By Colleen O’Sullivan
Gird yourselves and weep, O priests! Wail, O
ministers of the altar! Come, spend the
night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God!
The house of your God is deprived of offering and libation. (Joel 1:13)
“Whoever is not with me is against me, and
whoever does not gather with me scatters. (Luke 11:23)
Piety
Lord, fill our hearts with your presence. Deliver us from evil, we pray.
Study
Our Scripture readings today are about the very real presence of evil in
our world. The prophet Joel speaks of
disorder in the house of God. The people
aren’t worshiping as they ought. He
says they should clothe themselves in sackcloth and repent, for the Day of the
Lord is near.
Jesus doesn’t just talk about evil; he’s busy fighting it. In the verse before today’s reading, he’s
driven a demon from a man who couldn’t speak.
The crowd accuses him of doing so by the power of Satan, which makes no
sense. Why would Satan want to drive out
his own cohort? Jesus goes on to say
that he casts out evil by the finger of God, and that means that the reign of
God is right there in the crowd’s midst, if only they would open their eyes to
the truth.
Once evil has been cleaned out, Jesus says we’d better fill ourselves with
the things of God, lest the emptiness be filled with an even greater evil. Satan wants nothing more than to come between
us and God. He wages a constant battle
to gain control of our souls. Jesus
knows that if we’re not 100% with him, Satan will wiggle his way in through the
tiniest crack in our relationship. The
days we don’t pray because we’re too tired or we’re too busy doing other
things, the Sundays we take a “vacation” from worship, the times we don’t
defend our faith when we’re hanging out with people who ridicule believers, the
missed opportunities to help the poor, the sick, or those vulnerable in any way
– these are Satan’s delight. They are
his way into our hearts.
Action
Maybe you don’t think in terms of the “devil” or the “evil one,” but
something or someone keeps pulling me away from being the person in Christ I
long to be. I can readily identify with
the Apostle Paul’s words: “For I do not do the good I want, but I
do the evil I do not want.” (Romans 7:19) What can I do about it?
In an October 2014 homily
on this Gospel reading, Pope Francis gives us a suggestion:
“We know – Jesus says clearly – that the devil always returns. Even at the
end of life, He, Jesus, gives us an example of this. And to guard, to watch, so
that the demons don’t enter in, we must be able to gather ourselves, that is,
to stand in silence before ourselves and before God, and at the end of the day
ask ourselves: ‘What happened today in my heart? Did anyone I don’t know enter?
Is the key in its place?’ And this will help us to defend ourselves from so
much wickedness, even from that which we could do if these demons, who are very
clever and at the end would cheat all of us, even if they enter.”
Try praying the Daily
Examen that Pope Francis suggests.
When you’ve done it for a while, you begin to see the areas where you
are particularly vulnerable to being pulled away from the Lord. You come to know better where to pray for the
Lord’s protection from evil.
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