Tuesday, February 26, 2008

3rd Sunday of Lent 24.2.08 Sermon

3rd Sunday of Lent 24.2.08 Demons away

We pray to St Michael to cast down to hell, Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Because evil spirits are invisible we are not sure how many there are, or exactly where they are. We hope our prayer to have them moved somewhere else is successful.

It would appear from the amount of trouble we experience in this life that there are quite a few devils at least hovering around us.

Not just that things go wrong, but there is the difficulty we experience in avoiding sin, and the severity of the temptations we undergo.

Not the least part of which is the state of our whole society, which is infested with sin in so many ways – but public indecency for one, if you need an example.

So why is the devil so hard to shake off? Why does God let him roam about like that? If Jesus could deliver people in His time, why not now?

Clearly He can still deliver, and it may only need more prayer for such to happen.

Our Lord’s parable about the seven demons gives us insight into what is going wrong. We do pray (sometimes); we do make some progress in holiness, but not enough to drive the devil away altogether.

We do one good deed, or overcome one temptation and we think we are doing a great job. No, we must be like soldiers. We win one battle; we do not relax but consolidate the victory and guard against any sort of enemy reaction.

How many people have experienced a conversion in their lives but then relapsed at some later point. (Many catechumens just don’t make it. Some don’t even get off the ground.)

It is harder than it sounds to make a complete conversion. It seems easy at first because the feeling is so good, but there is a lot of hard grind to follow. Thus complacency.

There is also discouragement. The demons will attack us in weak places and at weak moments.

As regards weakness, we must recognize it and stay humble. It is one reason God allows temptations to force us to be humble; otherwise we would think we were gods.

It very much requires living each moment fully attentive to God’s reality and His will. If we forget Him even for a time the sins will start flying in. We will be like a sheep walking down the main street, highly likely to be hit by something.

This is why we structure our prayer: Frequent Masses, rosaries, Confessions, acts of contrition, morning offerings, resolutions, grace with meals, divine mercy, and a hundred other things we can do to keep the spiritual reality before our minds.

Our religion is not something we switch on and off. The devil prowls around like a roaring lion (or like flies at a barbecue); he does not sleep; he does not forget his purpose. Nor can we. We do have to sleep but even our sleep can be guarded by prayer.

The more we do these things the stronger we become personally, but also the more we drive the devils away in general.

He has so many footholds in our present world, he can attack more comfortably. There is such a thing as a communal resistance. We do not fight alone. We can help drive away each other’s demons by giving a common front of trust in God, obedience, humility etc.

We really can drive the demons away. It is not just wishful thinking. Granted there will always be some around somewhere but 99 demons is better than 100, and the more we restrict their influence the better.

And we must keep driving them, or they will come back (like the seven in the gospel). Keep that prayer to St Michael going, and of course Deliver us from evil.