Reclaiming Territory for The Kingdom of Heaven

,Last week was my Birthday and Birthday gifts can always be interesting especially when then come from people of different backgrounds and beliefs. This year I received an intriguing gift which led me to an interesting train of thought, and in a round about way, enabled me to talk to The Blessed Mother while doing dishes....lol..A little background on me....I'm notoriously hard to buy gifts for because I'm just totally uninterested in normal worldly things and am therefore largely misunderstood in my circle of immediate family and friends. In short, most people don't know what to do with me.  This year though, there was a theme of plants which was awesome. I have recently taken up the hobby of gardening, so my 32 going on 82 year old soul was thrilled to receive not 1 but 2 indoor plants. There was however a slight problem with one of the plants. The concept of it was as follows: Put this log looking apparatus in water dish and it would supposedly sprout a bonsai type plant decoration. Very cool and exciting no problem there. The problem was the intention and the figurine that went on the top of it. The marketing of this treasure was that it would bring luck and fortune, definitely superstitious and bordering on dabbling in the occult, but worse that that, there was the problem of the figurine on top of the log containing the plant (which in the giver's defense they did not think it came with). To me, it resembled what appeared to be a pagan nature spirit aka a demon. Maybe a type of the infamous "green man."
​ What I found out upon much research was that it is supposed to represent Marvel's character of the "Groot" who is described as part of the "guardians of the galaxy" who are evidently a "rag tag group of rebels." From what I gathered, Groot is a tree alien type creature that works to "keep humans safe." Now most people would tell me I am overreacting when I give my analysis (in fact the giver of the gift nicely chimed in that I am reading too far into the things), but let me give you the background of the weekend... For some reason, on this particualr weekend I was obsessing on trying to articulate the fact that we are living in a world in which everything is filtered through a demonic lense in order to manipulate us into being sympathetic to the enemy's agenda. My point was that we have reached a point where you cannot even watch a simple nature documentary without the evil one's agenda being shoved down your throat and that I was considering becoming a hermit because just leaving the house or turning on the tv is not doing anything good for my sanity.  So you could imagine my delight at being able to prove my theory right via the demonic Groot who's "rag tag team" of space beings uncannily resemble fallen angels who rebelled from the creator of the galaxy and now interfere with human activity... Only we are told by Marvel that they are" guardians " and here to help "save" us! HA! Totally demonic but totally proves my point..... It is a classic case of a story being told to manipulate the person on the other end to view the bad guys in a positive light. Truly and ridiculously obvious once you start being able to see behind the schemes of the Evil One. Nice try Satan, but not today. 
Furthermore I suspected that this tree alien posing as a good guy was symbolically and ritualistically being brought to live via the growth of the bonsai plant (at least metaphorically speaking), which I could not allow. So what did I do? Well I'm glad you asked. I ditched the statue of the demon and put the Holy Mother on top instead.  I am now able to venerate her image and talk to her while doing dishes. I also put a drop of holy water in with the regular water to make the plant grow and to banish any evil alien tree demons. I did all of this with a smile on my face and a general amusement of the situation, almost making a mockery out of the ridiculousness of the enemy. 

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After all of this madness, it occurred to me that the entire story of the Bible is precisely what I had just done with this weird little tree. In my own small and suburban way, I had reclaimed territory for My Lord. I had taken something meant for evil and made it good, but more than that, I returned the miracle of life to it's rightful owner. 
This reclaiming of God's territory has been going on since the Old Testament which we will get into in a minute, but more relevant here, since the early church. Many protestants misunderstood the Catholic Church and call us pagans because rather than destroy pagan idols, images, temples, etc, the Church has always been big on consecrating them to God instead, which is really returning to God what is rightfully his (hint everything is rightfully His). Satan has many convinced that Christians stole pagan ideas or days or whatever, but the truth is, it is Satan who highjacked God's creation and Christians are returning the stolen goods and ideas to their rightful owner.  We see this concept throughout Church history. In pagan Rome, buildings and statues were made into Churches and depictions of saints. Structures such as obelisks were brought to Saint Peter's and topped with crosses to signify the Churches triumph over paganism etc...  but it did not start there. Oh No....it starts much earlier. Let's for a second examine the Book of Exodus. In Exodus 3:1 (the Burning Bush incident), God commands Moses to remove his shoes because he is now standing on Holy Ground. Where was the ground that God made Holy?....Mount Horeb. A common belief is that Mount Horeb and Mount Sinai are the same mountain. Why did God need to point out that this ground was now Holy? Because it was formerly an important mountain for Pagan worship. Furthermore it is on that same mountain later on in Exodus, that Moses and the elders (70 of them which is significant but for another time), share a meal with the Lord which is a for shadowing of the Eucharist and the eternal covenant.  There are many more examples of this, In fact, the whole book of Exodus is a demoralization of those who worship false Gods. By the end of the plagues and calamities, the Egyptians are literally throwing silver and gold at the Israelites to just go away out of their land, and you can't tell me God wasn't greatly amused by that! This brings me to my next point...not only is God on a mission to take back what is His throughout the entire bible, he openly mocks Satan while doing it.  Let's look at Elijah for a minute. He literally mocks the priests of Baal, who many agree is just another name for Satan. In this incident in 1 Kings 18, we see the bull worship (bulls have long been worshipped to pagan "gods", take note of the horns)...  Scipture states the following: "Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, choose one young bull and prepare it first for there are more of you. Call upon your gods but do not start the fire. Taking the young bull that was turned over to them, they prepared it and called upon Baal from morning to noon saying Baal answer us! But there was no sound. ...When it was noon Elijah taunted them, Call louder for he is a god; he may be busy doing his business, or may be on a journey. Perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened." Now we need to note here that these characteristics were not unique to the god of Baal, which is how we know that all the pagan religions were derived from one satanic source. For example we see many of the same themes in Greek mythology such as the journeying god of Hercules (thanks Disney for teaching for glorifying Herculese to my 7 yr old brain *eye roll8) There are the gods of nature (much like the groot) who sleep during the winter and then wake up during the spring causing everything to come alive and turn green. Here Elijah is literally making fun of Satan and the scheme that the has convinced the Baal worshipers of.  In this story, God is claiming back his chosen people from this deception. 
The entire Bible is a story of reclaiming territory and restoring to God what is rightfully His, all while mocking the serpent. Trick woman into falling from Eden? No problem, salvation will come through a human woman. Use a tree as a means to cause humans to fall? No problem, salvation will come through a tree in the form of a cross. Use food to condemn in the form of the forbidden fruit? No problem, Salvation comes via the Heavenly food of the Eucharist. Trick humans into building great monuments to worship you? No problem, my Church will display those monuments in their Holy places and top them with a cross as a reminder to you, the serpent.  Try to make your way into the homes of my people with alien tree demons? No problem, my people will top it with She who crushes your head instead.....

Watch my youtube video on the topic to learn how you can relate this message to the season of Lent. Don't forget to subscribe!
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