Category Archives: Devils

The Devil in the New World

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In the battle against the Culture of Death, there is a certain gravity pulling towards two self-defeating tendencies, both of which equally plague those building a Culture of Life.  The first is to treat evil as something abstract, a mere force or darkness that looms around us.  No one ever won a battle against an abstract enemy.  The second is to treat other men as evil, that is, to literally demonize them.  It puts a face on the evil, showing it to be something that is orchestrated, but also misses the mark because it misidentifies the true enemy.  This temptation is perennial, especially since the enemies are relentless and have no real face, but instead are powerful and intelligent evil spirits, hell-bent on destroying as many human beings as possible.  “We are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12).  The Apostle to the Gentiles wants to remind the Ephesians (and us) that a Christian, as their name suggests, does not defeat his flesh and blood enemy but instead wins him over.  When we forget this fact, more souls will be lost.  No doubt, the Devil’s plan was always self-defeating, but our goal must always be to limit the casualties.

In a gloss on St. Paul’s aforementioned spiritual combat plan, St. Thomas Aquinas paints a vivid word picture which helps us to better understand our plan of attack.   Using the analogy of a battle, he says that “evil men are horses, and the demons the riders; hence, if we kill the riders, the horses will be ours.”  We win souls by releasing them from the grips of the Devil.  This means using first and foremost spiritual weapons of the Mass, Our Lady, prayer, and fasting.  But it also means engaging the enemy head on by exposing him and his works for what they are.

The Historical Battleground

This may sound woefully abstract, until we look at a historical example that illustrates what this looks like in practice; an event whose effects are still felt today.  Not surprisingly, we will have to do some digging to uncover what actually happened because like much of Christian history, it has been overcome with the Smoke of Satan, obscuring the truth with outright lies and revisionist history.  The event that I am referring to is Hernan Cortes and the conquering of Mexico.

The wind of truth can sweep away the haze by posing a simple, almost common-sense question that challenges the conventional wisdom of the day: how could Cortes, commanding 500 men with 10 cannons, 16 horses, 13 muskets and 32 crossbows, possibly conquer an enemy who outnumbered them at least 100 to 1?  For sure, the Spaniards may have enjoyed a technological military advantage, but the Aztecs were no backward savages either.  Their advanced culture would have rivaled anything found in Europe at the time.  They had many fierce warriors skilled in hand to hand combat and had conquered most of Mexico through their military prowess.  In fact they may have been able to match the military skills of the Spaniards except for one thing—they refused to kill their vanquished enemy, insisting on carrying them off as prisoners instead.  This novel approach however was not really a military tactic but a religious one as we shall see in a moment.

The Aztecs may have had an advanced sanitation system, aqueducts and a very accurate calendar system, but they exceeded all cultures in previous history in one particular regard.  It was this regard that especially drew the interest of Cortes and his Spanish Conquistadors.  It was not their gold or their riches, but their blood lust.  They were unrivaled in their penchant for human sacrifice, sacrificing at least 50,000 men women and children every year and as many as 80,000 during a 4-day festival in 1487.

Although the Aztecs had a number of gods in their pantheon, it was their primary god Huitzilopochtli, who was called the Hummingbird Wizard or the Lover of Hearts and the Drinker of Blood who demanded the human sacrifice.  It was to sate the Hummingbird Wizard that the Aztecs would carry away their vanquished enemies in battle—offering them as human sacrifices to the Lover of Hearts and the Drinker of Blood.  But we should resist the temptation to think the Aztecs think that these were backward people caught up in superstitious practices of sacrificing human lives to imaginary idols.  This would ignore the reality and the power of the Devil.

By possessing a few people of influence (influence he was able to give them) and speaking to the people through them, he was able to enslave the entire population of Mexico.  Things would go well when his demands were met, instilling a sense of fear and loyalty in the average person.  When they failed to meet his demands, he would punish the people through a reign of terror.  Without the light of Christ to free the people of Mexico from this demonic stronghold, the people were trapped in a bloody snare.

One might be accused of “over-spiritualizing” history to view it this way, except for the truth that the Devil is the great copycat—mimicking the good that God does, to set himself up as a god.  For Huitzilopochtli was believed to have been born from the goddess Coatlicue who was an earth goddess who was depicted as a woman wearing a skirt of snakes and a necklace of hearts torn from victims.  She immaculately conceived her son when a feather fell on her apron.  When her son was born, he killed all her other children who became the stars and the moon.  The parallels to Revelation 12 are uncanny, especially given they had no contact with the Christian story.  Compound this with the fact that they viewed cannibalism as a religious ritual in which those who fed on the flesh were thought to be eating the flesh of the gods that Huitzilopochtli killed and we can see that it was a great Black Mass that Cortes encountered.

The story can only be fully understood by adding one important detail.  The Aztecs were awaiting the return of Quetzalcoatl, a god wholly unique among their pantheon because he was of light and wanted men to live and serve him, rejecting all forms of human sacrifice.  He was supposed to return in a year of 1-Reed which occurred every 52 years on the day of 9-Wind.  When Cortes arrived on Good Friday 1519, which was both a 1-Reed year and a 9-Wind day and was dressed in penitential black, the same color that Quetzalcoatl wore as a priest, the Aztecs, especially their leader Montezuma assumed it was Quetzalcoatl returning.  Cortes never said he was Quetzalcoatl, but he was vague enough to use the deception to his advantage.

Cortes was joined in his war against the Aztecs by many of the indigenous peoples in the region, who were only too eager to finally be freed from the yoke of the Hummingbird Wizard.  In order to placate the Aztecs they regularly had to supply them with victims for sacrifice.  When they refused, the Aztecs would go to war with them and carry away their warriors as sacrificial victims.  They were quite literally damned if they did and damned if they didn’t.  Cortes was hailed as a great savior of the native peoples, especially because he did so in a true Christian spirit, always with his eyes towards their conversion and the toppling of idols and human sacrifice to be replaced with churches and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  Having been so recently victorious in freeing their homeland from the Muslims once and for all, the Spanish had a natural crusading spirit; a spirit that Cortes appealed to in rallying his men to fight for the freedom of the Mexicans, “The greater the King we seek, the wider the land, the more numerous the enemy, so much the greater will be our glory, for have you not heard it said, the more Moors, the greater the spoils?  Besides we are obligated to exult and increase our holy Catholic faith which we undertook to do like good Christians, uprooting idolatry, that great blasphemy to our God, abolishing sacrifices and the eating of human flesh, which is so contrary to nature and so common here.”  Surely, there can be no question as to Cortes’ primary motive in setting out to tear down the Aztecs’ altars of sacrifice and “conquer” the Aztecs.

What it Means for Us

One can’t help but wonder given the valor exercised by Cortes and his men why we are so quick to condemn him.  How many of the descendants of the indigenous people are alive today because of him?  The Aztecs were slowly but surely eliminating all the other peoples in Mexico so hungry had the Hummingbird Wizard become.  Surely any celebration of “Indigenous People’s Day” that is true to the name would be marked with gratitude for the Spanish.

The Conquest of Cortes and his companions serves as a great reminder that every cultural battle is a spiritual battle.  As soon as he arrived in Mexico City he set up icons of Our Lady and altars so that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass could be celebrated.  Everything that he did, was aimed first and foremost towards the conversion of the Mexican peoples.  He knew that a time would come when some of his fellow Spaniards would demand that the Mexican people be sacrificed in slavery to their idols—gold and that only through Baptism could this be avoided so that he always acted with a sense of urgency.  It was he and Christopher Columbus who called Our Lady down from Heaven into the New World by frequenting the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Spain because they knew the only way to squash the serpent was by becoming her heel.

The Terror of Demons

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When St. Pius X officially sanctioned the Litany of St. Joseph in 1909, he acknowledged him to be both the Patron of the Dying and the Protector of Holy Church.  It was Pope Pius IX who first invoked him under the title of Patron of the Universal Church and he did so because dedicated his life to safeguarding the two most important members of the Church, Our Lord and Our Lady.  Tradition also names him Patron of the Dying because he died the most blessed of all deaths in the presence of the same two whom he had so vigilantly protected during his earthly sojourn.  But it is the title that bridges St. Joseph’s dual patronage, Terror of Demons, which constitutes his most active roles in the lives of individual Christians.  There is a danger of seeing the litany as merely a catalogue of things that St. Joseph can do; the carpenter who is the jack of all trades.  These last three titles have an interconnectedness that stocks our personal arsenal in times of great trial.  In truth, they arm us for the greatest of trial each of us will face, death.

All of the spiritual masters of old suggest that we reflect upon death regularly, not just to know about it, but to remember it.  They do so not just because it helps keep things in their proper perspective, but because it is the moment when our souls are in the greatest peril of being lost.  During our lives, the great majority of us see the devil as the Cheshire Cat but for all of us he will reveal himself fully  as the prowling lion intent on the ruin of our soul (1 Pt 5:8).  When his time is short, his wrath is greatest (Rev 12:12).

Why the Battle is So Fierce

Why this time of trial is so severe may not be entirely clear so that by adding some clarity we can steel ourselves for those inevitable moments.  Through His death and resurrection, Christ destroyed “him who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb 2:14).  But He did not take away death, but instead freed us from “the fear of death” (Heb 2:15).  Death itself is the last enemy to be destroyed (c.f. 1Cor 15:26) and still remains the playground of the Devil.  Just as in the rest of life, the devil is given power because it provides matter for our growth in the theological virtues.  On the cusp of death our faith and hope are sorely tried and through their fervent exercise provide a growth in our desire for God, “having a desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ, which is much better” (Phil 1:23).

By freeing us from the fear of death Our Lord not only gives us a share in His victory but empowers us to make the victory our own.  Thrust into spiritual combat with the devil, the faithful are enabled to defeat the “strong man.”  Our Lord’s victory on the Cross does not merely defeat the devil, but destroys him (c.f. Heb 2:14).  That is, He renders Satan’s power at the time of death ultimately ineffective.  To be defeated by the Word made flesh is one thing, but to be defeated by hairless bipeds is quite another.  Satan’s destruction comes about because he can no longer bind severely handicapped human creatures.  Through the mysterious action of grace each of us can truly say that the victory is mine.

Armed for the Final Battle

The Church was given the power to arm the faithful for this final battle through the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick.  The Council of Trent says that among the effects of the Sacrament is the power to “resist more easily the temptations of the devil who lies in wait for his heel” (Council of Trent, Session 14).  While the Sacrament bestows this power ex opere operato, the effect within the individual believer depends upon his subjective disposition to receive the grace.

By anticipating the fronts on which the attacks are likely to occur, we can be better prepared for the ensuing battle.  It is our faith and hope that are put to the test during this final battle and so we need to examine how these two virtues are tried—faith through doubt and credulity and hope through despair and presumption.  In his book, Spiritual Combat, the 16th Century author Dom Lorenzo Scupoli examines these four areas and gives some tips to make us battle ready.

In his attacks against faith he will attempt to stir up anxiety about what is to come by planting the seeds of doubt about the faith of the Church in our minds.  The battle is not however to have a ready defense so as to argue.  Our Lord’s temptation in the desert reveals the Devil to be a liar and a sophist and able to twist and distort even the most blatant of lies.  Instead we must have the interior habit of faith—a firm clinging to the truth of all that the Church teaches.  The more ingrained that habit is, the stronger will be our defense.  In any regard we are to offer no pearls to the demonic swine.  As Scupoli says, “if the subtle serpent demands of you what the Catholic Church believes, do not answer him, but seeing his device, and that he only wants to catch you in your words, make an inward act of more lively faith.  Or else, to make him burst with indignation, reply that the holy Catholic Church believes the truth; and if the evil one should ask in return, ‘What is truth?’ you reply, ‘That which she believes.’”

The devil will also tempt us towards credulity through false visions.  Knowing the likelihood of an attack on this front, we should turn away from any visions in humility by seeing ourselves as unworthy of visions.  Even if they turn out to be true, God ultimately is pleased with our humility and therefore will not hold it against us.  Instead acts of trust are to be made in the mercy of Jesus and the prayers of Our Lady and St. Joseph.

 

The second front by which the demonic sortie is likely to come is by attacking hope.  Our past sins will be thrown at us all with the goal of despairing for our salvation.  Humility and trust in the blood of Christ are the weapons of choice.  Remembrance of past sins is a grace when it is accompanied by sorrow for having offended God and humility.  But when these thoughts unsettle you, they come from the Wicked One.  True sorrow is a gift of the Sacrament of Confession and will bear great fruit in this time of trial.  Genuine humility, borne out in the crucible of the humiliations of life is a steady shield.  To the extent that we develop these virtues now, they will be ready at hand in the time of trial.

Scupoli says that presumption is the final battle arena. Confronted with despair there is always the temptation to begin to list all of our merits.  In the face of this, Scupoli says we should “abase yourself ever more and more in your own eyes, even to your last breath; and of every good deed done by you, which may come before you, recognize God Alone for its Author. Have recourse to Him for help, but do not expect it on account of your own merits, however many and great be the battles in which you have been victorious. Ever preserve a spirit of holy fear, acknowledging sincerely that all your precautions would be in vain, if God did not gather you under the shadow of His wings, in Whose protection alone you will confide.”

The logic of the Litany of St. Joseph now comes into view.  If he is to be the Patron of a Happy Death, he necessarily must be a Terror of Demons.  It is his prayers specifically during our battle that make him the Terror of Demons, chasing them from us by the power of his mere presence.  By captaining the final battle of the members of the Church Militant, he is there to usher them into the Church Triumphant making the Church truly universal.  By fostering our own personal devotion to St. Joseph, we too may come to share in his inheritance.

Holy Saturday and the Descent into Hell

Devils, Passion of Christ,

Among the days of the Sacred Triduum, Holy Saturday remains the least significant.  For most Christians, it is simply a placeholder—a day of waiting for Easter.  Good Friday is done and now we await the celebration of Easter.  To live this sacred season to the fullest, we need to see it for what it is liturgically—the day of the death of God.  This is especially true given the practical  experience of our age; an age when many forces in our culture have succeeded in implementing  Nietzsche’s plan; “God is dead and we have killed Him.”

This experience of God’s silence is, as Pope Benedict once said, “part of Christian revelation…Only when we have experienced Him as silence may we hope to hear his speech, too, which proceeds in silence.”  This truth is so foundational to the Christian life, that it is was presupposed by an article in the Apostles’ Creed marked by the tenet that “He descended into Hell.”  Holy Saturday, then, offers us a unique opportunity to meditate upon this article of the Creed.

Part of the Christian Myth?

This particular article of the Creed, according to Pope Benedict, has become a victim of the demythologizing of Christianity, rendering it incomprehensible to many of us.  Some of this stems from a certain amount of ambiguity attached to the word Hell.  In English, we usually associate this word with the hell of the damned, but the Catechism of the Concil of Trent makes the distinction between three different abodes called Hell.  The first is the dark prison where the damned are tormented is called Gehenna and is hell strictly speaking.  The second consists of the fires of purgatory where the just men are cleansed from temporal punishment.  The third is Sheol which is the abode into which the souls of the just before the coming of Christ the Lord were received and remained, without experiencing any sort of pain and sustained by the blessed hope of redemption, in peaceful repose.

When we speak of Christ’s Decent into Hell we are referring to the place called Sheol in  Hebrew (Greek Hades and Latin infernus).  Christ did not visit the hell of the damned, a place that by definition, God does not go.   Instead He visited the place where the souls of the just men went, commonly referred to as Abraham’s bosom.

It was first of all fitting that He did this.  As punishment for Original Sin, the souls of all the just were sent to Sheol.  Because He was like unto us in all things but sin, Christ the preeminently just man, upon the separation of His body and soul at death descended to the abode of the dead and remained there until it was reunited to His body in the Resurrection.  As St. Peter tells the crowds at Pentecost Christ was “released from the pangs of Hades; for it was impossible for Him to be held by its power” (Acts 2:24).

What did He do while He was there?  As he did on the earth, He did under the earth—“proclaimed liberty to the captives.”  Who were these captives?  The righteous men and women of the Old Covenant, who, like Abraham had faith in the fulfillment of God’s promises were the captives freed.  This faith was credited to them in righteousness as St. Paul tells the Romans.  They are among the great clouds of witnesses listed in the Book of Hebrews; the Fathers like Abel, Enoch, Noah and Abraham; Jews like Moses and David; non-Jews like Rahab; and those who passed during Jesus’ life like His precursor John the Baptist, and foremost in great joy, St. Joseph.

St. Peter, in writing of Christ’s descent, says that “He preached to the souls in prison” (1 Pt 3:19).  This was an act of proclamation that what they had believed in and waited for during their lives, had taken place.  It was not as if He told them about Himself and they could decide whether to believe or not.  These men and women already believed and died in faith and charity.  Jesus did not “convert” unbelievers during His time in Sheol.  They had their period of trial during their lives.  It is appointed that all men die once and then judgement.  There is no test after death nor is there a second chance.  However, as St. Thomas says, Christ’s descent was virtually into the Hell of the Damned because its effects were felt in order to put them to shame for their unbelief and wickedness.

Christ’s Victory Dance

Christ’s Descent into Hell is a descent of victory.  The righteous who were held within the confines of Abraham’s Bosom would have been a virtual trophy case for the devil.  Although just, they were still kept from God in death.  The devil would have looked upon the death of Christ initially as one more victory.  That is until His actual descent when He conquers death by His death.  This truth is one that is beautifully captured in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ when the devil screams with the realization that God has used his weapon, death, against him.

The Descent into Hell is no mere collection of theological facts, but are charged with meaning.  As I alluded to at the beginning, this article of the Creed is so relevant today because God is seen by many to be silent.  But just as when Christ appeared to be silenced by death, God is always at work bringing about redemption.  Just when things seem darkest, God is at work turning evil on its ear. Those who remained in Abraham’s bosom are the saints of hope and patrons for all of us.  Despite all appearances to the contrary they knew that when God does speak, He always keeps His promises.  Often all they had were His promises.  They had to wait for Him to come to save them and wait they did.  Christ’s Descent into Hell reminds us that God always keeps His promises.  Through their intercession, may we spend this Holy Saturday, waiting in joyful hope.

Donald Trump and the Witches

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At Midnight on February 24th, a group of witches cast on spell upon President Donald Trump.  The ritual must be repeated at Midnight on the date of every waning crescent moon during his presidency.  Witchcraft is nothing new; they have been casting spells on men and women for many centuries.  What makes this mass spell unique is that it has taken on a “viral” quality with the rite being posted online with an attempt to take it to a wider community.  For most of us, the thought of witches in black hats around a bubbling cauldron with broomsticks in hand casting a spell on Donald Trump is somewhat ridiculous.  But for those who are actively engaged in spiritual warfare they know how serious this can be.  In openly declaring their intent to cast a spell, battle lines have been drawn and Catholics must step into the breach to engage in this spiritual battle.

Regardless of whether one is a card-carrying member of the Donald Trump Fan Club, as Christians we have an obligation to pray for him as the leader of our country (1Tim 2:2).  In other words, we should bless him rather than, as the witches propose, curse him.  These prayers of blessing protect him both from harm and from doing harm.  Despite protestations to the contrary that the witches merely wish to “bind him”, the intent of any spell or curse is to do evil to the person.

Curses and Divine Providence

Whether the curse is effective or not is left up to Divine Providence.  God may allow it to happen or He may actively oppose it.  Not recognizing this can often be an obstacle in understanding how someone becomes “infected” by the demonic.  Most of us understand that by dabbling in the occult we can open ourselves up to falling victim to demonic activity.  It does not happen in 100% of the cases, but the likelihood increases as the frequency of contact increases, especially for a person who has fallen out of a state of grace.

What is often not understood however is that it is possible, through no fault of the person, that they come under the control of the devil and his minions.  We can become spiritually sick in much the same way that we can become physically sick.  It may be that we do things that jeopardize our physical health (like drug abuse, overeating, etc.), but this is no guarantee that one becomes sick.  Likewise, many people become sick with some disease through no fault of their own.  Certainly, suffering in the innocent, especially at the hands of the demonic, stretches our capacity to understand, but it is still possible for it to occur.

Satan: The Great Ape

One of the most common ways in which this can happens is through the invocation of a curse.  Satan is the great ape, constantly trying to mimic God’s power.  Think of the curse as an “anti-grace.”  Grace seeks to aid a person through divine intervention, while a curse, according to the recently deceased Chief Exorcist of Rome, Fr. Gabriele Amorth, is defined generally as “harming others through demonic intervention.”  Satan apes God’s power that He exercises through the Sacraments by creating curses.

Like the Sacraments, curses usually require a minister.  This is where witches and wizards enter the picture.  They act as ministers once they are commissioned and perform a ritual on a given material object that is somehow connected to the victim.  In this case, there are several objects including an image of the President.

Not all people who practice or commission witchcraft are consciously worshipping Satan.  What they are consciously doing is invoking a supernatural power.  There is no denying this.  The source of that power does not require them to acknowledge him and may in fact prefer that they don’t.  Still, they are acting as his ministers and, in borrowing from his power, will end up falling under his power.  Access to that power comes with a price.  This is why the viral nature of the spell placed upon the President is so dangerous.  It may never touch the President personally, but most assuredly it will do harm to those who dabble in it.  This is a win-win situation for the evil one.  He is sure to gain power over someone because of this.

What to Do

The Church as the custodian of the Real Thing—the Thing that blesses and never curses—has an obligation to act in this case.  The problem is, as Fr. Amorth pointed out, priests do not take curses and witchcraft seriously.  They are not alone as most of the Faithful also see witchcraft as some antiquated superstition rather than a real threat to souls.  If they did, then both clergy and laity would be offering Mass for the protection of the President and for those who act out of ignorance in performing the rite.  They would have recourse to the Rosary and its inherent power to crush the head of the serpent.  They would go to the Sacrament of Sacraments, that is the Precious Blood of Jesus, and seek protection there.  The Litany of Precious Blood is perhaps one of the most effective prayers against curses and demonic activity in general as most Exorcists will attest.

Psychological or Demonic?

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As followers of Christ, true God and true man, it is hard to avoid the truth that we inhabit two worlds—the seen and the unseen.  This is so basic a tenet of Christianity that we easily forget it and gravitate towards one or the other, the natural or the supernatural.  We have all met people who supernaturalize everything, referring all that happens in our world to the angelic and demonic.  On the other hand there are also those who tend to only accept natural explanations for what happens.  Our Lord however taught us to keep one foot in each of those worlds.  There were the sick whom He healed and those whom He exorcised.  There is perhaps no arena where this dichotomy is more obvious than mental illness.

On the one hand there are those who think that the remedy is simply to pray the problem away.   Prayer must always be part of anyone’s therapy (more on this in a moment) so this is a difficult point to contend.  But for most people prayer isn’t enough.  Or, more accurately, the answer to their prayer is found through the help of therapists.  God rarely acts in a vacuum.  He always uses secondary causes when they are available to carry out works of His Providence.  We may pray and pray for healing, but only receive it when we go to the doctor.  Does this mean that God did not deliver?  Of course not.  He simply wanted to share His power of healing with one of His creatures.

Removing the Stigma

Within Christian circles, mental illness is stigmatized.  Mental health problems are not just problems because someone’s faith or trust in God is not strong enough.  That can always be the case, but it need not be the direct cause.  There are people of incredible faith that nobly carry the cross of mental illness.  If anything, those who think this way are the ones who do not understand the Faith.

An authentic Catholic understanding of the human person, as both body and soul, leads to the recognition that because of our fallen nature, defects in our bodies can spill over into the way we see reality.  Think about the person who is drunk—their judgment is impaired.  Did the alcohol somehow drip into the seat of judgment, the intellect?  No, but when our senses are impaired we cannot judge correctly.  That which is in the intellect, was first in the senses as the Scholastics were fond of saying.

So too with the person with mental illness.  They may have a bodily defect which causes them to judge reality incorrectly.  Or, their early experience or exposure to a trauma may have hindered their ability to judge reality properly.  Perhaps they need a medication to restore the body back to its proper function so that it can send clean data to the intellect.  They may additionally need counseling on how to judge reality correctly.

As an aside, many Catholics fear receiving counseling because the counselor may not be Catholic.  This is a reasonable fear, but just because they are Catholic doesn’t make them good therapists.  What one should look for is someone who has a correct definition of mental health.  Mental health consists in the ability to judge reality correctly.  This means they have an understanding of man as a body/soul composite with a purpose outside of himself.  Only once this is established would you assess their clinical capabilities.  In this regard, it is no different than choosing any other kind of health care provider.  If a cardiologist thinks that a healthy heart is one in which only one ventricle is functioning, you would not choose him, even if he was the most clinically gifted doctor in the world.  Simply asking the therapist what his or her definition of mental health is, can often protect you from wasted time and doing more harm.

Psychology and Catholicism have been in conflict since the advent of modern methods, but this need not be the case.  Anyone who reads St. Thomas’ Summa on human nature and the virtues realizes he would have made an excellent psychologist.  This is because of his correct anthropology.  There has been a rediscovery of sorts of St. Thomas’ works and many schools are teaching them to those training in psychology.

It used to be that anyone who was mentally ill was thought to be possessed.  In this regard the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme where everyone assumes that the problem is clinical.  However, just because there were cases in the past where a supernatural explanation was sought when there was a natural one, doesn’t mean that they weren’t right some of the time.  Supernatural explanations still remain valid.  While not everyone who is mentally ill is demonically tormented, this does not mean nobody is.  In short, sometimes when someone claims to be hearing voices, they actually are.

A Third Way?

This opens up a third possibility—one in which we acknowledge that we are standing in two different worlds.  This is the one that most people overlook because they fall into an either/or mentality, when in many cases it is both/and.   The person can be suffering from some natural mental illness which is only exacerbated by the presence of the demonic.  The devil is a bully and loves to kick people when they are down, especially when he can hide within some natural illness.

One of my boys suffers from Autism and this has made him a target of the diabolical bully.  It was his condition that attracted the evil one and made it easy for him to hide while he tormented my son.  The demonic oppression got so severe that we had to seek the prayers of an Exorcist.  Through the prayers of Exorcism, he was freed from the oppression.  But, and this is a very important but, he was not healed of his Autism.  His symptoms were greatly reduced and his response to therapy since then has been overwhelmingly positive.  But the clinical condition remained—for that God is using natural means.  For the supernatural problem, He used the supernatural solution of the Rites and Authority of the Church (as a side not, for those of you interested in hearing about my son’s story, I did an interview with my friend Pete for his podcast in which this among other topics related to Spiritual Warfare).

The point is that there are many cases where the problem is really both natural and supernatural.  For the good of the person we need to recognize this as real and likely option.  In the majority of cases it will not be necessary to seek out an Exorcist, but still spiritual remedies will need to be applied.

This is where the “just pray and it will go away” folks have a point.  There is almost always a mixture of the natural and supernatural causes involved and it is always good advice to apply spiritual medicine to all mental health problems.  Prayer alone may not be sufficient, but it is always necessary.  Psychotherapy should always be accompanied by an intense prayer life and an active Sacramental life, including regular Confession and Communion, along with a healthy dose of Eucharistic Adoration.  When someone has been in therapy for a long time, making minimal progress adds these practices to their regular therapy they usually begin running towards mental health.

How the Angels Fell

Angels, Devils, Heaven,

As Dante journeys to the center of Hell, he learns why it is so cold.  The devil is trapped in the pits of hell in a pool of ice that is constantly cooled by the flapping of his wings.  In other words, he would be free to rise to God if only he would stop trying to raise himself.  Dante is smuggling theology into his literary masterpiece in order to tell us how some of the angels fell and why they will always remain that way.

First of all, how can we possibly know what happened before the creation of mankind (i.e. no human witnesses) and about which there is no explicit divine revelation?  We know that they were tested prior to the creation of mankind (Gn 1:4), some angels fell, but the majority of them of them remained faithful (Rev 12:4), that after they failed their testing they were thrown down to the earth (Rev 12:9) and that their ultimate destination is hell (Mt 25:41).  There are also few Magisterial pronouncements (see CCC 391-395) on the fallen angels, none of which speak of how they fell only that, as the Fourth Lateran Council declared, “The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing.”  With only these few theological data points in hand, what can we say?

Why Specualtive Theology Matters

As a preliminary aside, many people will simply throw up their hands and say we cannot know anything more.  To speculate, in their minds, in theology is dangerous.  But when we allow revelation and the Church to set the boundaries, speculative theology can be an extremely fruitful exercise.  In fact I would say contemplating such questions (which is really all that speculation is) actually serves the purpose of moving what might seem to be abstract theological truths into the practical realm.  It helps us to see more fully the implications of our beliefs and show us how they actually relate to our Christian lives here and now.  It also helps strengthen our faith because it reveals the inner connectedness of all that we believe and how, even though many beliefs could not be known by reason, once they are known, just how reasonable they are.  As Clement of Alexandria once said, those who have “received these things [revelation] fortified by reason, can never lose them.”satan-wings-of-fury

With that said, let us begin with the declaration of the Fourth Lateran Council given above, namely that angels were created by God and insofar as they are created by God and reflect His beauty and wisdom are good.  Yet through a free decision of their own, they became morally wicked.  Reflecting on this, we see the first practical question emerge regarding the nature of reality.  In order to avoid falling into a dualistic understanding of reality—one in which good is equally pitted against evil—we must be able to explain angelic sin.

How Angels were Created

Like any artist, God created in order to reveal something of Himself.  In His plan, all of creation exists in a natural hierarchy.  The higher up the ladder of being, the more the creature naturally images God.  At the top of the ladder, sit the angels and man.  Angels are pure spirits incapable of making errors in the natural order.  All of their knowledge is given to them by God directly at their creation (we call this infused knowledge) and thus they are a rule unto themselves in the natural realm.  They exist in a natural hierarchy of power.  The highest of these angels has been always understood to be Lucifer, who was after his fall to become Satan or the devil.

We encounter here what might be an objection—the impeccability of the angels.  If the angels are incapable of making an error, then how could 1/3 them make such a grievous error of turning away from God?  I was careful to add a key modifier that many people overlook.  The angels are impeccable in the natural realm.  Like man, because angels are intellectual creatures, they have the natural capacity to live a supernatural life.  Like man prior to his fall, they were created in a state of grace that “activates” this natural capacity.   In other words, to truly be like God, they must receive the life of God directly from Him.  Otherwise they will merely remain His image.

What this means practically speaking is that they didn’t fall from “heaven” in the sense we might think.  We tend to think of Heaven as the place where the Blessed see God face to face.  Prior to their test, the angels were not in Heaven, but instead in some place of testing.  Properly speaking we might say they fell from the heavens in that their fall brought them from outside the material realm into it.

The angels in the supernatural realm are no longer a rule unto themselves.  They must now submit to the higher rule of God.  It is only in this supernatural state that they are vulnerable to error.  Thus we find that they are tested and not in some superficial way.

This distinction between the natural and the supernatural state is very important.  Understanding this distinction puts the faith vs works controversy to rest.  No natural act can get us to heaven.  It is only supernatural acts, namely those good acts that we do animated by sanctifying grace, which activate our “heaven capacity.”  So many fail to make this distinction and spend time thinking it is either faith or good works that will get you to heaven.  But it is supernatural works that get us to heaven.

The First Sin

With this distinction in place we see that the supernatural state or the “order of grace” as it is called is a great equalizer.  It puts everyone on a level playing field regardless of their natural endowment.  Instead it depends upon God’s gracious dispensation.  We find that it is often those who have the greatest natural endowment of gifts that has the hardest time accepting this.  And now we are able to see the sin of Lucifer.  Because he was the one who had the highest natural endowment, he preferred to remain in his singular position as God’s greatest creature rather than associate with the “common folk” who were elevated (maybe even to a place higher to him) by God.

This is why the Church has insisted that the first sin was pride.   As Abbot Vonier, summarizing Aquinas’ teaching says, it is clearly a sin of pride in the sense that it is a love of one’s own proper excellency in opposition to another’s.  For the prideful to admit the other’s excellence would end the singularity of one’s own excellence.  In other words, Satan’s sin consisted in the steady refusal of Satan to enter into communion with other beings because he sees it as a loss of his own excellence.  It shows also why his will remains fixed on his decision.  He is not under the delusion that he will somehow become God, he already knows that.  Instead he really wants to be utterly unique like God.

Practical Matters

There are two practical implications that follow from what we have said.  First, that in the fall of the angels there is nothing like concupiscence. St. Thomas says the fallen spirits did not lose either their intellectual privileges or suffer a weakening of their will.  Their place in the universe remains unchanged and thus their natural capacities far exceed anything we can do.  These are our enemies, not so much because they hate us, but because they hate the grace of God and in jealousy (always the second sin) they seek to prevent man from possessing or keeping God’s grace.  We must never forget their innate power and realize the devil and his minions should not be treated lightly.  We must do all that we can to protect ourselves from their attacks, but ultimately our protection and power rests only in putting on “the full armor of God.”

Second, it helps us to more clearly see the motives behind our own sin.  We tend to look upon the fall of the angels with some disbelief.  How could a creature as smart as Lucifer make such a totally insane decision?  That question is quickly put away when we realize we are no different when we choose to sin.  We know it is insane and yet we do it anyway.  This is because sin is not a matter of knowledge but of the choice of the will.  We cannot know God as He is in this period of testing.  The only way to draw near to Him is through love.  The commandment is to love the Lord, not to learn about the Lord.  This is not to poo-poo learning the Faith, but to constantly be on guard that our knowledge is leading to more reasons to love God and not merely know more about Him.  The former leads to true love, the latter to pride.

It Takes Three

Devils, marriage

Marriage is by its very nature Trinitarian.  Venerable Fulton Sheen once wrote a book called Three to Get Married that highlights the many ways that married love is Trinitarian—lover, beloved and God who binds them.  Unfortunately, God is not the only “third” who wants access to a marriage.  If God is the one who binds the couple, it is Diabolos (which literally means “one who tears asunder”) who is constantly trying to rip them apart, often in hidden ways.  As St. Ignatius said the devil is like a lover who tries to seduce a young girl or another’s wife; once his machinations are revealed the evil one is vexed and flees.  It is only by exposing him that we can actively engage in spiritual warfare and be free to live the high ideal of Christian marriage.

It is important to recognize that the Devil had his sights set on marriage from the beginning.  He insinuates himself between Adam and Eve.  Not only did Eve disobey God, but she also did not trust Adam when he relayed to her God’s command not to eat from the Tree.  By using the second person plural in the original Hebrew, the author of Genesis is telling us that Adam was silently standing beside Eve while she battled the Serpent.  In many ways the battle was already won because the Serpent had come between them.

Why marriage in particular though?  In Hell, there is no love; only competition.  Everything is done out of self-interest.  Marriage is the cradle of love and represents a great threat to hell.  It is the place where spouses have their love purified.  It is the place where children from an early age learn they were created out of an act of love.  They learn that love is not competitive, but self-giving.  If the Devil wants to bring the competition of hell to earth, then he will naturally target the school of love.

Knowing that marriage has a particular bullseye on it, what are some of the ways we can protect it?  First it is important to understand something about demons in general.  They are extremely legalistic.  They only operate in those places where they have a “right” to be there.  They establish this right when someone who has authority abdicates that authority or someone rejects the God-given authority over them.  Returning to the Garden, we can see what is meant.

God gives Adam the command to “keep” the Garden.  “To keep” in Hebrew is more accurately translated as “guard.”  In other words, it is Adam’s duty to protect the Garden and all its inhabitants from the Evil One.  So too, Eve has a right to be protected by Adam.  Adam abdicates his authority and stands by while the Serpent attacks Eve.  By failing to exercise his spiritual authority over Eve, he opened her up to attack.  He failed to shield his bride.

This unwillingness of a man to shield his family is a perennial problem and one that is particularly acute in our time, accounting for the near collapse of marriage and family.  With Christ as his model, the man must be prepared to exercise his spiritual authority over his wife and children.  He must be willing to undergo trials and temptations for his family in order that they be protected from the snares of the Evil One.  He does this knowing that he has God-given authority over them and that his grace of state that came from the Sacrament of Matrimony empowers him.  Likewise the wife and children must be willing to be subordinate to him.  The man may be the shield, but those under him must be willing to stay behind the shield.

tasmanian-devils-marriage

When one of our boys was three, he would often wake up in the middle of the night screaming.  I would always be the one to go to him, pick him up, ask for St. Michael’s intercession, and he would fall back to sleep.  One night it happened several times so the next night I was very tired.  My wife went to him instead that night and he cried out, “Daddy help me!”  This made me shoot straight up in bed, not only because he cried for help, but because he has autism and was non-verbal at the time.  Once again I took him and prayed and back to sleep he went.  Knowing now exactly what was going on, I spent the next night on the floor at the foot of his bed knowing that whatever was after him would have to go through me first.  And for the first time in a while, he slept through the night.  Once my God-given authority was exercised, the demonic attacks were ineffective against him.  Men must be willing to shield their wives and children regardless of the cost to them personally.

As an aside, I should mention that we had the house exorcised the next day.  Within two days my son began to speak because someone in the house had bound his tongue.  If you have not had your house exorcised then I would absolutely recommend it.  You never know what went on in the house before you moved in.  In our particular case, there were three previous occupants all of which ended up divorced.  Clearly someone was at work in the house.

Most of his attacks are more subtle than this and so it is important that we are on the watch for them because of their cumulating effect.  The “ordinary” ways in which the devil tends to attack a marriage fall into two main categories: division and discouragement.

First, the Evil One uses division.  It usually starts with an accusation that we latch onto.  Once we are hooked on it, he then supplies us with reasons why they do it.  For example, a man is driving in the car and his wife is telling him to pass the car in front of him.  The devil is quickly there to point out to the man “she always does that when I am driving.”  Notice the absoluteness (“always”) of the statement so that there is an implication that she has a serious problem.  Once the man agrees with this, the devil then gives him reasons such as “she is so controlling.”  Now the man gets angry that his wife doesn’t trust him.  Meanwhile, the demon is acting in unison with another demon planting the same sort of accusation the mind of the wife; “He always blows things out of proportion.”

The antidote to this weapon of division is what I like to call “compassion in small things.”  It is an attempt to see things from other people’s perspective.  Returning to our example, the man might simply say “No she doesn’t always do that.  In fact she usually only does it when she is worried about being late.  She must be worried.  Let me reassure her.”  Likewise it is helpful to tell your spouse when you hear that voice because they are probably hearing something too.  All too often once he is exposed, the demon flees.

Finally, there is discouragement.  Marriage often suffers because of the quirks and character flaws of each of the spouses.  Being “stuck” with a person who has serious flaws that you find annoying (at the least) can lead you to discouragement.  “This just isn’t what I expected when I fell in love with you” or “For better or worse.  Yes, but this is the worst.”

He can also tempt us to discouragement by getting a comparison game going in our mind.  When we are at our lowest, he will point out other (seemingly) perfect marriages.  In this regard, Facebook and other social media is a tremendous weapon.  People tend to handpick the good news they want to post.  Because that is all we ever see, we assume that everyone’s life is better than ours.  This is not to point out the inauthenticity of most people of Facebook, but to recognize that if you are discouraged or are finding yourself discouraged when you are on Facebook, you should log off immediately.  Discouragement never comes from God.

We also have to remember that love is a two way street.  It does not just require self-giving, but also other-receiving.  We must renew our commitment daily to receive our spouse, warts and all.  The second antidote to discouragement is to dwell on the positive characteristics of our spouse and to practice forgiveness.  For marriages that are heavily burdened, gratitude that God has given you someone to suffer with can often lift us out of discouragement.

It is no accident that St. Paul’s great hymn to married love in Ephesians is followed by a call to arms in spiritual warfare.  Marriage, in our fallen world, is a battleground.  The only question is whether we will identify the real enemy.  It may take three to get married, but no doubt it also takes three to destroy it.

The Incomprehensibility of the Incarnation

Devils, Lent

Each year on the First Sunday of Lent, we hear the different accounts of Jesus’ temptation in the desert.  Of course the Church puts this before us each year to bring to the minds of the Faithful that it is Christ Himself Who has consecrated these 40 days of fasting and spiritual warfare.  Our Lenten practices are simply participations in His time in the desert in which He won many graces for each one of us individually.  In His battle with the Devil, He won for us victory over every form of temptation that he throws at us.  But one is always left with a nagging question after reading these Gospel accounts, namely, did Satan know Who Jesus was?

There is always a great danger, even in our own spiritual lives, to ascribe more power and knowledge to the devil than he actually has.  So it is helpful to look at angelic knowledge in general and the effect that the Fall of the angels had on Satan and his minions.  Unlike man, who by nature knows ideas by abstracting from sense knowledge, angels know through an infusion directly by God.  Even though angelic knowledge is on a higher plane than human knowledge, it is limited.  For example, angels cannot know the future because that belongs only to God.  Likewise, they cannot know the secrets of our thoughts even if they can sometimes deduce from our outward actions or a change in countenance.  For example, they may deduce we are scared because they observe our heartrate increasing or frightful images appearing in our imagination.

By nature, Lucifer was the highest of all God’s creatures because he had the greatest natural knowledge of God.  Although it was greater than all the other creatures it was still less than God’s knowledge of Himself.  This share of God’s knowledge of Himself is only available through grace in the Beatific vision, namely to see God face to face.  Lucifer never saw God in His essence though because of his fall from grace.  According to St. Thomas it was this knowledge (that he wanted (so as to be like God) and could not obtain on his own and so fell.  The important point is that Lucifer did not know God in His essence nor can he know anything in the order of grace.  While his knowledge is great, it always remains on the natural level.

Christ in the Desert

From these two facts, we can conclude two things.  First, there is no way that Satan could have known anything about the Crucifixion, Resurrection, etc. because those events belong to the order of grace.  Nor could he deduce anything from Christ’s countenance as to Who He was because He was always in perfect control of His emotions and imagination.  Satan could get no read on Him because of this.  But what Christ did reveal to Him was that He was hungry and so He was clearly a man who had physical needs just like every other man.

It is Satan’s inability to get a read on this seemingly ordinary man, Jesus of Nazareth, that ultimately causes the Temptation.  He can detect something remarkable about Him, but what it is exactly he cannot say.  Each of his three temptations that he puts before Christ are really his way of probing into his real identity.

His minions too will be perplexed by Him later on.  All the Jewish exorcists at the time invoked God’s name to expel demons.  Jesus does it using His own authority.  They try gaining authority over Him by saying His name (an authoritative act) and nothing happens.  So while they may witness His power and declare Him the “Holy One of God,” they had no way of knowing that He was in fact the Second Person of the Trinity, God made flesh.  As St. Paul says “none of the rulers of this age knew; for if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor 2:8).  In essence if they had known Who He was, they would not have done something that would have led to their final defeat (1 Cor 15:24-28).

What this really comes down to is the fact that the Incarnation is completely and totally incomprehensible to Satan.  He could not even have conceived that God would condescend so deeply as to take on true human flesh and to allow Himself to experience need and to suffer deprivation.  Through the paradigm of his deadly pride, no God that could possibly be above him would stoop so low to raise the “hairless bipeds” (to borrow a phrase from Lewis’ Screwtape Letters) so high.  As St. Ambrose says Satan may have known that the Son of God would come, but “he did not think that He had come in the weakness of the flesh.”

In many ways, it is the disdain for His divinity that remains a stumbling block for many of us as well.  It seems the more we are in the grips of pride, the harder it become to believe.  It is almost as if there is a steady refusal to believe not because it is unbelievable but because it is too good to be true.  We need to honestly exam ourselves by asking, “If I were God, would I do it that way?”  Only insofar as we can put on the “logic of the Incarnation” can we begin to see the depth of Christ’s humility and love for us.  In this holy season of Lent, may we enter into combat on all forms of pride by keeping the humility of the Incarnation ever in sight.

The Star of the New Evangelization

Culture, Culture of Life, Devils, Mary

In his 1999 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Pope St. John Paul II referred to Our Lady of Guadalupe as the “Patroness of all America and Star of the first and new evangelization” (Ecclesia in America (EA), 11).  In referring to her as the Star of the New Evangelization the Holy Father was calling to mind the profound effect on the evangelization of Mexico after her appearance to St. Juan Diego in 1531 and her guiding role in evangelization today.  With the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe upon us, it is instructive to look at least two ways in which we can look to her to guide us.

The first  is that Our Lady uses lay people who are specially devoted to her as instruments in the spreading of the message of Guadalupe.

At the time of the apparitions, the spreading of the Gospel to the Mexican people was largely unsuccessful.  Even though Cortes demolished all the blood soaked temples where human sacrifice to demons was going on, conversion was virtually non-existent because of a deeply rooted paganism.  Further slowing the process was a fundamental mistrust among the native peoples of the Spaniards because of abuse at the hands of the First Audience, the five administrators appointed by Charles V after Cortes returned to Spain.  Charles V also appointed Bishop Juan Zumarraga as the first bishop of the new world and the Bishop worked to protect the Indians against the harsh rule.  This brought the Bishop himself and his friars under persecution that he described as “worse than that of Herod and Diocletian.”  Eventually he was able to smuggle a message back to Charles V he immediately replaced Guzman with a Second Audience headed by Bishop Don Sebastian Ramirez y Fuenleal.  Knowing that the Aztecs were about to take up arms against the Spaniards Bishop Zumarraga begged Our Lady to intervene.  Secretly he asked her to send him some Castilian roses as a sign of her intercession.

Enter Juan Diego, a simple farmer who was on his way to Mass one Sunday.  When he passed a small hill named Tepeyac, six 6 miles north of Mexico City and the location of a former temple to the great mother god Torantzin (whose head was a combination of serpent heads and dress a mass of writhing serpents), he began to hear music and the voice of a woman bidding him to come to the top of the hill.  She told him she was the Virgin Mary and that he was to present himself to the Bishop and ask him to build a Church on the hill.  After two visits the Bishop and two additional apparitions, she eventually gave him the sign the Bishop had asked for in the form of roses and the beautiful image on the tilma (more on this below).

What makes St. Juan Diego a model for our collaboration with Our Lady’s work of evangelization is what he did after the apparitions.  He was appointed as custodian of the chapel on Tepeyac where the image was kept and he tirelessly explained the significance of the image to wave after wave of pilgrims.  He emphasized the providential location of the apparition as formerly the site of pagan temple and this had such an effect on them that they referred to the image as Teonantzin (God’s Mother).  It was His ability to re-tell his story in the Indian language that served as a major source of conversion.  In fact when many of the Indians presented themselves to the missionary priests for instruction and baptism they had already been converted.

A major obstacle to the spread of the New Evangelization has been a lingering clericalism.  Our Lady of Guadalupe shows us what happens when lay people live their vocation in the Church properly and when clerics live theirs.  Juan Diego, despite being a widower, did not become a priest.  Instead he remained as a lay person and embraced his role as the primary evangelizer of the pilgrims that came to the chapel to venerate the image.  It was only after they had been evangelized that he sent them to the missionary priests for further instruction to prepare them for the sacraments.  Like St. Juan Diego, laity need to see themselves as the primary evangelizers of culture.  We cannot abdicate that role to priests and bishops but instead must embrace it.

When the laity are living out their vocation to evangelize those outside the confines of the Church (and even those who need it within the Church), Priests and Bishops are able to focus on tending their flock through catechesis and the Sacraments.  They also will not feel the need to abdicate this role in order to change the culture.  They can comfortably focus on the formation and sanctification of the laity and support them in their mission to the world.  I dare say that Bishop Zumarraga and his friar priests understood that their role should be to support Juan Diego in his evangelizing mission and they reaped the fruit of it, sometimes baptizing up to 6000 people day—most of whom they had not evangelized.

The second lesson we can learn from Our Lady of Guadalupe is the power of images.

Like our culture today, the Aztec culture was one of the image.  In his account of the apparitions, the missionary Fernando de Alva Ixtilxochitl recalled:

“The Indians submerged in profound darkness, still loved and served false little gods, clay figurines and images of our enemy the devil in spite of having heard about the faith…But when they heard that the Holy Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ had appeared and since they saw and admired her most perfect Image, which has no human art their eyes were opened as if suddenly day had dawned on them.”

The devil in inspiring the creation of the little idols knew that the Indians found them visually appealing and he exploited that even after the destruction of the temples and human sacrifice.  That is why Our Lady did not haphazardly leave the image on St. Juan Diego’s tilma but instead every element was wrought with meaning.  The people were familiar with using glyphs rather than written language and so Our Lady offered them an evangelizing image.  Not only is it edifying for us to discover the meaning of this image but it increases our reliance upon her (for more detail on the image, see Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of the Civilization of Love by Carl Anderson and Msgr. Eduardo Chavez).

Guadalupe

 

  • Clouds — in the image, the Virgin is surrounded by clouds, showing that she is from heaven. The indigenous greeted people they believed came from God with the expression: “Among fog and among clouds.” which is why Montezuma thought Cortes a god at first when his ships came through the fog into the Gulf of Mexico.
  • Sun —golden rays from the second sun, behind her, signify that she is the “Mother of Light” and greater than the dreadful Aztec sun god, Huitzilopchtli, whom she eclipses.
  • Cross medallion — around her neck, Mary wears a gold medallion engraved with a cross. For indigenous people, the medallion symbolized consecration, so the medallion around Mary’s neck meant that she was consecrated to Jesus. It was also the same black Cross that appeared on the banners and helmets of the Spanish soldiers.
  • Hands — the indigenous people expressed prayer not only by the hands, but by the whole body. In the image on the tilma, Our Lady of Guadalupe is shown in a position of dancing prayer, with her knee bent in movement. Presented in the position of prayer, it would  have shown that despite the fact that she was greater than all the Aztec gods and goddesses, she herself was not God.
  • Mantle and tunic — Mary’s rose-tinted, flowery tunic symbolizes the earth, while her turquoise, starry mantle represents the heavens. The mantle also indicates that she is royalty since only the native emperors wore cloaks of that color.
  • Moon — the Virgin stands on a crescent moon. The Aztec word for Mexico, “Metz-xic-co,” means “in the center of the moon.” She is standing upon it as their mother. The moon also symbolizes the Aztec moon god, fertility, birth and life.  This was the serpent-god Quetzalcoatl.
  • Angel — an angel with eagle’s wings appears below Mary’s feet. According to Aztec belief, an eagle delivered the hearts and the blood of sacrificial victims to the gods. The angel holds up the pregnant Virgin, signifying that the child in her womb is the offering that pleases God and only those with eagles wings could go to god
  • Black ribbon — the black ribbon around Mary’s waist shows that she is expecting a child. For the Aztecs, the trapezoid-shaped ends of the ribbon also represented the end of one cycle and the birth of a new era.
  • Four-petaled jasmine — the only four-petaled flower on Mary’s tunic appears over her womb. The four-petaled jasmine represents the Aztecs’ highest deity, Ometéotl. It shows that she is carrying the true deity within her womb.
  • Flowers — nine golden flowers, symbolizing life and truth, adorn Mary’s dress. The flowers are made up of glyphs representing a hill and a river. The indigenous people considered hills the highest points of encounter between God and people. Viewed upside down, the flowers take the shape of hearts with arteries coming out, representing life, which originates from God and that sustains creation not by blood of sacrifice but shedding of His own blood.

One of the most amazing things about the image is the eyes.  In the eyes of Mary miniscule human figures were discovered.   Using digital technology, the images in the eyes were enlarged many times, revealing that each eye reflected the figure of the Indian Juan Diego opening his tilma in front of Bishop Zumarraga.  Obviously no merely human artist could have painted these.

Guadalupe_eyes

With nearly 9 million converts in 8 years (that’s an average of 3260 per day), this approach can be a very powerful force.  I have written about the importance of evangelizing the culture through media before, but I want to re-emphasize just how important that is.  Ultimately the grip that pornography has on many men (and an increasing number of women) is like the little idols that the natives in Mexico turned to.  But the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe also offered a antidote the fear from the horrific images of human sacrifices that they had all seen.  We are surrounded by violent images all day long and it creates a culture of anxiety and ultimately distraction.  As Christians we need to offer different images to the culture—one based on what is objectively beautiful not beauty that has been objectified.  Only Catholics truly know the difference.

In closing, it cannot be emphasized enough how much we can do when we give ourselves over to the hands of Our Lady.  On the day of the third apparition, Juan Diego’s uncle grew deathly ill.  Rather than turning to her to help him, he avoided Tepeyac hill and sought help elsewhere.  When he came close, she came down the hill and confronted him saying,

“Listen, put it into your heart, my youngest son, that what frightened you, what afflicted you, is nothing; do not let it disturb your face, your heart; do not fear this sickness nor any other sickness, nor any sharp and hurtful thing. Am I not here, I who have the honor to be your Mother? Are you not in my shadow and under my protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the hollow of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? Do you need something more?”

The gentle rebuke is for all of us.  We may be anxious about our culture, but for those who in her shadow and protection, we have nothing to fear.  It is ultimately she who will help us lead our culture back to her Son.  In fact, Pope St. John Paul II called upon Catholics in the Americas to rely on the power of Our Lady of Guadalupe to evangelize the culture.  “In America, the mestiza face of the Virgin of Guadalupe was from the start a symbol of the inculturation of the Gospel, of which she has been the lodestar and the guide. Through her powerful intercession, the Gospel will penetrate the hearts of the men and women of America and permeate their cultures, transforming them from within” (EA, 70).

 

 

Hidden in Plain Sight

Devils, Spiritual Warfare

There is always a great temptation that in growing familiar with a thing we may begin to ponder its meaning to little.  This is most certainly the case with the Lord’s Prayer.  When it comes to this prototypical prayer that Our Lord gave to us, we should marvel at its depth.  As a testament to its inherent depth, we find saints and doctors of the Church, when reflecting on the meaning of each of the seven petitions, coming up with different conclusions.  This ought to awaken an awareness in us that this prayer is meant to be contemplated rather than merely recited.  Praying without contemplation of its meaning is mere saying.  In order to combat this tendency, I would like to offer reflection on the last two petitions, namely “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Evil.”

Any reflection on these two petitions must first start with two fundamental assumptions.  The first regards temptations.  On a superficial level, it appears that Our Lord was implying that it was God who leads us into temptation.  But St. James in his epistle tells us: “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted with evil and He Himself tempts no one” (James 1:13).  This means that it is not God Himself that tempts us, but ultimately all temptation comes from the devil.  This of course fits with Our Lord’s experience of temptation in the wilderness when the devil shows himself lord of the other two enemies of mankind (the flesh and the world) by tempting Him to turn the stones into bread and to receive all the kingdoms of the world.

This brings us to the second assumption and that is the fact that Evil is not some impersonal force, but has as its source a person (or persons).  The spirit of the world is one that is marked by materialism and scientism.  It views the world as a closed system in which given enough time we can explain everything through science.  God is then squeezed out of the picture as a superfluous hypothesis.  Even if He does exist, He is most certainly remote.  But there is a hidden effect of this spirit that we also often overlook.  If the world contains only what can be seen and measured, then there is also no room for the devil either.  Everything that happens has a material explanation (usually psychological) and the devil too is superfluous.  This “humility” of the devil allows him freer rein to orchestrate his plans.  He remains hidden in plain sight.  We demonize “the culture” or capitalism or socialism and miss the personal responsibility that ought to be assigned to the one who uses these things as means to carry out his diabolical plan—“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12).  Properly understood then the last petition is always our pleading with God to protect us from the machinations of the Evil One; “deliver us from the Evil One.”

Although these are viewed as two distinct petitions, they are intimately related because of this link between temptations and the one who tempts.  It is instructive then to look at temptations in general and how it is that Satan tempts us.

Why does God allow us to be tempted?  In turning to the Book of Job, we find that the first two chapters offer us a great deal upon which to meditate.

The first thing that you should take note of is the fact that there is a great battle going on between God’s elect and the forces of the Enemy.  God is not actually a participant in the battle however.  No one can truly fight God because He is all-powerful.  He merely indulges Satan so that ultimately His power is shown through His creatures.  And this is one of the reasons why God allows us to be tempted.  It is for His glory.  Lucifer is the highest of God’s creatures in the natural order.  He is of the first hierarchy of angels, the Seraphim.  He and his minions are so far above humanity in power that it is as if a colony of ants (us) were fighting mankind (the devil and his minions).  Even God’s mightiest angelic soldier, St. Michael is from the lowly eighth hierarchy, the Archangels.  Yet, once the order of grace is introduced, these lowly creatures are made so powerful that they are able to engage these great powers in battle.  A lowly handmaiden is given Lucifer’s place in heaven and now puts on combat boots and squashes his head.  All of this shows forth the power of God’s grace.  To Him be the glory.

Each time we are tempted and overcome that temptation it ultimately serves as a reminder of God’s power.  It is as if it is our own heel that crushes the head of the serpent and pushes him back to the depths of hell.  We grow stronger by the infusion of the divine life in us and the Evil One receives a mortal wound.  We also grow in faith that God always does provide grace in the manner and time that we need it.

Secondly, we are tempted because this is a time of trial and purification for mankind.   Through temptations we are brought low and grow in humility.  This is the experience of St. Paul when he speaks of a “thorn in the flesh was given to me, an angel of Satan, to beat me, to keep me from being too elated” (2Cor 12:7).  They can also serve as a wake-up call when we fall that we are not quite what we were made to be.  Recall the Pharisee who recounts all his own works to God and imagines himself to be self-sufficient.  He needs a healthy dose of temptation to keep from forming too high of an opinion of himself.

temptation_of_christ

By instructing us to pray “lead us not into temptation” Our Lord was first of all reminding us that ultimately we are powerless in the face of temptation.  It is an act of humility to utter the words.  But because we live in a season of testing, we ask God to remember our weakness when He does give the devil room to work.  We ask Him to limit the amount of power Satan exercises upon us and to give us the grace to overcome them so that they cease to be actual temptations.  We see this as God limits the space that Satan has in working against Job.  The first set of evils he visits upon Job are not allowed to “touch his person” (Job 1:12) and the second he must “spare his life” (Job 2:6).

The petition to be delivered from Evil is not merely a request that we be blindly protected from the ploys of the Evil One but that we are able to recognize them for what they are.  Many people fail to recognize the “ordinary” ways in which the devil is active in their lives.  They may believe in extraordinary demonic manifestations like possession, obsession and oppression, but do not realize that there is an ordinary form of demonic activity to which we are all subject.  We can make tremendous strides in our spiritual journey when we begin to see his ploys more clearly.  To that end, I find that there are four main categories into which they fall.

First there is discouragement.  Psalm 91:6 speaks of “the arrow that flies by day, for the matter that walks in darkness, nor for the ruin and the devil that is in the noonday.”  The great spiritual fathers have identified this “noonday devil” as discouragement leading to sloth.  The fact that it comes at noonday implies that one is already set out on the day’s work and that this devil comes during the heat of the day (i.e. when one is beginning to wear down) to convince the worker to give up the work altogether.

In our lives what this often looks like is that it starts with some idea or expectation of where we should be on our spiritual journey or how much fruit our apostolate should have borne at this point.  This is the “arrow that flies by day.”  Next comes the feeling of discouragement.  We find that it was really too hard to begin with or that we have been doing it wrong all along.  The temptation usually is not to give up altogether but to change something or to put our energies into something else that is “better.”  He can exploit our desire for growth by equating spiritual progress with change.  But discouragement never comes from God.  To arm us against the Accuser, the Advocate gives us the gift of courage to overcome the great stumbling block that discouragement can put in our path.

Second, the Evil One uses Division.  The Greek name for the devil, Diabolos, means “one who tears asunder.”  He does this by fostering division with those we are close to.  It usually starts with an accusation that we latch onto.  Once we are hooked on it, he then supplies us with reasons why they do it.  For example, a man is driving in the car and his wife is telling him to pass the car in front of him.  The devil is quickly there to point out to the man “she always does that when I am driving.”  Notice the absoluteness (always) of the statement so that there is an implication that she has a serious problem.  Once the man agrees with this, the devil then gives him reasons such as “she is so controlling.”  Now the man gets angry that his wife doesn’t trust him and she is left to fill in the blanks (again with the help of the Evil One) why he makes such a big deal out of such a small thing.

The antidote to this weapon of division is what I like to call “compassion in small things.”  It is an attempt to see things from other people’s perspective.  Returning to our example, the man might simply say “No she doesn’t always do that.  In fact she usually only does it when she is worried about being late.  She must be worried.  Let me reassure her.”

Third, there is distraction.  The primary goal of the evil one’s distractions is to have us lose focus and our sense of direction.  This happens in four main ways.  The first is to generate fear about the future.  This is a major theme in CS Lewis’ Screwtape Letters.  The senior tempter, Screwtape invites his nephew to exploit fear of the future because all vices are future directed.  He says, “[G]ratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.”

The second form of distraction is to remind us of slights and offenses we have suffered at the hands of others.  For most people this temptation arises most often in prayer.  This is because prayer is a time of great vulnerability where we open ourselves to God and therefore can be a time when we are reminded of other times of vulnerability and when we were wounded.  The antidote is to remember that God is the ultimate vindicator of wrongs against us and to place our trust in His mercy.  This is closely related to the third form which is to play the comparison game with the situations of others.

If these fail, then there is always the pleasures available at the present moment.  A chief way this is done is temptation through curiosity and I believe the main weapon is the internet.  I think we would all be surprised at the amount of time we spend online each day if we were to log the number of times we stop to look at email, texts or Facebook.

Our Lord Himself called Satan, “the father of lies and a liar from the beginning.”  Obviously then the last form of temptation and the root of all temptations is deception.  As the father of lies, he will always tempt us to deception as well.  Usually this comes in two forms.  First is by equating information about someone with the truth about the person.  This is where we are tempted to label someone as liberal, conservative, gay, straight, etc. and assume that tells us all we need to know about the person.  We even do this with ourselves by assuming a label tells everyone else all they need to know about us.  We can label ourselves as “orthodox Catholics” without even considering those places where we are like the Pharisees.

Second is by tempting us to lie to conceal or avoid some pain.  This is almost always at the heart of every falsehood we tell as a thorough examination of conscience will reveal as our motive for lying.  It could be an attempt to shield us from the pain of being embarrassed about our past, the pain of disappointing someone or of getting caught in something we should not be doing.  Ultimately what we fear is the truth and the lies end up trapping us.  But only the “Truth will set us free.”

St. Ignatius in his Spiritual Exercises says the devil is like a lover who tries to seduce a young girl or another’s wife; once his machinations are revealed the evil one is vexed and he flees.  Let us bring to light the trappings of the evil one by earnestly praying “Deliver us from Evil.”

Knowing the Enemy

Angels, Devils, Redemption

One of the more glaring omissions of the Passion accounts in the Gospels is that no attempt to explore the motives behind Judas’ betrayal is made.  This has led to much speculation throughout the years imputing to him various motives such as greed, envy or even impatience that Our Lord was not acting quickly enough in claiming his Messianic throne.  The danger of trying to impute a motive is that we will actually miss the reason why the Evangelists only refer to him as the “betrayer” (Luke 22:3).  St. John captures the reason explicitly when he says that “After he took the morsel, Satan entered him” (John 13:27). The Sacred Writers want us to realize that it was not Judas nor the Sanhedrin nor even the Romans that ultimately hatched the plan to kill Jesus—it was Satan and his minions. Our Lord recognized this and pointed it out when He tells the Jews that they “belong to your father the devil and you willingly carry out your father’s desires” (John 8:44). As the Church prepares to enter into Our Lord’s most intense battle against our Enemy we are reminded that in order to fight we must know about him and his tendencies. As Sun Tzu says in the Art of War, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

Examining his history, we can better understand his motives.  Just how did Lucifer become the Satan?  For many it seems that the angels were created in “heaven” with God and therefore it would have been impossible for them to sin.  This is an example of how important it is that we properly define our terms, especially given the propensity in English to reduce the number of terms when they only refer to subtle differences (the word love is a classic example).  Properly speaking, the angels, although pure spirits, are not by nature heavenly creatures.  Instead we should refer to them as naturally “Celestial” creatures.  By making this distinction, we are able to reserve the word “heavenly” for those creatures who have the vision of God and see Him as He is (1 John 3:2) rather than in His reflections in creation.  No creature naturally has this vision, it can only be granted to those who have sanctifying grace.  Communion can only happen between two equals so that in order to have communion with God (i.e. heaven or as Augustine refers to it in the Confessions “The Heaven of heavens”), He must infuse His life in us.  Only angels and men (who are made in God’s image) have the capacity to receive this divine life, but they must receive it and freely persevere in it.

Like the first man and woman, the angels were also created endowed with sanctifying grace so that they might have the capacity to be saved.  And like Adam and Eve they also were required to undergo a period of probation to test whether they could persevere in that grace.  This period of probation included some test in which they could freely choose between good and evil.  Although they did not yet have the Beatific Vision, they lived in something like a celestial Garden of Eden.  This Garden included sanctifying grace (i.e. God walking in their Garden in the coolness of day) and an experience of being exposed to the danger of committing sin.  Those confirmed in grace were then granted the vision of God.  The rest, were cast out of the celestial Garden.

Three questions naturally arise from this.  First is what was it that actually caused “Satan to fall from heaven like lightning” (Lk 10:18)?  It was most certainly pride of some sort as the book of Isaiah testifies:

“How did you come to fall from the heavens, Daystar, son of Dawn? How did you come to be thrown to the ground, you who enslaved the nations? You who used to think to yourself, ‘I will climb up to the heavens; and higher than the stars of God I will set my throne. I will sit on the Mount of Assembly in the recesses of the north. I will climb to the top of the thunderclouds, I will rival the Most High.’ What! Now you have fallen to hell, to the very bottom of the abyss!” (Is 14:12-15).

As to the exact nature of the sin we are left only to the theological speculation of the Church Fathers.  Most say that it is directly related to the plan of the Incarnation and the angels’ service of mankind.  The Fathers apply the words which the rebellious Israel speaks to its God, “I will not serve” (Jeremiah 2:20) to the fallen angels.  Some Saints (like St. Louis de Montfort) have also speculated that their fall was related more specifically to the eventual role of Mary as Queen of Heaven.  This might also explain why Satan targets Eve, a type of Mary, directly.  So while his first sin was pride, the devil’s second sin was envy.  Once he realized he could not truly usurp God, he decided to turn his wrath on mankind so that he could gain pleasure in God’s loss.  Interestingly enough we see the same thing happen in man—Adam sins through pride and then Cain kills Abel through envy.  This is a familiar pattern in all of us—“pride comes before the fall” and then once truth sets in and we realize we are not God, we envy others for having what we do not have.

The second question is when the angels were created.  The book of Job tells us that they were created before the foundation of the world: “Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding…Into what were its pedestals sunk, and who laid its cornerstone, while the morning stars sang together and all angels shouted for joy?” (Job 38:4-7). This fits with St. Augustine’s explanation of the creation of light on the first day of as referring to the creation and testing of the angels. The light refers to the angels themselves and the separation of the light from the darkness (after judging that the light was good) refers to the casting out of the demons (Augustine’s commentary on Gn 1:4 in City of God, Bk. 11, Ch 19).  At the very least we know that the devil is already fallen when Adam and Eve encounter him in the Garden.

Garden Fall Sistine

If the devil had fallen, why did God allow him to enter the Garden to tempt Adam and Eve? Wasn’t he forever cast into hell? The Book of Hebrews gives us a clue to the answer when the Sacred Author refers to the role of angels. He says, “Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to serve, for the sake of those who are to obtain salvation?” (Hebrews 1:14).

The role of the angels in God’s eternal plan is to minister to mankind. God’s plan is never thwarted so that even the devil and his minions still serve to aid “those who are to obtain salvation.”  For those who are in Christ, it is temptation and suffering that leads to growth in merit through which they obtain their salvation. The evil spirits merely become means by which God brings this about. Remember that mankind’s fall in the Garden, although caused by the lies of the evil one, is ultimately the cause of the Incarnation which is the source of man’s salvation. The choice for the angels, fallen and blessed, is the same choice that we have as well—do God’s will or do God’s will.

St. Michael the Archangel, pray for us!

NOTE: A number of you have emailed me with questions and I would encourage you to continue to do that. In fact this entry is the result of two people asking the same exact question yesterday. I want to encourage you all to also use the Comment section on each post as well. My vision for this web site is that it is one where there is some engagement between the readers and the readers and me. Please don’t be shy about commenting!