Blue Demons

Engaging in spiritual warfare

 Luke 11:24-26

“When an unclean spirit goes out of someone, it roams through arid regions searching for rest but, finding none, it says, ‘I shall return to my home from which I came.’ But upon returning, it finds it swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and brings back seven other spirits more wicked than itself who move in and dwell there, and the last condition of that man is worse than the first.”

            Fr. Tom Elliot and I have a friendly competition on Facebook: we try to get the most “likes” on our FB posts.  One time I went against my better judgment and even “liked” something he posted.  It was a “meme” (a little picture) with a caption that read: “Everyone makes fun of Catholics until they have a demon.”  Isn’t that true?  How many movies feature anything but a Catholic priest helping someone possessed by a demon?  When you have an evil spirit, you don’t call the Ghostbusters, you call Fr. Andrew or Fr. Pius (not me!).  Now some people may scoff at demons and devils as superstitious or old-fashioned or just names of college basketball teams, something that modern psychology has done away with.  That’s true to some extent.  But I believe that behind every addiction lurks an evil spirit.  Whether it’s an addition to drugs or alcohol, or to gambling or to sex and pornography, there is an evil spirit (a demon) who wants to enslave you, and make you serve him instead of serving God.

            Someone who very much believed in demons was Jesus.  In the gospel today our Lord goes to great lengths to explain the psychology of demons.  You see, Jesus uses psychology not to disprove demons, but to get inside their sinister minds!  He says: “When an unclean spirit goes out of someone it roams through arid regions searching for rest, but finding none, it says, ‘I will return to my home from which I came.’”  In other words, demons are very real for Jesus, not hocus pocus superstition or the figment of our imagination.  And they have one mission: to enslave us so that we will serve them instead of God.

            Today, open your eyes to the spiritual world around you.  Sometimes our advances in psychology and medicine, in science and technology (laudable as they are)  actually close our eyes to the spiritual world; they can tempt us to believe demons are outmoded or obsolete.  But demons are very much alive and well, in our sins and especially in our addictions.  A great book on demon psychology is C.S. Lewis’ “Screwtape Letters.”  Lewis asserts that one of the demons’ best weapons against humanity is to make us believe they don’t exist.  They’ve wielded that weapon to great effect in our modern culture.

            We don’t have to look far and wide to find demons; they are perched on our left shoulder (guardian angels are on our right) and always knocking on our hearts.  They have a hand in all our sins and stupidity.  “Everyone makes fun of Catholics until they have a demon.”  Do you think Fr. Tom will like this homily-post on Facebook?  Haha, I win!

            Praised be Jesus Christ!