I love St Michael the archangel. He’s my patron saint and perhaps for good reason in light of my life of demon busting and controversy!!
So one day when I was praying we had a chat and I felt him inspire me with this vision…
Imagine a modern house and imagine the owners have installed a state of the art security system! Camera, motion detectors, security dog, steel door, double locks, heck even a gun!!
But imagine as they go out that they leave all the windows and doors wide open and that they forget to activate the alarm. Burglers come and empty the house!
Well many christians are like this. They have 1000 prayers of protection (I have managed 11 years without one). They have a novena to St Joseph, 5 first friday’s, 7 second saturday’s, 9 fourth wednesdays. They have the holy rosary, they have the divine mercy, they have St Michael prayers. They have a stone from Medjugorje, oil from Fatima, water from knock. They have a relic of mother Theresa, St Padre Pio’s mitten, St Faustina’s hip bone! They have a benedict medal, a scapular, a cross not to mention sleeping on a plank and fasting on peanuts while attending 3 masses a day!
And yet, they are being robbed. They are depressed, sad, joyless and meeting them is like an encounter with death!
Why?
The answer is simple. A lot of people who are very religious do not know Jesus or the Father from the heart. Sure they talk about Him as I might talk about Donald Trump, but they don’t know him!
Satan has a field day adding devotional after devotional, pelgrimage after pelgrimage to somehow help them. Often scruples and depression follow especially in traditional catholic environments where laughing or smiling is considered mortal sin unless of course it’s to gossip, that’s aparently ok!!
So going back to what I was saying, so many have never surrendered fully theie lives to God. Often their prayers have a ‘pray and stay away from me’ undertone where they ask God to bless all their lives but do not want to get close enough to God that me may ask them to sell their expensive jewelery or expensive wardrobe or ask them to stop colouring that white hair not to mention to give their whole lives including houses, jobs, careers to God to do as He pleases!
So you see guys, these people are bound by attachments and often the same people can have an awful lot of hidden anger and hatred in their hearts not to mention the lost deadly sin of religious pride.
All these ungodly attachements leave them fighting with God and render many if not most of their prayers absolutely useless and powerless and are a walking contradiction to christianity and an insult to the Holy Spirit who wishes to detach them from all these things so that they can enjoy true freedom and happiness from a personal and intimate relationship with Jesus.
Without a personal intimate relationship with God, your “house” may have the best alarm system in the world, but it’s switched OFF and St Michael the archangel is sleeping and only laughing at you who don’t really love God!
And so today being Friday, take a moment before Jesus and ask Him if you are really dying with Him to the things of this world. Do you really know Him? Do you really trust Him? Is your faith alive and vibrant or is it lipservice? Do you trust Him with your material life? Are you open to making steps of faith? Are you open to being ridiculed for the sake of the Gospel!
If you answered yes to all these, well done. Soon you will be beatified and I will come to touch you and be healed!
But if not, then you are surely a work in progress and the place of change is the cross.
Eucharistic adoration at 3pm! Be there!!