Every now and again I hear from people that they get something from my blog reflections, which is nice to hear – and praise the Lord for that!   My own introduction to the “blogosphere” and my trying my hand at blogging came from my days as Associate Pastor at St. Patrick’s in Markham and an alternative to emailing my homilies when requested by people.  Our Youth Ministry Coordinator introduced me to this form of communication and social media.  It is still somewhat uncomfortable for me to fully engage this work because I feel like it borders on self-promotion for me.  That is not a judgement on others because from the odd Christian blog I’ve read, it occurs to me the need for some great writers to share their reflections in faith for us.  I don’t consider myself among that league of Christians writers, maybe because I’ve never been much of a writer at all.  The only reason I have anything to post is because in the interest of the people I preach to, I need to have a text with me, otherwise my homilies would be very long!

I have continued the blogging into the Office of Vocations, because wise people have continued to encourage me to do this and I figured that I could tie this into my ministry somehow.  My ministry is evolving, and I find myself less often in parishes preaching as I once was.  Relational ministry is the essence of a Vocation Director’s work and I find with more discernment groups and more people to meet; there are less weekends free for parish preaching (as much as I love it).  Without as many new homilies, I find myself blogging less and less.

Recently I’ve asked members of the Vocations Team to create more and write more, and so I too need to “put my money where my mouth is”, so to speak.  Now that I have shared my thoughts today on blogging, I offer you a very short reflection, based on one of my other social media tools which I use more often (because it’s a little easier), my Twitter account, my daily “tweet”.  My Twitter handle is @FatherLemieux.  I also use @vocationsTO, which is our Office of Vocations handle: but it’s a shared account so I use it less frequently and it is less personal than mine.  Anyway my tweet today was this: “Jesus gives us HIS authority over unclean spirits (evil) doing the work of making the world a GOOD place, one action at a time”.

My friends, I truly believe this.  Of course, as a Catholic priest I would never deny the presence of true evil and demonic possession, but these cases are rare.  The Gospel isn’t going to speak to each of our hearts if we consider something that most of us will never directly encounter in our lives: evil in this form.  But there are unclean spirits all around us, evil happening in the world, the community and the places each of us live.  I’m not talking about bad things happening to good people, because that is not evil in the sense of what we’re talking about here.  God’s children doing bad things to each other.  And it doesn’t have to be all that dramatic either. The most insidious of things happen when we are indifferent and complacent in helping others.

But what we are given God’s power and authority to do (each one of us) is to do good and to change the world, one good act at a time.  Friends, as we contemplate today’s Gospel, let us give this some thought.  If any one of us can say we’ve done everything we possibly can – praise God for the good we’ve brought to the world.  If we can do more good and be less complacent or indifferent, then welcome to my club (because I know there’s more I can be doing too) and let’s take the power and authority that comes with being Christian and make this world a better place…one action at a time!