10 July 2019
Wednesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Jesus has begun the fight against Satan, has won several victories, and told His disciples to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send more help. In the wake of that call for reinforcements He sets up His elite squad of men, hand-picked to do the work that He Himself was doing. He equips them with special weapons, chief among them being authority over unclean spirits.
Authority? They are given power to cure every disease and illness, real power. But authority over demons; why not power? Consider what a demon is: an angel that exists in absolute opposition and rebellion to God. In other words, a demon is an angel who refuses to obey God. There is no power a human being could possess that could force a demon to obey him; it is power that Satan uses, not authority, to bend every demon to his will: the demons obey simply because he is the most powerful. Hell is not a hierarchy; it is a tyranny of bullies. Heaven, on the other hand, is a benevolent hierarchy, where all obey the authority of those above them out of love, honor, and respect. God is indeed the most powerful, but the angels do not obey Him because of His power: they obey Him because He is God, their Creator and Master. Did not the angels obey Jesus, even when He was a human being, even in His most weak and tender moments? And do not we strive to obey God, even though He does not use His power to coerce us? What a gentle King!
And so Jesus arms His apostles with authority over unclean spirits, and not merely authority, but His own authority. They must obey the apostles, because they speak not by their own authority, but by the Son of God. Priests who minister to those afflicted by demons use this same authority in exorcism and deliverance ministry today. He sends His apostles exclusively to the Jewish areas to minister to their own kin, to rally the troops to the cause of God, those first promised the Kingdom: they would be given the first opportunity to embrace or reject it.
We, too, have by our Baptism a measure of this authority as we are able, as members of the Body of Christ, rebuke demons in His Name. Certainly we must be wary of demons, but we needn’t fear them! You belong to Christ: stay there, cling to Him, seek always to remain in a state of grace by striving against sin, by receiving the Sacrament of Confession regularly, by receiving the Eucharist often, and the demons cannot assail you. Jesus says, “These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons, they will speak new languages. They will pick up serpents with their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover,” (Mark 16:17-18). Now the Church does not recommend we go around handling venomous snakes without care, but Jesus promises that those who believe—those who have faith—have nothing to fear of Satan and his horde of filthy demons, for “our help is in the Name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth!” (Psalm 124:8).