Thursday of the Fourth Week of Ordinary Time: Mark 6:7-13
The Twelve drove out many demons, and they anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them. – Mark 6:13
In the Gospels, Jesus often confronts people who are possessed by evil spirits, and is often casting them out. In our Gospel reading today, He gives the Twelve authority over unclean spirits, and they also drive them out of possessed people.
In our largely secular Western culture, many people look skeptically at such reports. We have been conditioned to believe that only things that can be studied and verified scientifically are real. If you can’t get it under a microscope, or some other instrument, it isn’t really there. Given this attitude, people who read such Gospel stories as this will assume that they are talking about illnesses like epilepsy or schizophrenia. Primitive people, they think, would have been fooled by such illnesses into believing that the afflicted person was under the influence of an evil spirit. Today, of course, we know better, and realize that such stories are simply wrong interpretations. Evil spirits do not exist – because we can’t study them scientifically. or so we are told.
But were “primitive people” so easily fooled?
Note the quote I used at the beginning of this post. The Twelve drove out demons and anointed those who were sick and cured them. The Gospel writer could distinguish between possession and an illness. So, too, could at least some people at the time of the Gospels. Still, it is possible that some illnesses were “misdiagnosed” as demon possession. But all of them?
Let’s muddy the waters just a bit by considering our own experience. When we are feeling good, strong, confident, happy, and peaceful, the world looks great. However, many of us – if not all of us – are at times afflicted with anxiety, stress, anger, sadness, great pain, or some other challenge. Sometimes, we simply feel the anxiety or anger or pain. It may be very hard. We may not like it. But it doesn’t affect the way we see ourselves or the world.
At other times, however, it does. Besides the pain, or anxiety, or fear, some other voice appears. It tells us that we are worthless, a failure, totally unloveable. It tells us that God is only a figment of our imagination. Or, if God exists, that He doesn’t care about us. It wants to make us suspicious of others’ motives – even of those who love us dearly. It wants to isolate each of us, so as to make us easier prey. It wants to lead us into some attitude or action that is destructive of others and of ourselves.
This voice, I contend, is not the stress, or anxiety, or other burden speaking. It’s something else. Perhaps someone else, taking advantage of a weak or down moment to tempt us into harming someone else or our own selves in some way. It is some representative of the forces of darkness, that would like nothing better than to drive a wedge between each one of us and everyone else, and between each one of us and God. Divide and conquer. The very word “devil” comes from a Greek word meaning “the scatterer”.
So, it could well have been that some people who were already afflicted with some disorder or illness then began to face constant temptations and began to listen to them. These temptations drew these people further and further from God and from all other people who could have helped them, until they were totally at the mercy of the forces of darkness. This could happen to anyone who gets drawn into the demons’ trap.
We are indeed children of God by our Baptism. We are indeed filled with the Holy Spirit by Confirmation. The very life of Christ enters us through the Eucharist. Nevertheless, we cannot walk about as though we have no enemies. We do. There is a power of darkness that would stop at nothing to derail our spiritual life and lead us to misery and death. We need not fear this darkness so much that we are paralyzed. No. Christ has already won the victory. Still, we need to be watchful. We need to pray. We need to ask for the grace to be able to carefully discern the voices within us. We may need the help of trusted, wise friends of God to do this well.
When we sense something pulling us into ourselves and away from those we love, pulling us away from God, and pulling us away from our best selves, we may well be experiencing a demonic attack. These demons can frighten and discourage us, but they cannot harm us unless we surrender to them. At that moment when we feel this attack beginning to happen, we need to stop and remind ourselves of the love of God. God is with us, even then, though we may not feel His presence. We can call upon His mercy then. Moreover, we can choose to remember how we are loved by special people in our lives. We can remind ourselves that the dark voices are only selling lies and deceptions. We are not alone or abandoned. The Lord is near and ready to help. At times, we may need to endure such a dark attack for hours, but we never face it alone. We stand with so many others who are afflicted in many ways. If the Lord allows such an attack, He does so to make us aware of the afflictions of others and to give us compassion. He allows this so that we can see that even such an attack, as terrible as it may feel at the time, cannot defeat us. Its threats are empty. The Lord is with us always.
When we are so afflicted, we can pray that the Lord can act through our affliction for the benefit of someone else. We can entrust ourselves to the Lord’s power. The demons cannot face love or humility, for such attitudes being us closest to Christ.
Yes, Virginia, there are demons. There are dark powers who mean us harm – even if they present themselves (at first) as angels of light. We should not ignore their presence. At the same time, we need not give in to some paralyzing fear. We are never alone. People who love us are never far. We are surrounded by angels and saints who strengthen us. Christ Himself has promised to be with us always. His grace can cast out these evil attacks, and teach us that we can trust fully, like children, in the love of our Lord.