Homily for 5th Sunday in OT

In this passage, Jesus is shown preaching, teaching about God, healing the sick, and driving out demons. The devil and his demons have authority over the fallen world, but Jesus comes to wage spiritual warfare and bring people into the kingdom of light. We should be aware of this spiritual reality and the constant battle for our souls. The devil's goal is to tempt us to sin and divide us from God. We must be aware of his influence and counteract it. The demons, like angels, are creatures with more power and intelligence than us, but they cannot overwhelm our free will. They operate through temptation, division, confusion, and doubt. We can resist by relying on our guardian angels and the intercession of the saints. In this passage near the beginning of Mark's Gospel, we see Jesus doing what he'll do for basically his entire ministry and what the church continues to do. So he's preaching, so he's teaching the people about God, he's healing, he's bringing healing to those that are sick, and then he is driving out demons, right, and the three that are very closely related because after our first parents sinned, Adam and Eve, we were in a certain sense sold into slavery and sin and the domination of Satan. Satan has a kind of authority over the world, over the fallen world, that is in rebellion to God. And so Jesus comes to wage warfare, right, he comes to wage spiritual warfare to bring us out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light, into the kingdom of light to drive out the influence and power of Satan. So I think it's important for us to be aware of this spiritual reality, right, it's good for us as we're kind of going about our days, or it can be easy to kind of lose sight of what goes on around us every day, 24-7, 365 days a year. And that is there is a spiritual war, mostly invisible to our eyes, and what are the stakes in this war between God and the devil? The stakes are our eternal souls, right, our eternal salvation either with God or without him, heaven or hell. And so the devil and the demons that are allied with him are in constant battle for our souls, right, they have a plan for us completely different from the plan God has for us. Their plan for us is despair, death, and ultimately damnation. And obviously God's plan for us is to grow in greater love with him in this world so that we can be with him forever in the next. And we get to cast the deciding vote between those two realities. But it's important for us to have an awareness of the devil and his influence in the world, not to have an over-outsized fear of him or his influence, right, because the devil is fine with either of two options, right, or either of two errors that we can make. If we give him much more credit than he deserves and we're in more fear of him, he's happy with that, he'll use that to his advantage, but also if we're completely unaware of his movement and his work in the world or in our lives, he'll be completely happy with that too. He often tries to work in the background. How easy is it to conquer an enemy if you don't even know that you're at war, right? So we have to have a sober realization of the devil and the demons and their work and influence in our lives so that we can counteract them. One of the best explanations, I kind of heard of this before, I think it was an author that brought up, you know, how are we supposed to fear the devil and demons or how much fear should we have of them? And I remember him saying, well, the devil is like a chained dog, right, and he's dangerous if you get close to him, right? So he's a creature, so he's not more powerful than God, he's not on the level of God, God is infinitely more powerful and stronger than the devil, but the devil can have that influence over us, especially if we allow him. So the devil and the demons' whole point and goal for us is to sin, right? So those are really our two enemies in this life, the devil and the demons and sin. Those are the things that will divide us and drive us away from God, and that's what the demons always try to do, is to get us to sin, to divide us, to drive us away from our relationship with the Lord. And that can also be, that's important for us to realize, because it can be a temptation as we look at the fallenness and the sin and the evil in the world, it's very easy for us to then attach that to particular people, right? We can look at all the evil influences that are in politics or media or entertainment industry or whatever else it might be, and we can just say, well, if those people weren't around or if these people would just get their act together, and there are people that, in a real sense, have sold themselves over to being allied with Satan and are pushing agendas that are certainly demonically inspired and all of that, but people are still, those people are still enslaved, right? So we always want to pray for the conversion of people that are wrapped up in that, and keep in mind that even though they might be going along with the devil's plan, that God still wants those people, he wants them to be freed from the power of sin and from Satan's clutches. So sin, whatever sin it is, again, always works to divide and make that breach in our relationship with the Lord, and so we just have to keep that in mind, be very clear about who our enemies are, again, sin and Satan and the demons that are allied with him. And so, you know, maybe just a quick little education for us on kind of the spiritual order, like what the demons are, what they can do, what they can't do. So the demons, like the good angels, they're creatures, so they're pure spirits, they don't have bodies, they can at times interact with the material world, they're much more powerful and much more intelligent than we are, so they're not limited in time and space in the same way that we are. They were created, and at their creation, they were given one choice. So unlike human beings, where over the course of our lives, we can be in the state of grace, we can fall into serious sin and reject God, then we can repent and come back into the state of grace, and then the decisive moment for a human being is their death, right? At that point, once we die, we enter into eternity, so our soul is set for all of eternity. We're either with God, we've chosen friendship with God, or we've rejected God. That's the decisive moment for a human being. Angels, the decisive moment was at the moment of their creation, or just after the moment of their creation, they were given a choice. They were tested like Adam and Eve were, and we don't know exactly what that test was, but it would have been a choice to choose themselves or God. So there were certainly many angels that chose to serve God, and then there were some that rejected God and chose to serve themselves, refused to be in relationship with God, and so they were then driven out of heaven, and there is no repentance for a fallen angel, for Satan or the demons, because they saw with much more clarity than we do the consequences of their decision and their action. So they knew that because of their superior intelligence and intellect in a much greater way than we do, so that's why there's no repentance for them. They had one choice, and they chose for all of eternity, whether to serve or to reject God. So again, what kind of influence can they have in the world? Well, they can have the influence, in a certain sense, that we allow them to. Again, the more that we fall into sin, the more that we're allowing their influence to come over our lives. And so there are very rare cases of possession, of demonic possession, that is a very real reality. It is much more rare. How do demons generally work and operate? Well, typically through temptation. They can put forward temptation or ideas into our minds, into our imagination, but they can't overwhelm, they can't take over our free will. We get to make the choice, we get to make the decision. So they can put things before us, and we choose to either accept or reject that. So it's never a sin to be tempted by a demon or the devil. If you recall, Jesus himself was tempted by the devil, but he never fell into sin. How else do they operate? Well, again, they seek to operate by dividing us, they want to divide us from one another, they want to divide us from God, from his church. The demons will sow confusion, doubt about God's goodness, about his plan, about his authority, and try to get us to doubt very, very basic truths that we know to be true. And if we go back all the way to the Garden of Eden, what was the temptation that the serpent put before Adam and Eve? Doubt about God's goodness. That, no, if you eat of the fruit of the tree, you'll be like God, God somehow holding back on you. And again, sowing doubt and confusion about just very basic truths that we know the truth of. We can think about the whole gender ideology, the sanctity of life, the fact that abortion is so prevalent in our society, it's certainly demonically inspired, we know that life begins at conception, we are aware of that truth, of that reality, and Satan has done, for his side, incredible work in trying to sow confusion and doubt in a lot of areas of human life. So it's important for us to just be aware of that's generally how they operate, and so that we can resist that. So how do we respond? How do we respond to the influence of the devil and demons in our life? Well, fortunately, God hasn't left us abandoned to our own devices, otherwise it would be a hopeless struggle. God's given us our guardian angels, he's given us the whole host of the archangels, the whole host of all the angels and saints to intercede and wage war and fight on our behalf. And so our responsibility is to make use of the weapons that God has given to us. So all of us, we've been baptized, we have a guardian angel, so we want to use our guardian angels, ask our guardian angels to defend us, to protect us, to guide our thoughts, guide our actions, guide our minds throughout a given day. If I'm struggling with a particular temptation or addiction to a particular sin, I can ask my guardian angel to give me strength, to help me be set free of that. If I'm having a difficult conversation with maybe someone in my family or a co-worker, maybe there's anger or resentment built up, I can ask my guardian angel to talk to their guardian angel to let there be peace and calm and understanding. So God's given us the Blessed Mother, he's given us the angels and the saints to intercede for us, and he wants us to make use of them. Our guardian angels can operate in a similar way to the demons, except they try to tempt us to do good. They'll give us good thoughts, good inspirations, holy inspirations to grow in greater love of God and of others. Another great weapon is prayer and the sacraments. We hear Jesus, after ministering and driving out demons and healing the sick, he takes time to spend, he takes time to be with his Heavenly Father in prayer. And if Jesus needed to pray, we certainly need to pray as well. Prayer unites us with God. It goes against that dividing strategy that the devil tries to use. St. John Bosco once said this, he said there are two things the devil is deadly afraid of, frequent communions and frequent visits to the Blessed Sacrament. Frequent communion, so receiving Holy Communion when I'm properly prepared in a state of grace, and then frequent visits to the Blessed Sacrament. Spending time in front of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, again uniting myself more and more to him. It's also important for us to form our minds, to learn our faith, to form our intellects so that I'm not vulnerable to when the devil is trying to sow confusion and doubt about the Church's teaching or about basic truths about humanity, the dignity of the human person, and that my mind is properly formed according to Christ and his Church. We also obviously want to take advantage of the Sacraments of Confession, or the Sacrament of Confession of Reconciliation. When I have serious sin or addiction to be free of that, that drives out again the influence of the devil in my life as well. Also, something I would just say to more specifically, if I have any involvement in the occult, so astrology, Ouija boards, seances, palm readings, horoscopes, anything like that, some people think well that's just kind of for fun, or it's not really a big deal, what that's doing is it's opening up portals, it's opening doors to demonic forces, so it doesn't mean that every time someone does that they're going to be possessed by a demon, what it does mean is that they're opening a door to their influence, to spiritual forces that are not in obedience to God. So if we have any involvement in that, obviously we want to stop, we want to go to Confession, repent of that, be freed of that sin, of that attachment, and again be more united with the Lord. So again, all this isn't meant for us to cower in fear, this isn't an even fight, God is much more powerful and stronger than the devil and the demons, but it's also again important for us to be aware of their reality, of their influence in our world and in our lives, so we don't fall prey to their temptations, to their deceptions. So as we continue to celebrate Holy Mass, let's ask Jesus for the grace to take advantage of the weapons, the spiritual weapons that He gives to us, to be aware of the spiritual warfare that is going on all around us, and to take advantage of the intercession of the angels and the saints, to take advantage of sacraments of prayer, especially of Holy Communion, so we can be more united with Him in this life and be with Him forever in the next.