Are Your Anti-'Demonia' Shots Working?

PEOPLE WERE SHOT in our parish church last Sunday, August 28.

             Given vaccine shots, that is, in our parish’s first anti-pneumonia drive dubbed “No to Pneumo.”  The project brought down the cost of the vaccine to half of its market price, with some of the proceeds going to the church ministry were my wife and I serve as coordinators.   

With a 5-year efficacy, the vaccine offers the recipient a healthy dose of peace of mind knowing that life's pneumonia-free until 2016.  After all, the disease is not exactly lightweight; it remains among the top killer diseases in the country today.

Having done with the anti-pneumonia drive, we're now setting our sights on an anti-“demonia” crusade.  Its aim is to immunize ourselves from the ills that demons and Satan’s entire cohort try to afflict us with every day.  The symptoms of “demonia” vary, but apathy toward God and arrogance toward neighbor are the most common. 

Unlike common vaccines that have to be administered between long periods, the anti-“demonia” vaccine must be given as frequently as possible for its strains are numerous and are continually evolving. 

Starter doses are given for free every week, more appropriately during Sunday masses.  But the process is quite the reverse.  Because rather than antibodies, lurking in our souls are antigens which we need to get rid of.   Thus, no less than Jesus Christ, through the priest’s sermons and homilies and through His Body in Communion, administers us with “demonia” antibodies with the hope that our souls, with its “demonia” antigens, would respond accordingly.  We may feel feverish as our hearts are set on fire.  We may feel aches and pains as remorse and repentance set in.  Or, we may feel nothing long after the priest gave his final blessing because the “demonia’s” virulence has made us too numb to see and feel God’s presence in the Eucharistic celebration.

We are too sick because we never deepen our understanding of what it is to be a follower of Christ, i.e., to be His living example to our fellowmen.  We are too sick because we do not have the slightest idea of what the mass is all about, i.e., the highest form of prayer, worship, and sacrifice where no less than Christ is present.  Or at worst, our minds just wander while in Church, and at some point we ask: “why am I here in the first place?”  We are sick because we see our being Christians merely as a Sunday obligation, a qualification for our children to enroll in Catholic schools, an imposition of family and culture, and nothing else.  We are sick because we simply pay lip service to our Christianity; our actions a contradiction to what and who we are at home, in our workplaces, and in our communities, and how we treat the poor and the needy among us.

For the anti-demonia vaccine to work, we need to realize first how sick in soul and spirit we indeed are and, second, in dire need of divine succor.  And that, only we can do even as we must, through confession, seek forgiveness for our transgressions.  In time, booster shots of regular Bible reading, daily prayer time, formation in church, etc.  will have to be given to deepen our faith. 

For now, let’s just ask ourselves: Are the regular Sunday starter doses of anti-“demonia” shots working for me?

(This article is excerpted from my column, The Wandering View, in the St. Paul of the Cross Weekly Parish Newsletter, vol. 1, no. 44, September 4, 2011)