9 October 2015
Friday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
About eight years ago, when I was still in graduate school, I attended a town hall meeting with a dean candidate for my school. During the meeting, a female professor stood up and asked the candidate a question, “how would you deal with your own demon as a human being and as a dean?” The dean candidate was speechless and he could not believe that an educated female professor in a secular university would ask him about a “demon” that might not exist.
As people of the twenty first century, we might think that the Dark Prince Beelzebul is simply an imagination of the author of the Gospel that lived two millennial ago. Nevertheless, as Pope Francis reminded us that Jesus is still walking on the street, we have to remember that Jesus’ enemy Beelzebul is also still walking on street with his demonic troops. Indeed, the Holy Father refers to the demon continually. He does not believe him to be a myth, but rather the most insidious enemy of the church.
Jesus calls us to follow Him and one the consequences to be a follower of Jesus is to join in his fight against the Dark Prince Beelzebul. We might not want to join the fight, but we have remember what Jesus said, “Whoever is not with me is against me,
and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”