A year or so after she joined our parish, my mother said to
me “Dear, you really should tell people what you’re doing when you’re
away. Otherwise they’ll think your life is
one big holiday.”
Which I’m sure was her way of telling me she’d overheard a
parishioner saying my life is one big holiday!
So in the bulletin last Sunday, I was sure to mention why I
was away last week. I said that I was on
a priests’ training retreat about ‘Unbound’ ministry, an approach to
deliverance and healing prayer based on Neil Lozano’s book by the same name.
I said that Unbound uses five keys to praying for greater
spiritual freedom.
But I just took that off the Unbound website! I didn’t know anything much about Unbound;
all I knew was that people I really respected, including a couple of bishops,
praised it highly.
I’ve returned from the retreat convinced that virtually all
of us need to pray for greater spiritual freedom. And I think that using the
five keys of Unbound is a very good way to do that.
There’s no time for me to describe the five keys today, since
I want to look first at our Sunday readings: all three of them connect with
what I heard and experienced on the retreat. In fact, all the weekday readings
last week reinforced what the retreat leaders were presenting—and reminded me
that their teaching was solidly rooted in the Bible.
In the first reading today, we learn how God uses prophets.
Although Moses was a giant among prophets, the Lord says his ministry will
continue. It wasn’t Moses’ voice the people heard, but God’s. And God will
raise up prophets and give them the words to speak.
And in the Gospel, we hear a word we don’t usually like to
hear: authority! We usually use it in terms of governing authority, even in the
Church. But in the healing of the man with the unclean spirit, authority means
power—power to command, and power to heal.
We all know that priests have sacred power, the power to administer
the sacraments. We all know that the Pope and bishops have authority, the authority
to teach and to govern. Rarely do we talk about the power of each baptized
person. And yet God has given all of us power and authority; it’s different from
that conferred by ordination, but this power and authority are part of God’s
plan for us.
Right after Mass I am going to baptize the baby of a young
couple I married a couple years ago. Immediately after the baptism, I will
anoint the baby and say: “As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet, and King, so
may you live always as a member of his body, sharing everlasting life.”
We’re all called to be prophets—to speak God’s words to
others, in his name. And we’re called to be “ kings” who speak with authority—the
authority of the Scriptures and the teaching of the Church, mindful always of
the solemn warning God gives in the first reading to those who would dare to
speak in any other way.
And we’re called in baptism to a common priesthood. It
differs from the ministerial priesthood of the ordained, but it still imparts
the power to bless in God’s name.
Although I was on a priests’ retreat, trained lay people
often pray for others using the Unbound model, because it’s not based on the
sacrament of holy orders but on the sacrament of baptism.
The authority and power each of us has can be used to help
others find their way to freedom from the bondage of sin. But it can also be
used for our own benefit—praying with Unbound helps us claim authority in the name
of Jesus over the evils that torment us.
The scene in today’s Gospel is a dramatic one. Nowadays we keep
our distance from the idea of unclean spirits. Forty-five years ago I saw The
Exorcist, a movie that revolved around demonic possession. It’s taken almost
half a century to erase all the misconceptions the movie created.
In fact, the Evil One is too smart to show his hand as
clearly as the movie does, except in the very rarest of cases. Yet if we
marginalize the role that evil spirits play in leading us to the slavery of
sin, we fail to use God’s full authority and power over sin and evil. We fail
to use the power of the name of Jesus, even though our Lord said that we can
ask anything in his name. (John 14:14)
The Catechism says “By entering into the holy name of the
Lord Jesus we can accept, from within, the prayer he teaches us: ‘Our Father!’
His priestly prayer fulfills, from within, the great petitions of the Lord's
Prayer: concern for the Father's name; passionate zeal for his
kingdom (glory); the accomplishment of the will of the Father, of
his plan of salvation; and deliverance from evil.” (CCC 2750)
We’re all pretty good at seeking forgiveness. And God grants
it readily. But what about deliverance from the evil that leads us to sin? From
the lies we tell ourselves or the lies of Satan that we believe about ourselves?
Jesus wants us to be every bit as free as the man from whom
he casts out the unclean spirit.
If all this seems a bit over the top, let’s look at the
second reading. Paul is writing about anxiety. While the Gospel story of a man
crying out in the voice of an evil spirit may be entirely beyond our
experience, which one of us doesn’t experience anxiety?
Anxiety isn’t a sin.
But a spirit of anxiety comes from the Evil One; anything that binds us
from living Christian lives that are joyful and free comes from the Evil One.
We need to use the power and authority that Jesus shares with us to unbind
ourselves and others from all that oppresses us.
I’m still putting the pieces together from last week’s
retreat. I hope that the Lord will make it possible for me to share more about
Unbound ministry with the parish and to talk about the five keys. For now, today’s
Scriptures get us started in thinking in the right direction: first, are we
ready not only to hear but to speak God’s word to others? Second, do we acknowledge that anxiety—at home
and at work—pulls us away from God? Do
we recognize that it can be based on a lie leads us to sin and to doubt?
And finally, are we ready to pray for deliverance, to seek
freedom in gentle ways that help and heal within the tradition of the Word of
God and Christ’s Church?
If the answers to those questions resonate in your hearts,
it may be time to talk more about Unbound ministry in our parish.
I gave a second homily on this retreat, You can read it here.
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