Reading and meditation on the Word of God on Friday of the twenty-seventh week in ordinary time, October 9, 2026.
The theme for our meditation today is: Fight Satan with Strong Faith. In the Holy Mass with elementary school students, the pastor who was delivering the homily, explained about the importance for everyone to have fear of God. This means that we are afraid to become the opponent of God and that our attitude would disappoint God. There was a boy who had just received First Communion raised his hand and he said: "We must fear God, but we must not fear to fight Satan."
When we fear of someone or something, we actually expect something from him or from it. For example, teachers are feared by their students on the basis of punishment to be given as the latter break the discipline. Meanwhile, when we do not fear of something or someone, we mean that they are useless to us or at least we do not expect something from them. We do not count anything as something that we want from them. In this sense, we should do this to Satan and demons.
Satan doesn't really scare us. To support that comment made by that elementary school boy, we have at least two reasons. The first, our "say no to Satan". Saying no to Satan means rejecting him because nothing can be expected of him. We don't have to give him a chance or time to dominate us. Consequently, we decide not to sin or to follow the influence of Satan, instead we choose to embrace the Lord’s grace and enter the house of God. Abraham is described in the first reading today, as the one who had chosen the best that God already prepared for him and he dared to separate himself from other choices that were not from the Lord.
The second is our say "yes to Jesus". Saying yes to Jesus can be expressed in a negative way, especially when we are afraid of Him every time we are about to do something against Him. We feel distress and annoying if we deliberately go against His commandments and teachings, which means that we choose to say yes to Satan. Jesus says in the Gospel today: if we are not with Him, we are against Him.
While when we say in a positive way, which is to say yes to Jesus, we actually incline to reveal our positive thoughts, feelings, desires and tastes, in the accompaniment of feeling joyful, hopeful and confidence. This spiritual aspect must be strong in us, which of course supports our bodies from being tortured by Satan or demons. Satan cannot move and walk freely when Jesus is in command and in control of ourselves. We should also do the same because we have Jesus Christ always present in us.
We hope that as individuals and communities, we have enough power to become able and brave to fight Satan.
Let's pray. In the name of the Father ... Almighty and powerful Lord, strengthen us and fill us with courage and power of Jesus Christ that we may be able to fight Satan and all influences brought by it. Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit ... In the name of the Father ...
