The Devil take you?

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on the First Sunday in Lent

The first place that receives the seed is the wayside, the pathway where the birds swoop down and take the seed away. Our Lord explains that this is those who receive the word of God, but the Devil takes it from them. Well, whose fault is that?

As we have already seen, if we allow the Devil to influence us, he can lead us by the wayside where we can lose God completely. We know that this is something that he wants to do. Look at the lengths he goes to to take the Word of God away! Had Jesus succumbed to temptation,  then the Word of God would have been lost to us all!

So what do we do? We need to protect the seed that we have received. We protect it by arming ourselves as St Paul would have us do.

By pureness, by knowledge, by long suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, By the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left.

We need to be pure in our intent to love and serve God. We have to read our bibles and know what it is to be Christian. We need to stick with it through thick and thin. We need to see God in our neighbours and be kind. We need to pray to the Holy Ghost for His presence and continual influence to drive away the lies of the Devil. This is how we protect the seed that we want to grow in us.

We will suffer for it, there is no doubt. The Devil will give us a hard ride through Earthly things, but not through heavenly things. We will fall so many times in so many sad and terrible ways. We will fail, but the Holy Trinity gives us an Eternal Hope!  If we pray for help, it will come and it will bring us closer to God through Christ. We just need to cling on to what we have, and allow it to grow. Then the word of God will truly grow in us.