Holy Spirit of Jesus, help me recognize and get rid of demons without engaging with them …

 
Mark 1:29-39
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Much of Jesus’ healing ministry included ‘casting out demons’  - and he instructed his disciples to do the same as they travelled the countryside and ministered to people in His Name.  Ridding people and their children of the evil spirits that had wormed their way into their lives was taken for granted as being part and parcel of the work the Jesus, the Holy One of God, and the Healer and the Saviour of human kind. How then are we disciples of Jesus so reticent to ‘drive out the demons’ from our families and homes, places of work and public spaces today? How indeed are we to do this?  Jesus, himself models what the casting our of demons looks like.  First of all, far from denying the existence of demons or shaking his head and turning away, Jesus witnessed the manifestation of demon activity himself, or listened to the information family members of someone experiencing demonic interference.  Secondly, Jesus called them what they were: malicious spirits that were destroying the person’s dignity, sanctity and sanity., for example, spirits of profanity, jealousy, spiritual blindness, self-contempt, lust, greed, malice or acedia (despondency) to name but a few of the demonic forces at work in the world. Finally we notice that ‘he Jesus would not permit [the demons] speak’. On this final point alone, in our present Age of Relativism, we so often err.  How often do we debate (with the forces of evil themselves) and try to decide for ourselves if a given behavior is evil or not – and craft all kinds of narratives for and against that result in our “letting it [the demons] be”?  In addition, how often do we let the demons speak, by repeating the ‘gorey stories’ , the tales and gossip of demons at work in our own or others’ lives – rather than by proclaiming the glory stories of life that show God’s work in our midst?  Any engagements with listening to demons, let alone repeating stories of demonic interference, are designed by the evil one to  take our attention away from Grace of God and the fact that as followers of Jesus we have the power to ‘cast out demons’ from ourselves and those we love – as much as we remain in Jesus, and the Holy Spirit of Jesus remains in us.  Will I have the clarity and courage to recognize, cast out and disengage demons from my own life, and from my family? Holy Spirit of Jesus, help me recognize and get rid of demons without engaging them.     
 
Sing praises to the Lord, who heals the broken-hearted, and binds up their wounds. (Psalm 147:1.3)
 
God is so great. There is such a difference between God and everything that is not.
St. Charles de Foucauld
 
 
Soli ad gloriam Dei
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