Fr Paul Gooley reads today’s Gospel from Mark (3: 7-12) in which large crowds from all over the country follow Jesus everywhere and unclean spirits that saw him, fearfully recognised him as the Son of God. Fr Paul says Jesus withdraws to the lakeside, where the great crowd gathers which, Matthew will use as the audience for his great gathering of Jesus’ teaching, the Sermon on the Mount. Mark, here, gives us only a summary of Jesus’ wonderful works of mercy and healing. The importance of these works was that they showed the coming of God’s Kingship in the power of God wonderfully at work in Jesus. We, the witnesses, are gradually discovering who and what Jesus is. This is expressed not by the people but by the unclean spirits, whose testimony is more forceful than any human witness. Don’t forget that the first human being to hail Jesus as ‘son of God’ is the centurion at the foot of the Cross. The unclean spirits, like the unclean spirit in Mark 1.24, are forced to admit that God is at work in Jesus. It is perhaps possible to understand Mark as meaning no more than this. But the full Christian revelation of the Gospels leaves no doubt that Jesus was seen as himself divine. Fr Paul notes today’s Gospel Lesson: All of us – even Jesus – need a way to escape from time to time in order to recharge the batteries so that we can do more.