Fix your gaze

The good Abbot shares a worthwhile meditation on the cure of the Gerasene demoniac and how it pertains to our culture today. Here's a sample:

We don’t fight evil by looking it in the face, fighting fire with fire in a show of strength. We fight evil by looking Jesus in the face and never turning our gaze toward the darkness. It’s not for nothing that Scripture tells us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus and to set our minds on things of Heaven. Only Christ has the power to overthrow the kingdom of satan and to establish the Kingdom of God. Our victory over the devil is not obtained by charging toward him with guns blazing. Our victory is obtained by clinging to Christ in faith and love and purity of heart, calling upon his name with confidence, praising and worshiping Him so that our souls will be so full of his grace that there will be no room for the slightest inroads of evil—thus the powers of darkness must go somewhere else.

As I posted earlier, we are called to imitate Christ in casting out demons from our midst, just as the Apostles were commissioned to do at Pentecost. The success of 40 Days for Life is not that they are confronting Satan at the abortuary, but they are invoking the Saints and worshipping Christ on-site. As the local coordinator of the Vigil told me, "This is not about protest or demonstration. This is about my heart and yours and humbling ourselves in prayer before the Lord." We bring Christ's presence to the place to banish the darkness within.

We also stand witness against the Lie. At our local prayer site, our Vigil prompted the staff to post a memo in the window stating their belief that they are performing a loving service to the women who come to them. We need to pray that the persons involved in this self-deception are liberated and healed. We need to witness that care of the needs of women only accounts for half our obligation as persons of charity.

A good prayer to see us through the home stretch of these 40 Days is the Novena for Faithful Citizenship posted by the US Bishops. Uniting our prayer and fasting at the abortuary with this novena being prayed in dioceses across the country will be a powerful response to Satan by the Body of Christ.