Casting out the many devils and demons today.

When Senator Manny fights Matthysse today, he should first drive away the many demons that may cause him to be overconfident, given the tremendous pressures of President Rody Duterte’s ringside presence in Malaysia.

In today’s gospel reading, written by the evangelist, St. Mark, Chapter 6, verses 7-13, Jesus summoned the twelve apostles and sent them out by pairs. He instructed them to heal the sick and cast out the evil spirits, devils, and demons enslaving people in sin and sickness of the spirit. Today, humanity is still being enslaved by too many demons that we do not know whether the man sitting next to us, in church, the bus, or plane is possessed. But in Amos 7:12-15, we are assured some prophets will tell us who are good from evil. Ephesians 1:3-14 also reminds us we have been favored as adopted sons of the Father.

We have to cast demons out. First are the wolves in lambs’ clothing, the predators luring us to the path of sinfulness, tempting us with material wealth, inviting us to sin in flesh and spirit. Second, are the politicians who lure us into joining dishonest and pretentious hypocrisies and make us behave like scribes and Pharisees of old.

Then we have the lords of demons, including the drug lords, gambling lords, crime lords, prostitution lords, and those who make money out of their sacrilegious “praise the Lord” moneymaking ventures. Those who preying on others promising quick money and instant gratification, like those engaged in pyramid scams and large-scale estafa, also those into illegal recruitment and trafficking, those operating prostitution rings and pedophile cyber operations. We should guard against the flesh trade disguised as tourism.

The worst of these demons are the self-righteous modern scribes who use the Bible to make money or solicit sex from young victims. This was the story of the president himself. He keeps on repeating it in his speeches. He still harbors the trauma of being abused by men of the cloth. Maybe this is why he is very bitter against the clergy because he sees in them a large measure of hypocrisy and self-righteousness. They see the speck in others’ eyes but not the big lump of mud on their faces. In fairness, I must add a caveat, that the majority of our consecrated persons and priests remain holy and almost perfectly holy. They are not angels, yes, but who is?

Perhaps, the greatest demon we need to cast off, at the end of the day, is our own propensity to judge others, when we, ourselves are also wallowing in sin. I remember the immortal words of William Shakespeare, in Julius Caesar: “The fault, my dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings.’’