Saturday of the Twenty-sixth Week in Ordinary Time

“Do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”

I think the Lord is telling his disciples not to remain focused on the supernatural powers he has given them or on the things they can do. Rather, they should keep their minds focused on heaven. We hear a similar message elsewhere in the New Testament, where we are instructed to keep our minds on the things above.

That can be challenging for us. We like to keep our minds firmly rooted in this world, sometimes even on the worst things in it. Who doesn’t like a good true crime story? But what good do we really draw from something that keeps our minds focused on evil? That doesn’t mean it is always bad in itself to watch such a thing, but we would not want it to consume us.

More worryingly, people readily become consumed with what we call the paranormal: haunted house stories, ghost shows, and those sorts of things. Part of the problem is that their approach is deeply pagan and has nothing to do with our faith.

But even within our faith, there are all these podcasts about exorcists and books about demons. While those things may have some minor value, they can readily distract us and probably do more damage than good. They keep our minds focused on evil. They keep us entranced by it. We begin to think that evil has far more power than it truly does. We begin to see demons everywhere and imagine that they are constantly doing all sorts of things, when it is God himself who is in control.

You’ll never find the Fathers of the Church encouraging people to learn more about demons. They are always directing us to learn more about Christ, to learn about the angels, and to keep our minds focused on heaven. Whatever our minds are focused on is what we will learn to desire. It is what we will learn to love and what we will chase in this life.

We don’t want to chase evil. It is a reality, and at times we have to deal with it. But we want to chase what is good. We want to keep our minds and hearts focused on eternity, so that we come to know and love God more each day and draw closer to him.

So it is good to look at our own lives and ask: Where is my focus? What do I spend my day thinking about? What am I trying to bring more of into my life? If it is not the things of eternity, we need to change. We need to get rid of some things and make more time for prayer, for reading Scripture, and for sacred writings. That is where our minds should be.

If we allow the world to dictate what deserves our attention, it will tell us to pay attention to anything but Christ himself. We have to actively cultivate our minds and hearts to think about him and about the things of eternity—the things that will truly last, even when everything else in this world is taken away in death.