What goes around, comes around

"What goes around, comes around." This will always be so, as long as man chooses sin over virtues requiring self-denial. It is we who empower Satan whenever we consent to sin.

God, the most perfect of parents, forgives and restores to His friendship, sinners who repent and work to reform their lives. However, He also sometimes allows them to suffer the consequences of their selfish actions along with their innocent victims in hopes they will develop a keener, more compassionate conscience. Such was King David's experience after lust caused him to plan Uriah's death to marry his wife. We see him in fear, fleeing his palace, losing his kingship to Absalom, the son who betrays him.

Monday’s Gospel reading illustrates God's infinite saving power, His total defeat of evil. Jesus, traveling through pagan territory encounters a violent, self-destructive demoniac possessed by a "legion" of evil spirits. Christ never forces His will on anyone, but when the man prostrated himself before Him, Jesus commanded the spirits to leave him. The spirits, comfortable in pagan territory, begged not to be banished from the area, so Jesus allowed them to enter the nearby large herds of swine that then rushed madly into the sea to drown. Seeing the madman suddenly restored to his senses and their great loss of livestock, the natives, in fear, begged Jesus to leave them. However, His saving power remained with them. Jesus left behind the healed man to tell the wonder done for him by the One True God.

In both of these readings, humans are “beset”. Who among us is not “beset”? Who hasn’t felt completely overwhelmed? Sometimes we’re overwhelmed through our own fault (bad or nonexistent scheduling, discipline, choices); sometimes it seems that we’re being nibbled to death for no apparent reason.

Sometimes we want to strike back, or out, to heave the rocks and the dirt back in the direction they came from; other times we wish our own problems on others (lacking a herd of swine). I have some advice for these times:

First, take a deep breath. Then, ask Jesus to help you out of the mess that you got yourself into. That, really, is what faith is largely about—helping us overcome being “beset.”