
In some cases his presence is clearly discernible, while at other times he comes with great stealth. Without our knowing that it’s him, he causes the anxiety, division, and argumentation. He darkens us. He does so to entire societies. He tempts us to sin. On September 11 there was not just a physical darkness from the smoke at the World Trade Center but also a shroud of perplexity and confusion that descended. And it has affected most people. More than anything we are under spiritual attack, and we need to break it. We need to dispel the darkness. We need clarity.
There are many ways this is done, but most powerful is through the Blood of Christ.
We live at a time of special evil [see the new “special report“]. An exorcist named Father Chad Ripperger says that “one of the things that we exorcists have noticed is the resilience of demons now is unprecedented. Historically, when you talk to priests who had been exorcists back in the Fifties and Sixties, they said before the mid-Sixties, when you got faculties for a case of possession, it was over. Within a day to two days, ninety-nine percent of the time the demons were out, maybe on the outside a week. The average case of possession now takes somewhere between ten months and two years to break. The demons are extraordinarily resilient to your prayers in ways that exorcists say they never saw in the past.”
By meditating on Christ’s Blood, by pleading it, by washing ourselves in it, we banish evil. The devil can not take this. It’s what defeated him — drop by drop — at Calvary. It’s what flowed into every part of the Savior’s body, and what was shed for the salvation of the whole world. It is the holiness of the soil of Israel!

Plead it all day. Plead it at the first sign of evil. If you have evil in your lives — if you’re hurt, or confused, or perplexed, or frightened, or sick, or fatigued — take these matters to the Eucharist and dispel them. Plead that the Blood of Christ washes all evil from you and you’ll find that bondages are broken and light shines and a curtain of darkness and spiritual blindness is lifted. This is why blood is seen in Eucharistic miracles. It is to remind us of what’s behind the Eucharist; it’s to assure us; it’s to let us glimpse a power that transcends the entire universe.
–MHB
[resources: Secrets of the Eucharist and Michael Brown retreats: New Orleans and Chicago]

