We hear in today's gospel how Jesus - new Prophet - speaks and acts with astonishing authority. Jesus is always offering His followers a new way of looking at the human condition. A possessed man or a deaf person or a leper were viewed as mistakes or cursed in the religious-culture of Jesus' time. They were "out-casts"! Jesus casts out the evil which made the person the "out-cast". Jesus is offering us a different view of ourselves - His view. He has come to cast upon the earth a sacred sense of humanity. He enters into our human condition to redeem us.

Jesus comes, not as fire or thunder, but as the gentle voice of the loving God who desires to establish His Lordship over the possessed or wandering or injured of this world. He knows the ways of His opponents and drives them into defeat. As Christians we watch Jesus' victory in our lives. He drives out selfishness, violence and anxiety from our burdened lives. It is a battle; and to the patient and trusting, goes the victory.

As Moses raised his followers sense of themselves and led them out of slavery into freedom, so does Jesus! He draws us out of sinfulness and leads us from being enslaved to the evil forces to a life of freedom - of possessing ourselves in Jesus Our Lord.