The Strong Man and the Stronger Man

Third Sunday of Lent
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  For many men, especially as they’re in adolescence or a young adulthood, one of the worst things you can say is, “You look like your mother.”  I can’t be sure if this applies to daughters being told they look like their dad, but I can’t imagine a young girl wanting to hear she looks like a guy.  The physical comparisons, whether between mother and son or father and daughter might be somewhat true, but, at least for guys, it’s not the sort of thing you want to hear. 
    In a different vein entirely, but still something that shouldn’t be compared is our Lord and the powers of evil.  Christ was not afraid to use physical force with objects (as in the cleansing of the Temple) or sharp words with people (as in his rebuke of the scribes and Pharisees) to get his point across.  So the fact that He used neither of these in today’s Gospel demonstrates just how patient Christ could be.  There He is, working to free people from the dominion of the evil one, and people start surmising that He must be doing the work of the evil one.  I can’t say that I’d be as patient as our Lord in such a situation.

St. Irenaeus

    Instead, the Savior asks them how Satan is supposed to survive if he’s undermining his own work?  He says the words that Abraham Lincoln would paraphrase some eighteen hundred years later: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  And then Christ speaks about His own work.  The strong man in this explanation is Satan, but the stronger man is Christ.  St. Irenaeus the early second century bishop of Lyons and martyr, writes in his magnum opus Adversus Haereses:
 

For as in the beginning [Satan] enticed man to transgress his Maker’s law, and thereby got him into his power; yet his power consists in transgression and apostasy, and with these he bound man [to himself]; so again, on the other hand, it was necessary that through man himself he should, when conquered, be bound with the same chains with which he had bound man, in order that man, being set free, might return to his Lord, leaving to [Satan] those bonds by which he himself had been fettered, that is, sin.  For when Satan is bound, man is set free; since none can enter a strong man’s house and spoil his goods, unless he first bind the strong man himself.

We are the spoils, the ones that Satan first duped, but that Christ freed from slavery to Satan, while Christ bound up Satan and put an end to his dominion over us.
    But, Christ also notes in this Gospel that even with His work of freeing us from Satan, it’s not as if Satan just gives up.  Christ does His work of freeing us, but we have to continue to cooperate in that work by standing guard against falling into that slavery again.  Because, as Christ noted, demons may be cast out, but he may return, and may bring his friends to try to wrest us back to the power of the enemy, so that we are more under Satan’s control the second time than the first.  As St. Peter warns us in his first epistle, the devil is prowling like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.  If we knew a lion was outside, we would be very careful about watching where it was, and making sure we were protected from an attack. 
    How do protect ourselves?  The works of Lent are a good starting point.  Prayer is a great way to guard against the enemy.  A daily habit of prayer is not only good to strengthen our relationship with our Beloved, a strong relationship with our Beloved keeps us from looking for other lovers.  Some people find that in the moment of strong temptations, prayer can help greatly.  Others find that, in the midst of strong temptations, it is very hard to pray.  But daily prayer, especially the Rosary, can assist in keeping watch against attacks of the enemy.
    Fasting also helps us to fight off temptation.  It may not always seem obvious how fasting helps, but we are a union of body and soul, and so when we discipline one, we discipline the other.  Fasting is intended to raise our mind to heavenly things, since we are not focusing as much on satisfying the body.  It reminds the body, which is so often the way that Satan tries to get us to follow him instead of God, that just because the body wants something does not mean that it gets it.  Bodily desires have to be subordinated to the soul, which has to be subordinated to the will of God.  And fasting helps to put that divinely established order back into line.
    Lastly, confession is an important part of regaining freedom and remaining free from the grasp of the enemy.  Of course, if we have fallen into mortal sin, confession restores us to sanctifying grace, the grace that allows us to be received into heaven.  It removes the obstacles to God’s grace that we have put up, and unshackles us from attachment to the enemy.  But even if we only have venial sins, confession strengthens us to work on avoiding those sins, and helps us to avoid falling into other sins, which can be more grave.  Confession not only treats the disease, but also helps prevent us from getting the disease in the first place.  Many exorcists have said that the best way to make sure that we are not susceptible to demonic oppression or possession is to make frequent confessions, since confession means that we want Jesus to be Lord in our life and we wish to serve Him, not the enemy. 
    In the end, resisting the devil means doing the will of God.  God does not want us to be slaves of Satan, but wants us to be God’s children, united with Christ.  Christ always works to free all those created in the image and likeness of God from enslavement to sin so that they can live in the freedom and joy of the children of God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Which Kingdom?

 Third Sunday in Lent
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  At the end of the day, there are only two kingdoms: the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of the devil.  The Kingdom of God has and will win.  The kingdom of the devil has and will lose.  The question for us is: to which kingdom do we wish to belong?
    The easy answer is, of course, the kingdom of God.  We’re here, after all, so we must put some faith in God and want to be with him.  But we often find ourselves as divided, as some of us wants God, and some of us wants the devil.  We would likely never say it that way with our lips, but our actions tell a different story.  Every time we sin, especially, but not limited to, mortal sin, we choose the kingdom of the devil.  Every time we respond to God’s grace, we choose the kingdom of God.  
    Our Lenten pilgrimage is meant to help purify us to choose God more frequently than we choose the devil.  By denying ourselves certain things, or maybe doing extra things, we are trying to train ourselves to choose God.  As our Lord says elsewhere, we cannot serve two masters.  We will either love one and hate the other, or hate one and love the other.  
    St. Paul outlines ways that the people of the Church in Ephesus chose the devil: by saying obscene or silly or suggestive things, or participating in immorality, impurity, and greed, which the Apostle calls idolatry.  And certainly, when we do those things, we give our attention to something other than God.  Instead, we are told to be thankful.  Thanksgiving might seem to fit as an antidote to greed, but what does it have to do with immorality and impurity?  I suggest that we give thanks to God for the gift of our sexuality, but also for knowing how to use it properly.
    Our sexual passions often become false gods.  They so often want to demand total obedience.  But they are a hunger which is never satisfied.  They keep wanting more.  They’re like the old commercials for Lays Potato chips: bet you can’t have just one.  It’s not enough to see one impure image; once one is seen the desire for another, or something more enticing, grows.  The passions that arise from physical expressions of affection, too, seem to want to keep ramping up and escalating.  But God has revealed ways that humans can express physical affection, but without becoming slaves of them.  He tells us that certain expressions of love are only fit within the confines of marriage, where man and woman can give themselves fully to the other, open to life, as an expression of love between a husband and wife.  If those three requirements are not met, then a couple would be falling into the immorality which St. Paul says can exclude us from the kingdom of God.  Even and husband and a wife could need to abstain from physical intimacy if those three requirements for holy sexual activity are not present, so that they do not use each other simply for pleasure.
    In my work as a chaplain for the Michigan State Police, I too often see where people have let their passions, both sexual and other passions, run free, and how much it ruins their lives.  God does not desire ruin for us.  He desires the fulfillment of our human nature, which God reveals to us.  Yes, it sometimes means saying no to our desires, but that no is a sign that we are free.  If we only can say yes to something, then we are a slave.  If we have the ability to say no, then we are governing ourselves.  The devil, on the other hand, desires our ruin.  He never paints it that way, but he encourages us to give in to our desires every time they pop up.  But in doing so we enslave ourselves to the prince of lies.

St. Irenaeus

    Christ, by His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, has tied up the strong man.  As St. Irenaeus says:
 

For when Satan is bound, man is set free;…the Word bound [Satan] securely….And justly indeed is [Satan] led captive, who had led men unjustly into bondage; while man, who had been led captive in times past, was rescued from the grasp of his possessor, according to the tender mercy of God the Father, who had compassion on His own handiwork, and gave to it salvation, restoring it by means of the Word–that is, by Christ.

This time of Lent is the perfect time to re-welcome the kingdom of God in our lives, and ask Christ to bind up the enemy, so that we might no longer be in slavery to him.  
    So the question for us is: to which kingdom do we want to belong?  To the kingdom of the devil, which often brings immediate pleasure but later suffering and death?  Or to the kingdom of God, which does have us deny ourselves at times in the present, but which leads to the eternal joy of heaven, where we see God face-to-face: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.