Fighting the enemy: satan

Sunday | 30 | OT | C
Vancouver, October 27, 2019

​An incident was reported only a few days ago in Bangladesh of a 19-year old female student. Apparently, this young woman, reported to the police the headmaster was sexually harassing her. After reporting to the police seventeen people led her to a roof top of a building attempting to coerce her into withdrawing the complaint of sexual assault. The school girl refused to withdraw the sexual harassment complaint from the police. As a result, her attackers threw kerosene on her and burned her alive.

How can people do such a horrible thing to an innocent girl who approached the police with a sexual assault complaint? Why protect the headmaster to the point of burning someone alive? It’s hard to believe that people would do such a thing to an innocent girl who is making a complaint concerning a guilty person.

Her own classmates bound her hands and feet so she could not escape as they poured kerosene on her and burned her. The fire burned the cord tying her hands and legs free, so she was able to make her way down the stairs and report what had happened to her. Since she was not sure if she would survive while in the ambulance, she recorded what happened on her brother’s mobile phone.

We could ask, what kind of justice is this? But, This not justice. If the complaint had already been made, a greater effort on the part of the police should have been made to protect her, especially knowing that in Bengali society how women are treated, these are ongoing social problems, where women who are vulnerable victims and brutally victimised. Who was this mob who burned her to death because she refused to withdraw the complaint? Is this the human justice?

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In the Book of Sirach, we have this beautiful reading that speaks to us of the justice of God: there is “no partiality.” God hears you, God watches you, God knows you, and God judges you. Without partiality. He listens to those who are wronged: whether, you are a poor person without money and friends to defend you, whether you are a woman as in the case of the Bengali story where the voice of the woman was ruthlessly crushed, whether you are an orphan without a mother and father to rescue you, whether you are a widow without support, Sirach looks at the most vulnerable segments of society. The ones least likely to be heard if they are wronged: but God hears and God responds with justice. Those who have been wronged are assured of divine justice.

If one is not punished for their sin on earth, certainly unrepentant sinners, God condemns to hell: the wicked, the evil ones, the cruel. That is part of divine justice. God is Truth and Love. Nothing in this world can compare to the perfection of Truth and Love that we find in God. And this is how God judges, with Truth and Love.

The words of St. Paul in his 2nd Letter to Timothy are words for each one of us: I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Keeping the faith, that is, faith in Jesus Christ and His Church, is not without a battle: I have fought the good fight. The good fight for Truth. Nobody likes fights or to fight, but to be united with God means, endlessly fighting off the traps Satan puts on our path to distance us from God, so we fall, and get discouraged, and give up. Some people do not like to battle or at least, do not like spiritual warfare -- and spiritual warfare is what it means to be a disciple of Christ.

Several years ago I met a Dominican student, he just completed his novitiate year of religious formation – and intense year, and he was thinking of leaving the Dominicans. I told him our life, whether as a Dominican or the life of a Christian, is one of battles. We battle against the seductions of the world leading us away from God, slaves of power, sex and wealth. Battle within our Church because so many people are indifferent to conversion, to living a Sacramental life; battles within ourselves. Fighting off Satan his false promises.

And his reply was. But I don’t want any battles. I told him: If you don’t want battles, you will not make it in religious life, or even just being a Catholic. And of course, he abandoned religious life.

“I have fought the good fight…I have kept the faith.” This is what Paul teaches us.

We see in Sirach how God is a just Judge, how St. Paul in his letter to Timothy reminds us that we have our part to do, that is, be willing to engage in battle and by God’s grace finish the race.

In St. Luke’s Gospel we have two different attitudes that Jesus conveys to us in this parable: one is the self-righteous pharisee and the other the repentant tax-collector. How does God show justice to someone who already thinks he is righteous? God has no justice to show because the righteous person has already justified himself: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people.” The tax-collector, instead, recognises his sinfulness, his unworthiness, his misery, and can only say, “God be merciful to me, a sinner!”

Two different attitudes. It is in the case of the sinner who is humble and repentant, justified before God by acknowledging his sinfulness. When we acknowledge our sins, we express humility. Instead, the pharisee, and remember pharisees were religious people,  the Jewish Scribes, the Pharisee thought, I am not like the others, “thank God!” Thank you, Lord, I am not like them.

The language where one looks down upon others because of their sinfulness, and in self-righteousness, just like the Pharisee saying, “Thank you, Lord, I am not like them.” But God wants humility, and confession of our sins, a contrite heart. This is what we call the Act of Contrition during Confession.
 
Let us ask the Blessed Virgin Mary in this month of the Holy Rosary that we may identify our sins, rather than be consumed by the sins of others, and ask God for his mercy, that we may grow in humility and to have a contrite heart. Amen.