Evil battled in prayer

The spiritual powers of evil are described as gathering in the texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today. We need only glance into the media to be able to come up with a list of evil events in our world. We name our enemy as ebola, ISIS or terrorist. Friar Jude Winkler reminds us that the spiritual battle within against the passions which take us away from acting as people living in Christ are to be engaged first by seeking virtue through prayer. Prayer in the Spirit is described by Tom Purcell as our way of realizing how the gifts that God has given to us will be brought to action today. That action which will involve us with the other is love. Love will motivate the best response to the external evils. The Gospel from Luke emphasizes, according to Julian Kinkaid, the prayer life of Jesus. In walking in the Spirit, Jesus proclaims His destiny to be as the Prophets of His heritage and to be rejected by the people of the Holy City, Jerusalem. Unfortunately today, this place which is sacred to Jew, Muslim and Christian continues to do external battle against zealots who seem unable to find the armour of virtue in the action of love when they listen, internally, to the Spirit of God.