Spiritual Warfare
“…those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, those having seizures, and paralytics, and He healed them.”
—
We have a curious tendency of reading the Gospels as though the world they describe no longer exists.
We read about demons the way we read about dragons. Sounds interesting and symbolic perhaps, but belonging to “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..”
But Matthew speaks of them with complete sobriety. There’s no drama or theatrical flourish. Simply: “those oppressed by demons.”
He writes as though the spiritual world were as real as the physical one - which, of course, it is.
And here we begin to glimpse something G.K. Chesterton once observed about Christianity: it is the one worldview that manages to be both mystical and practical at the same time.
It insists that angels and demons exist while simultaneously telling you to go feed your neighbor and mend your fence.
Matthew’s description in this verse belongs to that same realism. The human condition is not merely biological. Nor is it merely psychological.
Man is a creature standing at the intersection of two worlds: the visible and the invisible. When he falls ill, the disturbance may arise in either realm.
The Gospels therefore present sickness in layers.
Some are suffering from bodily ailments: paralysis, seizures, fevers. Others are tormented by demons. Thus, sometimes Jesus restores a body. Other times, He casts out a spirit, and sometimes He does both.
On this side of modernity, we tend to flatten these distinctions.
Renowned exorcist, Fr. Chad Ripperger, often notes that demonic oppression does not always resemble the dramatic scenes made popular by horror films.
Most of the time it is quieter than that, consisting of persistent temptations, crushing discouragement, or irrational despair.
The devil, after all, is not primarily interested in theatrics. He is interested in discouragement.
And discouragement is one of his most effective tools because it erodes the virtue that makes the Christian life possible: hope.
Fr. Dan Reehil - another exorcist - has similarly observed in his pastoral work that many people underestimate how aggressively the enemy works to distort a person’s interior life, particularly through lies.
If the devil can convince a man that he is alone, that God has abandoned him, or that change is impossible, then he has effectively imprisoned him without chains.
Our modern tendency is to fight these battles with purely psychological tools.
But Matthew shows us something different.
What happens when the oppressed are brought to Jesus?
They are healed.
Take note of how they came to Christ - people brought them to Him.
That subtlety reveals a profound truth about spiritual warfare. Deliverance often begins not with the afflicted person himself, but with someone who carries him to Christ.
A friend, parent, a priest, a community of believers.
The Church has always understood this. Prayer, fasting, confession, the sacraments - these are not religious decorations added onto an otherwise normal life. They are weapons.
The most astonishing fact in this passage is not that demons exist.
It’s that Christ has authority over them.
The kingdoms of darkness tremble because the Son of God has entered their territory.
And wherever Christ walks, the dominion of the enemy begins to collapse.
This is why the crowds in Matthew’s Gospel bring their afflicted to Him in droves. They can see what happens when Jesus arrives.
Oppression loosens its grip. Bodies straighten. Minds clear. And hope is restored.
This episode from the distant past is the same battle that rages around and within us. And the remedy is the same:
Bring everything to Him.
We must bring our sickness, our discouragement, our hidden sins, and our quiet despair.
Bring even the things we cannot explain.
Because the Gospel presents Jesus as a King reclaiming occupied territory.
And the demons know it.
Onward and Upward,
Ted
I recently had the opportunity to discuss the power of humility with Mackenzie Watkins as part of her Lenten series “Choosing Virtue.” You can check it out here ^
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