You don’t have to be a villain to wind up in hell. You only have to miss the point. The point is that this world is not “about” this world, and your life is not about you. It is all about heaven. It is all about Jesus.

The Church hasn’t been just sitting around. Layer upon layer of protection against unclean spirits has been put in place, and remains in place to this day. We all walk by hundreds of people every day in whom Jesus is alive and vigorously active. There is a red candle burning next to the place where Jesus is physically present in Catholic Churches all over the world. Millions of people will receive the very life of Jesus in their hands today.

Beneath the superstars, as it were, there was a large community of other people, less gifted perhaps than the superstars, but still people of immense talent, and their working, struggling and striving with each other created the superstars. The superstars come from communities of people who have seen that the harvest is plentiful, and lean into that work. There are no superstars apart from a dedicated community of laborers at work in the fields of the Lord.

Some don’t understand what sort of man Jesus is. They don’t accept what sort of man He is. They don’t come, they don’t kneel, they don’t ask. And so they don’t receive His mighty acts of power. Power happens when we recognize what sort of man Jesus is. He is the man who is also God.

The Church is on offense. The Church has the ball. And who is attacking hell for the Church? People like the 72 are attacking hell – people who attend long readings of Holy Scripture, who read long swaths of it, who commit large swaths of it to memory, who think with it, speak with it, pray with it, people whose minds are full of the glory of God all day, every day, and find therefore that even demons are subject to them.

We can do without food for a time, or sleep for a time, or anything of this world for a time. Fasting is our testimony that in the fullness of time we have everything we need always and only in Jesus.

Young people especially are experiencing a crisis of meaning, depression, hopelessness and anxiety. At the same time Bible sales are up 22%. Conversions to Catholicism in some places are up dramatically – 73% in Dallas-Fort Worth, 160% in France since 2015. People might not understand a thing we say about Reconciliation, Sanctification, or Evangelization, but it looks like they are trying to find out.