Imagination is a remarkable capacity: for example, Samantha Harvey’s 2024 Booker Prize-winning novel Orbital imagines six astronauts on the international space station experiencing continuing dawns and evenings amid the minutiae of their unique routine. Can you imagine being present in the Capernaum synagogue as Jesus demonstrates victory over the bad spirit? Are you as amazed by the powerful healing action as by Jesus’ powerful Word?

After praying over this Gospel story, perhaps I will choose to listen, through conversation in the Spirit, to my companions’ responses…. ‘I was astounded’, one might say. ‘What is this – a new teaching?’ another might share. What seems to be the consensus among our group? Then, we listen again as each shares, how am I touched by what another has said? Finally, what seems to be emerging in our group?  Are we experiencing in real time the power of Jesus’ presence and teaching?

Today’s Gospel can be both a personal prayer experience and a taking on board of the process of Jesus’ recognition of and dealing with the bad spirit and an opportunity for group discernment and decision making. Do we desire the presence of the Holy Spirit in our discernment in common as well as in our daily Examen of awareness of God’s presence in the feelings, thoughts and encounters of each day?

Let us pray to be in today’s Gospel story, just as Jesus is there in all the events, joys and challenges in our own lives and communities.

by Peter Webb