Chicken Sacrifice... For Real

I saw a sacrificed chicken along the route of my morning run today. It sat bloodily prostrated-- as if someone had squished it with a big foot from above-- on a ceramic saucer at the crossroads two blocks away from my house, just across from the place where yesterday morning a Palm Sunday service was held. It definitely freaked me out a bit, and reminded me that I’m in a place where the spirit world is very present to many people and where things like demon worship and witchcraft still take place.

My neighbors told me recently that the house next door to my own used to be a place of cultic rituals. Today, a Catholic family lives there with one daughter who’s even an evangelical. They told me, too, that they once found goat heads nicely arranged on their own front lawn, left by some angry relatives who also happened to believe in and pronounce evil curses. Bringing in the spirit world to deal with family disputes seems to take sibling rivalry and familial jealousies to an even higher level.

As for me, though, I trust that all these demonic powers have no power of me. I believe that they exist, for sure, and I even fear and respect them, but I also have the faith and trust that the Lord I serve has “disarmed all the rulers and authorities and put them to shame, by triumphing over them in the cross.” I know that, by putting my hope in the death and resurrection of Christ, all the powers of evil and death have lost all their powers over me, so I have nothing to fear as I pass by sacrificed chickens and hear rumors of all sorts of dark things. I plead the protection of the holy cross, the instrument through which, as we remember Christ’s passion this Easter week, God defeated all the dark spirits in the world.