Discerning the Spirits

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012824.cfm
Discerning the Spirits

When I was a child attending this church on Sundays with my family, I always looked up at the high altar in the sanctuary. I wondered what the heck the big stone things were on the corners up there. Were they gargoyles? Sphynxes? I couldn’t tell from where we sat in the middle of the church. Do you know what they are? [pause]

Angels! There are little baby faces faced at a diagonal angle. The rest of their figures are wings with no bodies. Whoever designed this church really liked angels. I’m going to give you fifteen seconds to take a look and see how many you notice [pause]. I am quite sure that if I don’t tell you right now how many angels there are, you will spend the rest of my homily trying to count them and won’t hear a thing I say, so let me tell you. By my count, there are 50 angels: eight are on the high altar and the tabernacle, including two inside the tabernacle doors. Another 42 are on the five friezes in the apse, behind the high altar.

I like to imagine that there really are 50 angels who live in the sanctuary of our church, crowding around the presence of the LORD in the tabernacle, singing, “Holy, holy, holy Lord.” The sanctuary of the church is where heaven and earth come close together, and meet, and the angels represent and embody that. The word ‘angel’ means messenger—which is the usual way that humans have encountered them. Their primary role is actually singing the praise of God.

One thing to note about angels: as we see in the friezes, they tend to appear in the gospels during the beginning and end of Jesus’ life. We see an angel appear to the shepherds at his nativity. Angels are present too at the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. They disappear from the story, interestingly, during the middle of the story.

In the place of angels, we see the notable presence of a more nefarious spiritual entity, which the gospels call evil spirits, unclean spirits, and demons. All three terms describe a fallen angel. In today’s gospel, we have one of who has possessed the body of a man in the synagogue in Capernaum.

Unlike angels, their Fallen counterparts, have forsaken God’s message, preferring a message of their own creation. They have abandoned praising God, choosing to glorify themselves. Angels, both graced and fallen, have seen God’s face and been in His presence. This is how the demon in today’s reading immediately recognizes Jesus.

It’s difficult for modern people to accept the reality of angels and demons. We live in a materialist age where we believe only in what we can see and prove. Invisible spiritual forces tend to be denied, ignored, or doubted. As a product of our time, I consciously and unconsciously share this worldview.

Yet angels and demons are too frequent in Scripture for us to dismiss as metaphors, mental health concerns, or literary devices. In Jesus’ worldview, spiritual forces are powerful and present. The Gospel treats them as real entities that have effects on human beings. The man in the synagogue has been possessed by such a spirit. These possessions indicate that a person is in an “unnatural or pathological state” of some kind (Sabin 1045). Jesus performs an exorcism on this man. Exorcisms, according to one scholar, are “a special kind of healing which demonstrates Jesus’ power over spiritual forces hostile to God” (Williamson 52). After healings, this is the second most common type of miracle that Jesus performs.

I want to suggest three places where we might detect “possessions” by evil forces in our world today. First, they are at work on our roads today. The recklessness, selfishness, and disregard for human life on display by drivers is an almost (to me) a palpably spiritual force. There is a profound feeling of frustration, anger, even rage. In a recent news story, I read this quote that explained the epidemic of bad driving and traffic collisions that we have seen since 2020, “the more stress and anxiety and fear and anger we experience in everyday life, the more badly we will act when behind the wheel. The problem today, in the United States, may be that we’re all baseline angry and anxious. ”

Evil spirits are at work online. Anyone who has interacted with strangers online in the last ten years has felt their presence. Two years ago, a study found that algorithms on social media over-select videos and news stories that provoke anger and outrage. These generated the most web traffic.

Evil spirits are at work in our politics. Increasingly, voters are motivated by a concept called “negative partisanship,” which means defining myself not by a party platform or candidate, but by an animosity toward the opposing party, and a desire to see the other side lose. Or perhaps even suffer.

In today’s Gospel, the people gathered in the synagogue are astonished at Jesus’ new teaching. That new teaching is this: that evil spirits are not in control. A person possessed by sin is not doomed forever. God can release us from the grips of evil and death. The Holy One of God is with us, and comes with authority and command.
As we approach Lent this year, we are called to examine our lives and to examine our inner selves. To look at which areas are not of God.

St. John wrote, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1). This means that we should examine the impulses and feelings in our own heart and cultivate a keen sense of discernment to help us judge whether our desires are holy or sinful. The Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and charity can help us develop this sense of discernment.

Like the angels, we were created by God. And we were created for God. God is in control of this world and is ready to fill our own hearts with his Holy Spirit, if we invite him there. The unclean spirit today fearfully asks “have you come to destroy us?” The unmistakable answer is yes. Christ has come to set us all free from evil powers.

May we work in cooperation with him and pray for the intercession of St. Agnes’ 50 angels to watch over us. Amen.