Against “powers and principalities,” steadfastness and a focus on God

A Reflection for Thursday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

Find today’s readings here.

What line jumps out for you from today’s readings?

I suspect that many, if not most, will point to this ominous line from Paul, the first half ringing the loudest: “For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens.”

It is understandable for that line to be loudest—it is a masterful turn of phrase from Paul. The alliterative translation of “principalities and powers,” tracing all the way back to the earliest English versions of the Bible, helps as well. (Some contemporary English translations have shifted to render the Greek archas and exousias with words that are just as accurate but a little less “grabby”: rulers and authorities.)

But in some ways, the rhetorical strength of that line might tempt us to grab onto the wrong end of this reading. We can get tied up in parsing the difference between principalities, powers and “world rulers of this present darkness.” If you Google this verse—please don’t—you will find people only too ready to unpack the demonic hierarchies they think Paul is mapping out and to explain all the manifest evils that they cause.

It is not that I do not think evil spirits are real and dangerous; they are. (St. Ignatius Loyola often talks about the “evil spirit” or the “enemy of our human nature” in his Spiritual Exercises, the force that draws us away from God.) But categorizing and cataloging them and assigning them responsibility for this or that particular evil in the world is the wrong way to resist them. At its least harmful, this can turn into a kind of spiritual version of Pokemon (“Gotta catch ’em all,” if only to know what dangers they pose), and in its worst manifestations, it can become a kind of obsession with their power, rather than God’s.

There have been a few stories this year about bishops correcting priests who were publicizing a ministry of exorcism. In some cases, the priests had speculated about connections between UFOs and demons. These are extreme examples, but they point out the danger of focusing on the sickness rather than the remedy.

What we miss here, to return to today’s readings, is the line with which Paul introduces this section of his letter: “Draw your strength from the Lord and from his mighty power.”

That’s the key. We do not resist the power of evil by our own strength or knowledge, but by our reliance on God. So that is where our focus needs to be: on God, “with all prayer and supplication, pray[ing] at every opportunity in the Spirit.”

And even if evil spirits in the supernatural sense never cross your mind, there’s a lesson here for how we might resist more mundane evils as well. When we find ourselves “doomscrolling,” reading obsessively and unproductively about whatever evils are being done by human powers, the principalities and rulers of this world, it is easy to give them more attention, and thus more power, than they deserve. St. Ignatius would ask us to discern: How is this focus of my attention working on me? Does it draw me closer to God or move me away?

Here, we can draw inspiration from Jesus in today’s Gospel. Being warned that Herod wants to kill him, Jesus continues with his ministry: “Behold, I cast out demons and I perform healings today and tomorrow, and on the third day I accomplish my purpose.”

Jesus does not ignore the threat that Herod poses, but neither does he let it pull his focus away from his mission of proclaiming the Kingdom. Because what Jesus knows—and at bottom, this is why Herod is opposed to him in the first place—is that the power of God who cares for the poor and the lowly is greater than that of any earthly or heavenly power.

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