1 Sm. 18:6-9, 19: 1-7; Mk. 3:7-12
“You are the Son of God”. Who proclaims this? It is the unclean spirits who “prowl around the world seeking the ruins of souls” as we are reminded in the St. Michael’s prayer. “And whenever unclean spirits saw him they would fall down before him” and could not face the Son of God. In proclaiming you are the Son of God reveals his divinity yet Jesus is not ready “to make him known” scripture says. As the Son of God you could imagine someone who is and was to be king wanting to make himself known immediately with all the fanfare of a king. God’s ways are not our ways and he understood that he must prepare his disciples on becoming apostles to remain in him with teaching, understanding and with courage to sacrifice. In the Old Testament David make reference to the Son of Man who is to come. This speaks to how he will come from all eternity to be fully human and still fully divine, not two persons but one.
Today in the scriptures we see how the unclean spirits enter Saul to create jealously of David and with the thought “All that remains for him is the kingship” becoming “angry and resentful”. The purpose of unclean spirits is to bring about death and destruction. Saul then looks to kill David but God also works through Saul’s son Jonathan to prevent a tragedy. If Saul had acted on his evil spirit and killed David he then would be guilty of mortal sin repeating the story of Cain and Abel.
Often when we perceive evil spirits we envision some type of movie drama like the Exorcist, with bodies being elevated and demonic voices coming out of them. Recently I listened to an interview on EWTN, the catholic broadcasting network. (Kathleen Beckman, author When Women Pray) The person was part of a team working in the Church assisting the priest with exorcisms. She mentioned three types or levels of demonic influence: oppression, obsession, and possession.
The most common is oppression with a good example of that being the story of Job. In oppression you suffer by the freedom of evil spirits to bring about suffering through circumstances surrounding us. I recall an experience when I received a call from a neighbor claiming his child was complaining of seeing an old man appear on his upstairs bedroom window. At first he tried to ignore the boy thinking it was his imagination and it was pass but the child continued to insist the appearance was real and he was starting to regress and become more fearful. I promised to go over and together with my wife we visited his home. He met us outside with his wife expressing his concerns and I asked, “Is the child baptized?” I knew the family was not catholic but did not have any background history of their faith practices. The mother said all the children were baptized. Inside we met the children and after some discussion we proceeded to go throughout the house blessing the home with prayer and holy water. In the boy’s room I invoked the any evil spirits that may be present to leave through the name of Jesus. The father called me the next night stating the child had finally slept in his room without problems and days later I inquired how he was doing and he said all the family was doing well. Is your home, work setting, vehicle blessed?
The second form of attack is obsession. Through the mind temptations of jealousy, pride, lust, paranoia and even suicidality with self-hatred can enter. In Saul we see the spirit of jealousy become an obsession with a drive to kill David. In Jesus we see during his passion the attack by the evil one at the Garden of Gethsemane as the gospels recount his “sorrow even unto death” (Mk.14:34) and his warning to the disciples to “pray that they may not undergo the test”. (LK. 22:40). One moment we may be driving down the road enjoying the moment then someone threatens our safety by cutting us off and we become filled with “road rage”. Our impulse our spirit is filled with the temptation to strike back, “How dare they!”
The presenter pointed out that the least common seen is possession though she has participated in some of those exorcisms. Here the body seems to be controlled by the evil spirits and demonic voices can be heard coming out from them. Scripture is filled with examples of Jesus exorcism of demons from people’s lives. There is always the concern of the possibility that a person may have mental health issues which is why the church is careful to examine the person and rule out other factors.
In our humanity we believe in what we see but we don’t always accept what we don’t see. We have a headache and we believe and feel that reality. We don’t always know or understand if that headache is the result of elevated blood pressure or allergies which we cannot see, the unseen source. In the same way we see bad things happen and we look to the rational explanation as we should for natural causes. Sometimes we have no explanation for circumstances and we consider it simply “bad luck”. Do we ever consider evil forces working to bring ruin into our world? Probably not often enough because we fear the unknown and cannot understand the unseen. What do we do? We deny or fail to recognize the forces of evil around us that “prowl around the world seeking the ruins of souls.” Evil is real. We are given power over evil. Power comes in the form of our sacraments, through prayer with the rosary as our weapon, novenas, and devotions, and with the sacramental signs of a crucifix, holy water, and always “In the name of Jesus”. We have warriors at our side in our guardian angel as an angel was sent to Jesus to strengthen him in the Garden of Gethsemane, other angels and saints, our Blessed Mother and our Church community to bring strength through fellowship. God may be working through us today, gathered together to be like Saul’s son Jonathan, a voice of reason, an intervention in moment of danger serving God today for his purpose. Jesus Christ is our deliverance.
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