A Homily for the Third Sunday after Pentecost

​+ Sóbrii estote et vigiláte : quia adversárius vester diábolus tamquam leo rúgiens circuit, quærens, quem dévoret : cui resístite fortes in fide. “Be sober, be vigilant. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith.”
 
These words of Saint Peter, addressed to each one of us in the Epistle of this Holy Mass, are a stark warning. They brusquely remind us of the truth that the devil is a personal reality whose aim is to devour us—to destroy the life of God established within us through the grace of Holy Baptism and to make of us mere food as he pursues his ever-downward spiral of egotistical narcissism.
 
In her Tradition the Church has regarded this warning as so utterly important that it is repeated at the beginning of the Office of Compline each night. At the end of the day our wise mother warns us: “Be sober, be vigilant. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith.”
 
We would do well to listen to our mother’s warning, for we know only too well how easily the devil can sink his teeth into us and eat away at all that is good and of God in us, infecting us with the deadly rabies of sin that takes root and spreads more rapidly than cancer. And it is a shocking and terrible fact that this takes place even amongst those whose vows or promises oblige them to pray the Divine Office: they hear and read Saint Peter’s warning and yet do not heed it—their fall is as terrible as it is scandalous. The devil avidly feasts on their souls.  
 
Yes, the reality is that the devil seeks to destroy us, and that far more often than perhaps we are prepared to admit, he makes significant progress in his quest. The Church teaches that the devil exists and that heaven and hell are eternal realities and that. We ignore this at our peril. We omit to teach and preach these eternal verities to the eternal peril of others. The salvation of souls is our fundamental mission—our own souls first, and then those of anyone for whom we have God-given responsibility—but also and most especially the souls of those whom the devil has firmly in his clutches.
 
This is an enormous task. It is hard enough to be faithful ourselves and to persevere in the Christian life, let alone to be responsible for and to try to save others! And so many people seem perfectly content in their lives of sin, without God. Our preaching and even our genuine witness would in many cases be utterly unwelcome.
 
In the face of this reality, in the light of the fact that so many of our contemporaries choose to reject God, His Church and the life of grace, we can be tempted to adopt a stance that makes perfect sense in the world of business and economics: to “cut our losses.” After all, the free moral choices of adults are just that—their free choices: who are we to interfere?
 
Regardless of this, each night St Peter continues to warn us: “Be sober, be vigilant. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith.” Do we wish to sit back and watch as others are devoured by the devil? Is this truly no concern of ours?
 
Our Lord Jesus Christ answers this question clearly and resolutely in the Gospel of this Holy Mass: “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing…”
 
This is, of course, economic insanity: to risk ninety-nine for the sake of merely one. Those who heard this parable from Our Lord’s own lips, just as we who hear it in His Church’s Sacred Liturgy today, cannot but be astounded at His teaching. And yet, it is His teaching: bringing one sinner to repentance is worth the effort, it is worth the risk—indeed, it is necessary, for the one lost sheep is a beloved child of God for whose salvation Our Lord Jesus Christ died on the Cross. They cannot simply be written off as an unavoidable or inconsequential loss, not matter how terrible their sin or how far they have strayed.
 
My brothers and sisters, sin, the devil, heaven and hell are realities with which me must each reckon, We know only too well how easily the devil can take hold of us and lead us towards eternal death and damnation. Through the evangelical zeal of others, many of us who have been lost have been sought out, placed on the shepherd’s shoulders and brought home to the Lord’s sheepfold to much rejoicing.
 
As we offer this Holy Mass, let us beg the grace to be sufficiently “strong in faith” to resist the devil’s many and subtle temptations; and let us ask Our Lord, from whose Most Sacred Heart flow all graces, to give us the courage and strength to seek out and find the lost, and bring them also back into His sheepfold. +