Where the Demons Are

9 July 2025   Matthew 10:1-7

“He gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity.” Matthew 10:1

We don’t hear much about Christians and Christian leaders having authority to cast out demons, and heal diseases. Some may think that those items have simply been dropped from the menu. Some may think that Christians find these kinds of claims to be embarrassing holdovers from an unlettered and primitive age, and so we don’t mention them much anymore.

Well, not so fast.

It’s not like the Church has been just sitting around since the days of the apostles. Significant protections from evil spirits have been hiding in plain sight for centuries. For one thing, we know from the New Testament that unclean spirits – by which we mean spiritual forces that have aligned themselves with evil, opposing God and seeking to hurt humanity – are terrified by the presence of Christ, and howl their protests every time He shows up: “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me” (Mark 5:7). Well, today there are over 2.4 billion Christians, about half of them Catholic, in whom Jesus resides. There are Catholic Churches all over the place where Jesus is physically present all day, every day. Tens of billions of people over the centuries have received the Holy Spirit in Baptism and Confirmation, and raised their children in the care and admonition of the Church. Jesus is everywhere, and everywhere Jesus is, unclean spirits back off. Those are pretty significant layers of protection.

This is not to say that unclean spirits lack any opportunity to corrupt souls. To the extent that people disregard or fail to cultivate the presence of Christ within them, openings for corruption can occur. Illness is one of the things that can cause that kind of inattention. It is not without significance, therefore, that modern medicine arose not in spite of Christian witness, but because of it. Modern science presumes that the closer you look at the physical world, the more likely you are to find something good. This was emphatically not the outlook of classical antiquity, or any other ancient civilization. It is why modern science, and modern medicine did not emerge in ancient Greece, Rome, China, or India. It arose instead in Christian Europe, because Christians have believed from the start that God created the world good and rational, and made people capable of finding out how the good and rational world worked. It was Catholics who established the university system that is the centerpiece of scientific inquiry today, and because of that inquiry average life expectancy since the 1950s has increased by about 20 years. Many dangerous diseases have been eradicated (e.g. smallpox, polio), and many others controlled by vaccines (e.g. tetanus, measles, hepatitis B et al.). All of that protection arose because of the witness of Christians, closing countless opportunities for distraction by unclean spirits.

Poverty is another factor that can cause inattention to the blandishments of corruption. For that reason, service to the poor has been the foundation of Christian witness from the beginning.  Today the overwhelming majority ofcharitable giving across the world is the work of of religious believers. In the U.S. the only organization that provides more money and resources to the poor than the Federal Government is Catholic Charities, and the Feds have the distinct advantage of being able to tax, and print their own money.

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. And again tomorrow. From all of that demons are still backing away. There is obviously more work to do, but plenty has already been done, and continues to be done.

You want evidence that Christians have authority over evil spirits?

Look around.