Sermon preached at
Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on the Third Sunday after Trinity
Are lions evil?
They catch and kill animals but then, they have to in order
to eat. Why does that make them evil?
We tend to make this sort of judgment based on what we see
lions do. Perhaps we tend to side with the poor, harmless gazelle who gets
chased, and potentially caught. Why take the gazelle’s side over the lions?
[PAUSE]
Look carefully at a lion and you see that it is a beautiful
creature, well-designed by God. In fact, we know that it is the lioness that is
the more skilled predator and she is highly efficient at what she does. It’s
not safe to be a gazelle when there is a lioness around with cubs to feed.
How efficient is a roaring lion going to be at catching prey
to devour? The gazelle will surely hear him coming and run off, won’t she?
Resisting a roaring lion is easy, surely?
[PAUSE]
It is entirely possible for an animal to hear the roaring
and be frozen in fear. It is also possible for an animal to be distracted, or
unfit. That way a lion can indeed seize the weaker, less-prepared animal.
Likewise, when it comes to the Devil, we can be frozen in fear
of his presence in the world. Like a rabbit caught in the headlights, we can
freeze in the presence of Evil and do nothing to stop its spread.
We can be distracted
from hearing him. There are lots of voices in the world, some of which speak
Good, but many which are designed to obscure that message OF God’s love.
Sometimes we are just overwhelmed by the noise that we don’t hear Evil coming.
We can be so unfit as to be unable to avoid him. We can be
so used to our own sins that we simply don’t recognise the Devil when he creeps
up on us.
St Peter reminds us “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary
the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour: whom
resist stedfast in the faith.”How do we avoid fear of the Devil and the
sufferings he can inflict?
We need to deal with our fear. First, we can recognise that,
in the Cross, Our Lord has already defeated the Devil and rendered him powerless
over the people of God. While the Devil may cause suffering in this life, he
cannot destroy who we are. We are safe with Christ. If we want evidence, we can
recognise that all the saints are going through the same troubles, and hold
true to God. This shows that the Devil can be resisted.
We need to know what sin is, and the difference between good
and evil. We have only to look to God for that. It is possible for every human
being to be good, but all Goodness comes from God, not from human beings. We
need to look to God in the Bible, in the saints, in the sacraments.
We need to know how we have sinned and recognise that we all
fall short, that we all sin and render ourselves unfit to resist Evil. We can
repent of our sins and, by drawing on the grace given by Our Lord, find
nourishment to make ourselves fit again to serve.
We must also
encourage others, not by judging them by our own standards, but by realising
that we are all in the same boat and all loved by God. Remember, Our Lord says,
“I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that
repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no
repentance.” Those who are just in their own eyes never hear the Devil’s roar.
They are like gazelles who have put their hooves into their ears. But, by
recognising that we can behave foolishly, sinfully, and wickedly, we can
understand that our fellow human beings need prayer, warning, grace, and love.
All too often, the animals on this planet lose their lives
because of the foolishness of people. Playing the blame game does nothing. They
lose their lives because we human beings treat them badly. How we treat animals
says much about how we treat ourselves. We need to do better, each one of us,
but we are loved by Christ. It is His love that helps us hear the lion’s roar
and resist the Devil and all his works.
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