Angels and demons - Chris Gleeson SJ
In mid-February I shared a podium with two other presenters at a Youth and Children’s Ministry Training Day conducted by the Brisbane Catholic archdiocese. Their input was excellent and very engaging.
I was struck particularly by the material offered by Marist Father Kevin Bates, well-known speaker and musician, and parish priest of Hunters Hill in Sydney. His challenge to us as church leaders, using cleverly the title of Dan Brown’s book later made into a film of the same name, was to focus on the angels that enrich us and beware of the demons that bedevil us.
The idea appealed to me for several reasons. I immediately recalled the story—good stories bear repeating—about an old Cherokee warrior who was describing to his grandson one evening a battle that goes on inside all people. He said, ‘My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It promotes anger, envy, jealousy, cynicism, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other wolf is Good. It nurtures joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.’
Wide-eyed, his grandson thought about this story for a minute and then asked his grandfather: ‘Which wolf wins?’ The old Cherokee warrior simply replied: ‘The one you feed.’
The two wolves are our angels and demons, of course. Let me quote here, liberally and gratefully, from what Kevin Bates lists as the ‘angels’ that enrich leaders:
‘Faithfulness. We all need to know that we are in good hands, that our world is in good hands, that our family, our church, our nation are in good hands and so our leaders need to be faithful to us, to their promises and to their calling. Humour. Getting through and over things, accomplishing change with a certain lightness of touch. Surrender. Not needing to be in control but rather being of service—like washing feet. Exploration. Being ready to go where we haven’t gone before to see what is of value there. Trust. Trusting the gifts of the community, the group we are leading. The leader doesn’t have to do all the work.
‘Connection. As leaders formed by the Gospel, we are about relationships as our first point of reference—see the Good Samaritan parable. Shared identity and ownership. We create a space or a climate where people can own their community, where they can name its mission in their own way and where they can bring their own special gifts to the growth of this mission. Love. Which becomes the bottom line. Forgiveness and compassion. When wounds and brokenness draw us together, these mark good leaders in our communities.
‘As leaders we are not perfect, nor are our people—we don’t expect them to be perfect—and our wounded and missing bits become the stuff of our growth.’
On the ‘demons’ side of the ledger, Kevin suggested that we need to be carefully discerning about the following:
‘Resigning, giving up. Whether from being too busy, too hurt, too frustrated. Power-seeking. Needing to be in control—wilfulness, bullying, gossip, power-plays all bring down the community and cheapen us. Defensiveness and lack of humour. Taking ourselves too seriously and imagining the world is made in our image. Disconnection. Opposition between self and community—we are the good guys and you are the opposition! It happens in every corner of society, including our church. Imagined personal exclusive ownership. I am the only person who can possibly bring this project to completion. The group needs me! I am the bishop, the priest, the youth leader you’ve all been waiting for.
‘Things and ideas, structures and processes can become more important than people; ego in all its forms becomes the bottom line; and wounds and broken bits divide us.’
As I listened to Kevin Bates engaging us about angels and demons, I reflected that this was a very Ignatian presentation. This gifted Marist originally from Geelong would have made an excellent Jesuit! In one of the pivotal meditations of the Spiritual Exercises, what we term ‘The Two Standards’, Ignatius Loyola invites us to imagine that we are on a battle field where there are two battle flags—one identifying the army of Lucifer (‘bearer of light’), and the other signalling the leadership of Jesus Christ.
Lucifer’s program is centred on the attractions of riches, honour, and pride—not necessarily bad things, but capable of bringing us down and becoming demons if we do not use them carefully. Lucifer might mean ‘light bearer’, but the values, ideas, and propositions he commends to us are false lights.
Jesus, on the other hand, offers us the opposite values—poverty, powerlessness and humility. Just as Lucifer’s values are not obviously bad in themselves, so too the values of Jesus are not intrinsically good. For so many people on our planet today, poverty and powerlessness are painful afflictions. Ignatian spirituality, which is based on seeing everything as a gift from God, challenges us to take a much more nuanced approach to these values. Ignatian author David Fleming sj puts it lucidly:
‘The value of poverty reminds us that we have nothing in ourselves but only as a gift from God. Embracing powerlessness acknowledges that God is our strength. Humility is the expression of the reality of the self before God. It recognises that we are first and foremost sons and daughters of God, children who call him Father. The perfect embodiment of these values is Jesus himself’ (What Is Ignatian Spirituality? p. 75).
In chapter 13 of the Letter to the Hebrews, the author warns us: ‘Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that, some have entertained angels without knowing it.’ Hospitality, the art of keeping not just an open door but an open mind and heart, will help us to discern the angels and demons in our lives. To let go of those demons and to welcome our angels is one meaning we can give to those challenging words of Jesus: ‘Those who want to save their life will lose it, but those who loses their life for my sake, they will save it’ (Luke 9:24). Let us keep a discerning eye on our angels and demons—the former nurture God’s life in us, while the latter lead us down a different path.
