There is a very curious and rather perturbing verse in Mark’s gospel
where the evangelist writes that Jesus’ relatives were convinced that he was
‘out of his mind’. Other translations
have it that Jesus was ‘beside himself’, or that he had ‘lost his senses’. Note that these comments or thoughts were
made not by the evangelist himself, but it was those who were close to Jesus,
and some translations describe these as his ‘friends’ or ‘kin’.
Why did they say that about him?
Well, in the context of the gospel, this episode comes right after Jesus
made his selection of his twelve apostles after having spent some time on the
mountain top in prayer, and after he descended, we see the crowd appearing
again, preventing them from even eating a meal.
It was at this point that his friends or relations were intent of
taking charge of him and made this comment about him. They were quite certain that something about
Jesus that was just not quite right.
Perhaps it was very much connected to the fact that his choice of
those whom he wanted to be his first missionaries – those 12 whom he appointed
and chose were a motley group that just seemed too unconventional, too
improbable and highly impractical, and definitely not safe in any sense of the
word. But we are told that this was a
result of prayer, alluded to the fact that he was on the mountaintop before his
choice. He chose fishermen, unlettered
and not Rabbinical in any way, and among these 12, there was even a
Zealot! And the cherry on the top of
this ungainly bunch just had to be Judas Iscariot, the one who was to
eventually betray him and lead him to his ignominious death on Calvary. And this was a result of prayer? No wonder he was labeled or thought of as
being ‘out of his mind’.
The spiritual life’s discipline and practice of meditation and
habitual contemplation helps one to develop what is known as mindfulness or
awareness. Being mindful has nothing at
all to do with being logical and pragmatic.
In fact, if you think about it, sitting in stillness and being aware of
one’s state of one’s breath and posture and having one’s attention settling on
the life force that is God is something that seems to have no bearing at all on
the complexities of life. The modern
mind is just prone to looking at everything from a practical and pragmatic, and
productive point of view. We have been
taught and trained from a very young age to get results, and to get them at a
high level, so much so that anything which tells us to simply ‘be’ strikes us
immediately as counter-intuitive and a waste of time, getting us nowhere and
perhaps hint of escapism.
Yet, if we are honest enough, we have to admit that there is
something inside of us that admires and appreciates people who are steady in
crises and who have the spiritual and moral courage to act and not react, who
manage to hold it together when things are falling apart, and who manage to have
the moxie that allows them to live in such a way that they are forever giving
their lives over to something else other than themselves. One thing that helps anyone do this is when
one is operating and acting apart from just one’s senses or mind, or as Mark
the evangelist puts it, when one is ‘out of one’s mind’.
Jesus wasn’t thinking along linear lines of a sensible choice and
worldly pragmatism when he chose those 12.
It was a moral decision that had repercussions that were dire for him,
but necessary for the world. I am quite
certain that the courage to do this was steeped in his being in prayer the
entire night.
Why are we called to be people of prayer and contemplation? Why is there this need of nurturing this deep
and real self of ours, to uncover as it were this ‘original face’ which we keep
burying inside, covered by layers of what we think people accept and want to
see? Why is this so difficult that so
many drop their attempts at it like a ton of bricks as soon as they begin it
and cannot see the rationalistic point of it?
It has something to do with the fact that most of us in this life are simply
too preoccupied with living for ourselves, and are reluctant to do the hard
work of removing the masks that we wear.
To do this, the spiritual masters have always advocated and recommended
that we get ‘out of our minds’ regularly.
When this is done with intent and with regularity, it helps us - by
giving us the courage to act for purposes outside of ourselves. Many have the wrong idea that being
contemplative and developing a good prayer life means just sitting in the
adoration room and enjoying a ‘spiritual spa’ time. While this is good, it certainly cannot be
the aim of our spiritual lives. We are
meant to be as Jesus says, workers in God’s vineyard, not Adoration Room
lizards. There is an action that we are
called to do, and we miss the point when we think that our Christian lives are
not about service and action in the community.
Even contemplative nuns and monks are mission-oriented in their
cloistered lives. What more the majority
of the laity who live outside of those walls of silence? Perhaps saying that we ‘prefer’ to just pray
in silence and not interact with others is our hidden pride at work, and our
justification for our not wanting to be hurt and bruised by the natural
conflicts that will surely result from living in a community of broken people.
Let us honestly ask ourselves this week – are we unable to make
inroads in active ministry? And if we
are, perhaps we may be still living and working in the confines and safety of
logic and cocooned safely in self-preservation.
It could be a sign that our prayer still hasn’t quite taken us ‘out of
our minds’.
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