A Homily for the Twenty First Sunday after Pentecost

+ “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore, take the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.”
 
At first sight these words of Saint Paul, addressed to each of us by the Church in her Sacred Liturgy this morning, can seem rather daunting. For we have no desire or indeed little capacity to fight “against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Indeed, fighting against the ordinary and ever-present temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil are more than enough to be getting on with each day! Who amongst us wishes also to battle with the global or cosmic manifestations of evil?
 
And yet if we take the Word of God seriously—as we must—Saint Paul’s warning stands. There are greater evils to be combatted than merely our personal sins and vices: ‘natural’ ones (though that is an abuse of the word) and supernatural ones. Whether we like it or not we are part of a cosmic battle wherein the devil is at work on all possible fronts to thwart and overcome God’s grace and all that is good. And in this war, Saint Paul insists we must play our part.
 
It is all well and good for Saint Paul thus to insist, but we are weak. We are sinners. We are often alone as Catholics in the world. And even in the Church, at times, it can seem that the darkness of worldly powers and spiritual wickedness has taken control. What can we do? How can fight worldly and supernatural evil powers? How can we overcome the attacks on the nature Church from within her very ranks?
 
 The answer is, of course, that by ourselves we cannot. That is precisely why Saint Paul instructs us to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.” It is why we are told to “put on the whole armour of God…” so that we “may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” We cannot overcome the evil powers by ourselves; but if we put on the power and strength of Almighty God we can indeed be found standing upright and victorious after they have done their worst to destroy us. 
 
For by the grace of Holy Baptism we are not alone. We have been inserted into the Divine Life of the Blessed Trinity and thereby take our place as part of the Communion of Saints, of the whole body of the baptised, living and dead (excluding only those who have tragically definitively rejected their baptism and who have thereby merited the punishments of hell). The saints of heaven stand with us as do our brothers and sisters in arms throughout the Church catholic on earth.
 
Through the Sacrament of Confirmation we have been given the very power and strength of God the Holy Spirit and His own gifts of wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord with which to stand firm and fight the battles necessary—within ourselves, as in the Church and the world. And if we are injured in battle and fall, we have the merciful and radical healing of the Sacrament of Confession at our disposition, just as through our worthy reception of Holy Communion we have the supernatural nourishment of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ available to sustain us all the day long.
 
So too, in God’s Providence, some of us have been further fortified and given particular graces through the Sacrament of Matrimony or Holy Orders so that we may serve Christ’s Body in specific ways or have consecrated ourselves to His exclusive service by the pronunciation of monastic or religious vows. Even in our weakest and final moments, protected and strengthened by the grace of the Sacrament of the Last Anointing, by uniting ourselves in our suffering to the Cross of Christ we can claim victory over all that would destroy us.
 
This is the armour of God. This is how we can withstand “the principalities…the powers…the world rulers of this present darkness…the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” This is how the victory of Christ will be won anew in our souls, and in the Church and in the world of today. If we persevere in faith and in prayer and emulate the generosity and charity underlined in this morning’s Gospel passage, with constant recourse to the strength and power of Almighty God established within us through the sacraments, we shall stand. The final victory shall be ours—or indeed, it shall be Christ’s. This is God’s armour. This is the content of our hope.
 
The victory over all that is evil has in fact already been won through Christ’s saving death on the Cross, in which we participate anew in this Holy Mass. Once again, this morning, let us draw from it the strength we need to share ever more fruitfully in His victory, and to be its ever-faithful heralds in our troubled times! +