THE DEVIL AMONG CRIME, ITCH AND REALITY IN 2024

«Human beings are amphibians – half spirit, half animal […]. As spirits they belong to the world of eternity, but like animals they are inhabitants of time"

 

 

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In February this year the mass media announced the terrible news of a religiously motivated family homicide. It all wore out, with particular and brutal cruelty, in Altavilla Milicia, in the province of Palermo. With the now consolidated spirit of pure itching i talk show national-popular groups have been talking about it for a few weeks, by putting people completely devoid of basic knowledge on certain issues to discuss in television lounges.

According to journalistic sources a man would kill his family, with the exception of his seventeen-year-old daughter. He later called the police to turn himself in. The motive for the murder, always according to the sources, it would be the demonic presence in the house.

Faced with such a tragedy, which initially shocked me a lot, I thought it was a better choice to remain silent and pray. If in the face of this gruesome episode we strongly condemn this murder and the calling into question of the Devil by exalted people, at the same time it makes no sense to judge them for their religious status and their faith, that only God knows. As a priest, Dominican friar and theologian, however, I think it is necessary to clarify what the true nature of the Devil is, and distinguish between the responsibility of the fallen Angel and that of man.

Although a text about the devil always attracts, It is important for me to write it to also awaken conscience and personal responsibility in the exercise of virtue. How many battles there have been in the history of Italy? Think of the Punic Wars and Scipio, without which we would not have had Roman civilization but the Carthaginian one. Think about World War II, when the Allies arrived to liberate our nation from the Nazis. But this battle involves us as children of God: we are all responsible for ourselves, as people, both of our Common Good and that of others. One of the examples of application of the Common Good was when during the Lockdown we promised to stay at home, allowing the practice of that Common Good which according to the teaching of the Church is «the set of those conditions of social life that allow both communities and individual members, to reach one's perfection more fully and more quickly » (Social Doctrine of the Church, 346). Now, one of the conditions that we all achieved with our virtuous effort at that moment was to end the pandemic phase as soon as possible so that all Italians can perfect themselves. But we who are called to the life of faith, we too face a special battle. St. Paul tells us about this:

«Our battle, indeed, it is not against creatures made of blood and flesh, but against the Principalities and Powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the evil spirits that dwell in the celestial regions" (Ef 6, 12).

This battle against these spiritual realities, demons calling them by their name, it's not a sword-fighting battle, magic wand or witchcraft. It's an internal battle, spiritual indeed, in which the devil tries to divert us from the path described by God for us. Let's try to make a small description of the devil, which we first see acting against Adam and Eve, first in Genesis 3.

«The serpent was the most cunning of all the wild beasts made by the Lord God. He said to the woman: “It is true that God said: You must not eat from any tree in the garden?”. The woman answered the serpent: “We may eat of the fruits of the trees of the garden, but God spoke of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden: You must not eat it and you must not touch it, otherwise you will die". But the serpent said to the woman: “You will not die at all! On the contrary, God knows when you ate it, your eyes would be opened and you would become like God, knowing good and evil". Then the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, pleasing to the eyes and desirable for gaining wisdom; he took of its fruit and ate, then she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he also ate it.".

The biblical text tells us something very important. What we know by tying it together with the New Testament - and what Catholic Doctrine has assumed - is that Satan and the rebel angels disobeyed God. St. Peter explains it to us:

«In fact, God did not spare the angels who had sinned, but he plunged them into dark abysses, holding them captive for judgment" (2PT 2,4).

Angelic and demonic theology offers an in-depth study of the biblical text. The devil is first and foremost an angel, an angel who disobeyed God and fell. So, He has the same natural characteristics as angels, but with some differences that we will see now. First of all, the devil, spiritual being without body, like all creatures he was created by God. In technical jargon it is said that it is pure substantial form without matter.

How then to explain apparitions of angels and demons? A question that is normal to ask, Theologians asked themselves the question and then offered various answers. According to Saint Thomas Aquinas the Devil, when it appears a certain way, It is because it combines the natural and material elements: so we will say for example that it creates plays of light, terrible voices and disturbing images (QUESTION, I, q. 41, a2, ad3). Not because he has them in his nature, but because it is able to interact with the outside world and with humans.

According to Father Serge Thomas Bonino the Devil is guilty of the sin of pride: indeed, being a spiritual entity he wanted a spiritual good. The greatest spiritual good is obviously to be like God. But the Devil did not want to be like God for a gift of grace, explains Saint Thomas: he really wanted to become God. In short, before God he claimed the right to be called to divine participation (S. Bonino, Angels and demons, Word and Silence, 2007, 246 – 264). This is never a right, It is a gift of grace, which is offered by the Lord to those who entrust themselves to Him. The devil, according to St. Thomas he was proud and did not want to entrust himself to God, and he then claimed to make himself God. For these reasons he was hurled into Gehenna, and from there he tries to pull himself further and further into it and into Hell. The Devil acts on men precisely to pull them all away from God and lead them towards hell, dimension and “place” that are anything but metaphorical, but real and above all eternal.

Despite being champions of pride and selfishness, all the demons have coalesced, in a pact of subjection to Satan, leader of demons, with the aim of taking away believers from God. United, in their being proud, they know they are strong. But we are not alone. God is with us and we just need to know how they act: temptation. The ordinary action with which the Devil hinders and fights us is traditionally called temptation. However, this does not imply that the Devil carries out actions for us or forces us to carry them out.

The temptation it is the dimension of solicitation and incitement to sin, even more terrible. All we have to do is fight and resist this invitation to evil by making use of our freedom and our free will, through which one can both fall into diabolical temptations and resist and reject them. It's an unequal battle but we are not alone. The grace of the Lord helps us. The devil knows this well and for this reason he tries to distance us from him.

Clive Staples Lewis he was able to give voice to this certainty of the Devil in an excellent way, when in his splendid work Screwtape Letters makes the devil say Screwtape:

«Human beings are amphibians – half spirit, half animal […]. As spirits they belong to the world of eternity, but like animals they are inhabitants of time" (Screwtape's letters, chapter 8).

Let us always remain strong in his grace, which we draw upon especially in the sacraments and in the intimacy of prayer. With these tools we need not fear anything and become increasingly men and women of virtue.

We conclude with the appearance: Demon and itch. Our editors Ariel Levi di Gualdo and Ivano Liguori, who at the time trained for exorcists, they always repeated: «Of the Devil, in television contexts and in the press, the less we talk about it, better '. Let's clarify what they mean: when they hear the delicate aspects of demonology being addressed in an itchy way talk show televisions, where, if anything, some imprudent priest or religious person agrees to speak in a parterre populated with soubrette elderly people put in the role of unlikely commentators and more or less aggressive and mocking secularists, both end up being attacked by hives, and it's completely understandable. None of us should lend ourselves to fomenting, even and only involuntarily, certain itching games. Except to be silenced, if not attacked after less than half a minute trying in vain to explain what is of no interest in those television contexts, because the one and only thing you are aiming for is itching, the show, not infrequently the trash. For this reason, certain priests should avoid accepting invitations to those television salons where explaining certain delicate topics and offering clarifications on them is really prevented.. It is in this sense that our two brothers affirm: «Of the Devil, the less we talk about it, better '. Which is to say,: avoid, certain priests, to lend themselves to making the Devil laugh while some of his faithful acolytes never miss an opportunity to put the priest or the exorcist in difficulty and then expose him to ridicule. For which reason this, the Italian Association of Exorcists, he has repeatedly urged priests and exorcists not to accept invitations to television programs and to avoid speaking on certain topics where it is impossible to discuss them. But not everyone listens, as Al Pacino says at the end of the splendid film The Devil's advocate: «Vanity... of all the sins is always my favorite».

Florence, 10 April 2024

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