United States Conference of Secular institutes

USCSI REFLECTIONS

Mark 9:38-40

In today’s gospel, Jesus’ disciples are declaring that exorcists who drive out demons in Jesus’ name but do not follow him should be prevented from using Jesus’ name. But Jesus has a much broader picture, declaring that others cannot use his name to accomplish their deeds and at the same time speak ill of him. Therefore, “whoever is not against us is for us,”he states. Just think of what kind of world we could have if instead of spending our time trying to figure out who is in and who is out, we just focused on the all-inclusive pic­ture as Jesus did.