Good Versus Evil

We are fast approaching the end of the liturgical year.  We don’t like talking about endings unless of course it’s the end of suffering or the end of the baseball season with the Red Sox being World Series champions – the Patriots as Super Bowl Champions, we’ll see.  The end of the trail; the end of the line; the end of relationships, perhaps marriages; the end of our lives. Not good.

Most of us want beginnings, not ends. Perhaps that’s one reason why Advent is so attractive.  The Advent season is about a fresh start. It’s like rebooting a computer, and we start over again to do better the next time around with Jesus Christ as our companion.

Today’s first reading from Daniel is about an ending – and it’s pretty startling at least for those whose names are not written in the book – some sort of journal where judgment is handed down.  According to the prophet Daniel those on the wrong side of the ledger end up with “everlasting horror and disgrace.”

But, let’s not be afraid because the Book of Daniel is not about the end of the physical world.  It’s actually about the end of persecution.  His words are spoken to people who were suffering terrible persecution, and he offers hope to those people.  Daniel assures us that good will prevail over evil.  Suffering will end.   

The battle of good versus evil reminds us of the Jekyll and Hyde story written in 1886 by Robert Louis Stevenson.  In the novel, Dr. Jekyll transforms into Mr. Edward Hyde, a man without a conscience.  He uses potions, and eventually the transformations get out of control.  Each time Jekyll takes the potion to become Hyde, he worsens; he becomes more evil, and eventually he is trapped as Hyde.

This story is about the good and evil that exist in all of us and about our struggle with these two sides of our human personality.  Once unleashed, evil slowly takes over, until good ceases to exist.

Here are a few verses from one of the songs: "Friends, you’re aware, there are two sides to each of us, good and evil, compassion and hate. If we could extract all the evil from each of us, think of the world that we could create.

A world without anger or violence or strife, where man wouldn’t kill anymore! A world of compassion, where passion for life, would banish the madness of war!"

If only we would.

Cape Cod Times columnist and teacher Larry Brown recently said it best.   He wrote: “If you believe in evil, then you must believe in something that can defeat it. Without that there is no hope.  It is the determination to try treating all people as fellow-tribesmen…love as a matter of policy is our only way out.  It always has been.  People who gather to worship – regardless of their persuasion – have an advantage.  They can work in groups and magnify their love exponentially.  They have to.  No political strategies will save us if love fails."

Our Gospel makes this point by explaining what happens when love is absent and Jesus is forgotten or is an after-thought. Our Gospel describes what’s called the tribulation when according to Jesus, the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.  Although the tribulation is biblical fantasy, its assumed consequences are symbolic of what is happening to our nation and in much of the world today – love taking a back seat to hatred.

All of that is described in an almost 3-full-page spread in last Sunday’s Boston Globe article entitled “Exporting Fury” describing the spread of anger and hate throughout the world. The writer said: “Nationalist movements are ablaze in Europe, and nowhere is the heat more intense than in Britain. Anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant, the fury on the right is being fanned…"

According to France’s President Emmanuel Macron recently speaking on Armistice Day (Veteran’s Day) and the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, “Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism by saying, ‘our interest first, who cares about the others. By putting our own interests first with no regard to others, we erase the very thing that a nation holds dearest, and the thing that keeps it alive: its moral values.”

Fury and hate – and the extreme nationalism of me first, to hell with all the rest – are the spawn of self-interest over the common good.  It’s so counter to Jesus – the Christ we worship – and his commandments the greatest being love your neighbor as yourself.

It’s well past time we all stopped drinking the potions of evil, hate and division turning us into uncontrollable Edward Hydes.  Many influential people sell those potions, and many of us tend to buy.  Then, once unleashed, evil slowly takes over, until good no longer exists.  It’s a spiritual disease that can consume love and have us lose our souls.  Jesus knew this.

We began with a reference to December 2, the first Sunday of Advent.  We end with a reference to Thanksgiving – just 4 days away.  We give thanks for the good and charitable men and women here in this church and wherever else they may be found who reflect the sun and dispel darkness; make the moon shine; keep the stars in the sky; and who refuse to let the heavens be shaken.

We give thanks to those who make the Kingdom of God come on Earth as well as in heaven and who hold strong to our Catholic belief that good will prevail over evil and our moral values should never be abandoned – just as Jesus taught us.

And, thanks be to God.

Deacon David Pierce