,9). And the devil will be thrown into
the pool of fire where the Beast and the false prophet are and they will be
tormented day and night for ever and ever (20,10). Then, says Saint Paul,
it will be the end, when Jesus Christ delivers the kingdom to God the Father,
when he has reduced to nothing all principality, all power and all power (1
Cor. 15,24). Such will be the end of the fight that Jesus engages with the
powers of darkness, meanwhile, He, as sovereign, to whom the heavens, the earth
and the hells themselves pay homage, will use the demons to test his chosen
ones, just as he uses the angels to defend them. For the disciples cannot
be in a better condition than the teacher. If he had to sustain a hard
fight with the powers of hell, his own will also have to sustain it.
II. celestial
phenomena
Jesus Christ denied the Pharisees the
miracles from heaven that they asked for. But in the death of Christ the
Father wanted to honor him with signs from heaven. It is Saint Luke who
tells us: It was about the hour of the sixth, and the mists covered the
whole earth until the hour of none; the sky darkened and the veil of the
temple was rent in the middle (23-44S). In Saint Thomas's commentary that
he gives us of these prodigies, he invokes the testimony of Saint Dionysius the
Areopagite, as a witness to the events. Saint Luke does not speak to us
about the eclipse of the sun, which would be the strangest thing in the full
moon, but about the darkening of the sky throughout the land that we must
understand as that of Judea, as in so many other passages of Sacred
Scripture. This phenomenon lasted about three hours, and it reminds us of
the darkness of Egypt, of which the Exodus tells us.
III. The sick
and the dead
It is the healing of the sick that
abounds most in the Gospel. It is that there were many then, as today, the
sick who wanted to be cured and went to that wonderful doctor, who with a
single word or with the contact of his hands returned everyone to full
health. And it goes without saying that all those who had experienced the
mercy and power of Jesus would give him their entire faith and
adherence. With this, Jesus also wanted to prove that whoever had the
power to cure the ills of the body also had the power to cure the ills of the
soul. This is why he says to the paralytic: Your sins are forgiven
you. And then: So that you may see that the son of man of man has power to
forgive sins, get up, pick up your bed and go home. (Mt. 9,6)
It is Saint John who most
particularly highlights this purpose of the miracles of Jesus, since this means
that, after curing the man born blind, he pronounces those words: While
I am in the world, I am the light of the world (9,5). And shortly
before he had said: I am the light of the world; whoever follows
me does not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life (8.12). And
when raising Lazarus he said: I am the resurrection and the life; whoever
believes in me, even if he dies, he will live (11,25). And because this
requires certain moral dispositions from man, that is why Jesus demands faith
from those who ask him for these favors, whether they are the sick, whether
they are his relatives, and because of this, Jesus feels as if he were
restricted by unbelief and, on the contrary, he shows great satisfaction when
he meets souls of great faith. There has been no lack in our times of
those who tried to explain Jesus' cures by the faith that works
miracles. This is one of many explanations how unbelief has invented
against the miracles of the Gospel.
IV. irrational
beings
To manifest Jesus, his power over the
entire creation, he also works wonders on irrational beings. He gave the
disciples abundant fishing (Io. 21,11), calmed the storm of the sea (Mt.
8,18-23), walked on the waters, provided a tetradrachma in the mouth of a fish
to pay the temple tax (Mt. 17,23-26), multiplied the loaves (Mt. 3-21;
15,32-39). All these facts respond to the same purpose of Jesus: to show
who He was and generate faith in the beneficiaries or witnesses of such
miracles.
Santo Tomás in these questions tries
to highlight the reason for the miracles, which comes to be the meaning of
them. The first that encompasses all miracles and that comes to be the
literal historical sense is to prove with them the dignity of his person, his
divine mission and the truth of his word. To this end, the Angelic raises
this question in an article: if the miracles performed by Jesus are sufficient
proof that God is with Him by personal union, that is, if he is truly the Son
of God; And his answer is yes. If we then look at each category of
miracles, it will offer us a special facet of the person of Jesus. The
casting out of demons will particularly test his power to undo the work of the
devil; the healing of diseases, his grace to heal the diseases of the
soul; the resurrection of the dead, his power to resurrect souls from
the death of sin; the calm of the storm, his power to dominate the storms
that fight souls and the Church; the miraculous catch, what the Lord
himself promised the apostles, to make them fishers of men,
etc. etc. These ideas can then be extended by allegorizing the
details of each prodigy, which, done discreetly and with theological sense, will
give an exegesis of the miracles that is very rich in doctrine and very
profitable.
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