Deacon Larry

 

Thursday of the Forth Week in Ordinary Time

1 Kings 2: 1-4, 10-12; Mark 6: 7-13

Dc. Larry Brockman

“The twelve drove out many demons”.  How can we relate to that in our day and age?  Now the disciples were given power to cast out demons, and we just heard that they succeeded.  So, there were definitely demons in Jesus’ day.  Just exactly what were these demons like anyway?  Were they just some special phenomena that only existed in Jesus’ time?  Or are there demons all around us today that need to be cast out? 

Our secular society would like to deny the existence of demons.  It’s not something we hear about in the Church very often either.  But personally, I believe that there are demons today,  because I don’t think things have changed that much in 2000 years.  Human nature is human nature- it hasn’t changed.  And it is subject to the same kinds of influence today as 2000 years ago. 

I would project that demons show themselves to us in two ways.  First, there are demons who totally possess some people in our society.  Sadly, these are people who are Godless, self absorbed people who seem to thrive on, and constantly seek evil.  And they are bent on infecting anyone and everyone they come in contact with.  They are the ruthless and cutthroat in business; or people who are addicted to sex; or people who derive pleasure out of killing for example.  It would be great if we could cast these demons out of people, but that takes a special talent, and few have been given that talent.  The best we can do is recognize the possessed for what they are, pray for them, and avoid them.

Second, there are the demons who are trying to possess us.  They constantly try to derail us in our faith.  These demons show themselves to us as temptations, persistent and unrelenting temptations.  And when they succeed, it is almost as if they redouble their efforts to drag us further and further into sin until our temptations control our lives.  But we have free will, and we have the sacraments.  These demons can be cast out by our faith and resilience as Christians, with prayer, confession, and resolve not to sin again- in other words, repentance. 

The Twelve were sent out to preach repentance and that indeed is what is needed today by all of us.  We can cast out our demons when we repent, when we confess our sins, resolve not to sin again, and have control over our temptations. 

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