The Gospel tells us today that Jesus spoke "with authority."

To speak with authority means that Jesus was authentic. He was true and real. His words were not platitudes or deceptions.

The Internet often traps people in what is not authentic.

And fundamentaism is like hardening concrete. it locks people into concrete positions which are inescapable.

Frozen mindsets which become impervious to change. So there are a significant number of people who believe Trump won the  election!

 Pope Francis:

"Faced with ..the rigid mindset,we must resist. Fundamentalism is a mind set of assembling thought and behavior as a refuge that supposedly protects a person from destabilization in a crisis. Such mindsets offer to shelter people ...in exchange for a kind of existential quietism.

They offer you an attitude and a closed way of thinking, as a substitute for the kind of thinking that opens you to truth. Whoever takes refuge in fundamentalism, is afraid of seeking out the road to  truth.

He already  "has the truth" and deploys it as a defense, so that any question of it is interpteted as an aggression against his person."

from "Let Us Dream..." Pope Francis

These wise words help us to see how right wing fanatics "see the truth."

We so need in our time what is authentic, and yet social media too often is counterfeit.

The Bible identifies Satan as the "Father of all lies/"

"Be sober and watchful, for he goes about like a roaring lion, seeking those he may devour."

So we pray in the Our Father,

"Deliver us from evil."