Daniel 14:6-9. The king of Babylon is having a discussion with Daniel about the divinity of the Babylonian God, Bel. The king insists Bel must be a "living god" because every night huge amounts of food and drink are brought into Bel's temple and in the morning they are gone. But Daniel just laughs and tells the king not to be fooled, Bel is just clay and brass and has never eaten or drunk a thing. This angers the king and he sets up a challenge - if his priests can prove that Bel is eating the provisions l then Daniel shall die, but if they are lying to him, then they shall die. That's the end of the passage but, spoiler alert, the priests are lying to the king and they do die.

False gods can be very persuasive, we all fall victim to them sometimes. In addition, when there are people who benefit from the continuation of our worship of false gods, maybe even whose livelihoods depend on that worship, then they are greatly incentivized to do whatever they have to do to keep us believing. Hence, the priests of Bel had an elaborate system set up to make it appear that Bel was eating and drinking the sacrifices left for him each night when, in fact, all of that food and drink went to the priests and their families. Nice gig while it lasted!

Whenever we place something higher than God in our lives we are worshiping a false god. We must always be alert to this because, as Father Mike Schmitz says, we have idol making hearts - we do this all the time! When I allow my beeping phone to interrupt my prayer, I have made an idol of my phone, if only for that moment. When people allow the fear of a virus to keep them from the sacraments or their families, or to treat their fellow man as less than deserving of love and compassion, then they have made an idol of their fear.

One way to realize that something is an idol is to look at who is benefiting from our worship of it. Is God benefiting, is it He who is getting our attention and devotion? Or is it people who are getting the benefit of our devotion to this thing? The phone manufacturers know how to make my phone divert my attention and they do so purposely so that I am beholden to my phone and keep putting money in their pockets. The powers that be (and, other than Big Pharma, I am not really sure who they are, other than the devil himself), know how to keep us in a state of fear over the virus and that lines their pockets tremendously and gives them immense power over all of us, so they will keep doing it as long as we let them.

We were told not to let fear (or anything else) keep us from God. If we are letting the "priests of the new religion" keep us from the one true God, and all of the gifts he wants to give us, including most especially the sacraments, then we had better do some serious soul searching and deprogramming of ourselves! We are risking losing eternal life for the sake of this other things and, just as with all false gods, we are having the joy of this life sapped.from us as well!