THE EMPTY SOUL

When the unclean spirit is gone out from a man, he walketh through dry places seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out; and when he cometh he findeth it swept and garnished; then goeth he and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in, and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. St. Luke 11:24-26.

An empty soul, Jesus teaches us, is in great peril, but we must not conclude from this illustration of Our Lord’s that we should not, with God’s help, drive out what is evil within us. We must, but we must never stop there.

If we study for a moment the life of Jesus Christ we will see why. Jesus suffered the same assaults of the devil as we do. First in his forty days and nights in the wilderness he was tempted, rejecting the blandishments of the devil at every turn. Then when Peter was trying to dissuade him from going to Jerusalem to face the Cross, Our Lord turned to anxious Apostle with the stinging rebuke, Get thee behind me Satan: thou art an offence unto me. In Luke 22:28, Jesus says to his disciples, Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations, which tells us that he was not left alone by the devil.

Finally, and perhaps worst of all, Jesus faced the devil in the Garden of Gethsemane when the tempter again tried to turn him from the way of the Cross. Luke 22:44 tells us that this temptation was so intense, that Jesus was in agony, and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground.

If Jesus suffered so, we can be absolutely sure that the devil will leave us alone only when he is sure that we belong to him. That presents the Christian with a most interesting perspective on what we call temptation. William Barclay, canny Scot that he was, put it his way:

What we call temptation is not meant to make us sin; it is meant to enable us to conquer sin. It is not meant to make us bad, it is meant to make us good. It is not meant to weaken us, it is meant to make us emerge stronger and finer and purer from the ordeal. Temptation is not the penalty of being a man, temptation is the glory of being a man. It is the test which comes to a man whom God wishes to use.

Fine words, but how do we translate them into our lives. How do we keep that evil spirit from bringing his rancid friends back into our soul?

In the days when I frequented bars more than I frequented church, a favourite saying of mine was, A man has to believe in something, I believe I’ll have another beer. It never occurred to me then, but I now recognise that as an echo from the void within me; a cold dark void which at times threatened to engulf me.

I sometimes filled that void, or at least temporarily obscured it, with booze. All too often I hear of others doing similar things. As Christianity is driven from our lives, we hear more and more of people filling the void with sex, alcohol, drugs, with warm and fuzzy, new age garbage and even sometimes with crime.

Small wonder that St. Paul warned the Ephesians, And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery; but be filled with the Spirit. Eph. 5:18.

It is never enough just to drive out evil; the void must be filled with good.

To accomplish this, our Loving Father has provided us with an amazing array of help. There is the Bible and all the knowledge of God which it contains. There are the teachings and the most glorious example of Jesus Christ. There is the ever present help of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. There is the extraordinary support structure of the Church, the Body of Christ into which we are baptised.

St. Paul, in glorifying God, taught us of the vital importance of wholehearted membership in the Body of Christ. We should ever avail ourselves of the support structure of the church and the most important reason is that it is within the Church that we are fed through the Holy Eucharist, the feast instituted by Our Lord Jesus Christ. We cannot really be Christians without that Blessed Sacrament.

With that precious gift, and with all the other gifts I just mentioned, there is no reason to leave any room inside us for evil spirits to fill. There is no reason to leave our souls in the peril of emptiness. After all, it is there in our souls, that Jesus Christ, our Saviour, longs to make his abode, filling our souls with that Love which radiates from the Cross.

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you.

Where God dwells, there is no place for evil spirits.

Peter Jardine+

Lent III, 2005