“That Gospel today is one that invites us to a little reflection upon the action of Christ with our lives. It says that Jesus went about doing good. He went about curing illness. He went about expelling demons and I think that is an important part of the ministry of Jesus today is to expel the demons of our life. When we hear that word ‘demon’ I think we usually think of the devil and fallen angels and certainly possession in that sense is very real that that is true, but it’s not just those demons that we need to be concerned about. There’s other demons within our life, those negative things, those negative attitudes. I’m reminded of a story of Jesus going up and telling a woman, ‘You are possessed by seven demons and I want to deliver you from those seven demons.’ and the woman thought about it for a little while and Jesus said, ‘You want freedom from these seven demons that possess your life?’ And she said, ‘Lord can you make it six?’ It’s important because there’s always those ones that we want to hold on to those ones that we don’t want to give up, those weaknesses that we may have that we kind of enjoy and those demons can be all kinds of different things within our life. It can be a judgemental attitude. It can be negativity. It can be a critical spirit. It can be lust. It can be pornography, demons of anger, envy, gluttony, all kinds of different demons can be there within our life and the Lord does want to deliver us from that demonic part of our own life, the ways in which we are still influenced by those, but we particularly need to get in touch with the one, the one that we want to hold on to, the one that somehow seems so important to us.
We have Lent coming up very quickly here and as we enter into that spirit of Lent, maybe one thing that we could do this Lent is to take a look at that one demon within our life that Christ really wants to free us from and he won’t free us by just saying, ‘Be gone.’ but rather through the practice of virtue by doing the opposite virtue from what the demonic is by practicing those virtues of charity, of understanding, of self-control, of chastity. Practicing those virtues is how we are freed from that negativity, from that sinfulness and so we are challenged to identify and to allow Christ to enter in to help us to be freed from all the demons in our life.
The second thing in the Gospel today it says that Jesus was being put upon to do all kinds of good things. He was very busy, but what did he do? He got up early in the morning and went off and prayed. He was not so busy that he could not pray. I am so very impressed when I visit with so many of you of what an active prayer life you have, of how every morning or every evening you take time for God. You turn off the TV, the radio, whatever it may be, and you really listen to God and spend time in prayer. I’m really edified myself at the number of you who do that, taking time to really allow the Lord to speak to your heart as well as for you to speak your heart to the Lord, how crucially important that is. The most perfect prayer obviously is the prayer of the Mass because it’s not just my prayer or your prayer or our prayer, but rather all of those joined together with the prayer of Jesus, so therefore that is the most important prayer that we offer, but it can’t be the only prayer that we offer. We’re all called to a very personal relationship with Christ, taking time each day to spend with the Lord to reflect upon his word to pray for our world, our nation to pray for our own families, our friends, to be able to listen to God. He can’t speak to us in the midst of the business of our life, but in those moments of silence those moments of openness, God will speak to us and so we are challenged I think again as we approach Lent to begin to think about how can I take more time for God? How can I withdraw a little bit from the business of my life to spend time with the Lord to allow his word to touch my heart to transform my life? These are the challenges that each of us have the personal responsibility of entering more deeply into the rejection of that which is evil and to be embraced more fully by the loving presence of our God.”