Readings: 1 Samuel 1.9-20; 1 Samuel 2.1,4-5.6-7,8; Mark 1.21-28
We can speak of our relationship with God as the encounter of two freedoms. It is a rich thought and opens the path to many essential reflections. The readings today, however, invite us to consider our relationship with God, our life of faith, from another perspective, as the encounter of two truths.
Hannah teaches us about the power of truth in prayer. The priest standing by thinks she is drunk, but no, she explains, just intoxicated by a deep sorrow and misery. Giving expression to her distress, and expressing the desire for what she believes will heal it, gives her prayer its power. We are tempted to say its 'infallible power', for God must attend and respond to prayer coming in that way. Her prayer is clearly, as George Herbert says, an 'engine against the Almighty'.
In the gospel reading we hear of the power of truth on the lips of Jesus, the authority and 'infallibility' of his words: 'he commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him'. Jesus speaks the words of God, the truth God desires to reveal and communicate to us. Even more, he is, we believe, the Word of God himself, incarnate, and so the presence of the Truth God is in our flesh and in our history.
Note that in each case - Hannah and Jesus - we are not dealing with 'cold' truth, with brute facts, but with a truth that springs from deep desire, with words that interpret that desire, in Hannah's case for a child, in Jesus's case for the healing and salvation of people, their freedom to live towards the fulness of life he came to bring us.
Our task for today then is this: live in the power of these two truths that encounter each other within us, the truth of our need and desire, perhaps our sorrow and misery, and the truth of God's address to us, the revelation of his desire that we should be well, and free, and powerful in serving his kingdom of love, justice and truth.
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