THE WORK OF THE DEVIL IN THE HISTORY OF MAN: TEMPTATION AS A DAILY BATTLE

Now the diabolical possession, of which even the Lord Jesus was accused is an extraordinary action, very rare, of which the Church follows a strict procedure and rules for its certification. But ordinary action, daily, of the Devil is the temptation that comes to strike man both in the body and in the psyche.

 

 

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Some time ago I dedicated an article to the figure of the Demon, after that in Sicily, in February this year, a heinous crime was committed where the killer, to explain his insane act, he was hiding behind the reason that in his house, in his family members, there was this dark presence (WHO).

I continued to think about it and I find it prudent as well as reasonable to add a few words about temptation, which appears as the ordinary way through which Satan acts among men, placing stumbles, by virtue of his being disobedient and a liar first and foremost. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, al n. 395, he is defined as a spirit with limited power:

«However, Satan's power is not infinite. He is but a creature, powerful because it is pure spirit, but still a creature: cannot prevent the building of the kingdom of God. Although Satan works in the world out of hatred against God and his kingdom in Christ Jesus, and although his action causes serious damage - of a spiritual nature and indirectly also of a physical nature - to every man and to society, this action is permitted by divine providence, which guides the history of man and the world with strength and sweetness. Divine permission of diabolical activity is a great mystery, but "we know that everything works for the good of those who love God (RM 8,28)».

I think it is right to return to reflecting on the meaning of temptation, because this topic seems to have disappeared from the horizon of Christian life, rather, sometimes, we try to diminish personal responsibility for sin. How many times have we heard it pronounced, as a joke, Oscar Wilde's famous phrase: «The best way to get rid of a temptation, is to give in". Or only the first part of a well-known phrase of Jesus in the Gospel is retained: "I don't condemn you either"; forgetting that the text continues with: "will’ and from now on sin no more ". Or when in the everyday phrasebook, to excuse particular sins they say: «The flesh is weak».

Just to mention, having quoted the famous writer Oscar Wilde, I would like to mention that, despite his past, the many homosexual adventures, he died as a Catholic, after receiving Baptism from a priest, absolution from sins the moment of death and extreme unction. In the famous letter Out of the depths addressed to a lover of hers, Oscar Wilde never stops blaming himself for the weaknesses demonstrated on every occasion and pronounces the phrase: «Catholicism is the only religion worth dying for».

Always to loosen personal responsibility in sinning, sometimes it comes, in the religious field, to put the entire blame on the Devil. Or we resort, outside the horizon of faith, to the psychological processes by which the human being, since it is such, subject to impulses and desires that often date back to childhood, he is free from sin; he can self-absolve without intermediaries, even going as far as removing the guilt itself, in defiance of any ethics of responsibility. This is something in which Freudian psychoanalysis is a pioneer.

Understand what temptation is it means understanding precisely this human fragility. In a religious and specifically Christian context, we see that this humanity subject to transience has not been condemned by God, but rather, assumed by Verbo, the second person of the Holy Trinity, so much so that in the Creed it is professed that He is: «True God and true Man». In fact, we know that Jesus himself suffered the attack of temptation and brought the word of forgiveness and mercy to everyone, leaving man the freedom to be able to disregard this proposal to his own detriment.

Face temptation for us human beings it means waging a war that we fight frequently. And the example of Christ who engaged in a final battle with the Devil comes to us. According to the account of the Synoptics, the public demonstration of Jesus' messiahship in baptism is immediately followed by the conflict with the Devil, whose peak is reached by the Lucanian version of the second temptation:

«E, leading him upwards, showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the ecumene; and the Devil told him: “I will give you all this power and their glory, because it was given to me and I give it to whoever I want; if you then bow down before me, it will be all yours”» (LC 4, 5-6).

It's a deadly challenge. Jesus cannot contest the Demon's assertion of power, but he opposes it with faith in another power. To whom later, echoing the words of the devil, he will accuse him of being possessed himself, will answer:

«But if it is with the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you" (LC 11, 20).

Now the diabolical possession, of which even the Lord Jesus was accused is an extraordinary action, very rare, of which the Church follows a strict procedure and rules for its certification. But ordinary action, daily, of the Devil is the temptation that comes to strike man both in the body and in the psyche.

As the Catechism stated mentioned above, for the mysterious plans of God, this tempting yet limited activity, it is also allowed, evidently for a higher purpose. We could say, for the good of souls. The psychological and spiritual dynamics of temptation have as their goal the overturning of the real relationship between us and God. The devil makes us appear to be good things that are not, leading us to sin, attempts to distance us from the living and true God by placing before our eyes attractive realities that are in truth poor idols.

These demonic dynamics of temptation we can trace them in the first biblical book of Genesis. It is there that we find the mother of all temptation narrated, in the third chapter of the work. The text shows us how a temptation moves that is to the detriment of man and his original relationship with the Creator.

First of all, temptation, in its first movement, it comes between man and God's plan for him, until it corrupts him.

“It meanders […] he said to the woman: “It is true that God said: You must not eat from any tree in the garden?”» (Gen 3, 1).

The tempter thus insinuates himself into the relationship between the creature and the Creator, starting to ask doubts in the form of a question in a dialogue context. The first failure occurs here, the trap into which Eve falls, because he answers. All spiritual authors, based on the biblical text, they warn that we must not dialogue with the devil, but silence it, preventing it from triggering any suspicion. The only voice we need to listen to is that of God.

The next move, or second movement of every temptation, it consists in the moral distortion of a good, making it perceived as the opposite:

«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" (Gen 3, 4-5).

Once you open a door for dialogue the Devil not only sneakily insinuates himself and raises doubts about God like few others, but he distorts His teaching, perverting it. It is the end of morality and the search for true good: make it seem like a bad choice, a shame, as the best and most reasonable thing. Having reached this point, how can you not fall? In fact, everything happens easily. Because sin is presented to us as the truest and most useful way, only to then discover that it is insidious and above all distances us from God:

«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."(Gen 3,6).

As noted, then exit the tunnel of temptation, once entered, it is difficult if not impossible. Yet at the beginning we said that we are not subjects without freedom and responsibility. Even if indispensable goods are undermined by a threat such as the demonic one, we have the capacity, if not duty, to oppose us. The Saints and the masters of the spirit have shown us some means which, if they don't help us avoid being tempted, they strengthen us, they give us those antibodies that make us almost unassailable. I mentioned before not giving space to dialogue with the devil, which can be, for instance, inner, in our thoughts; and to do this we need to be vigilant.

The prayer, following the example of Jesus, It helps a lot in not falling into temptation. It trains us to be vigilant and prepares us for future difficulties and battles with the devil. But sometimes it is also necessary to escape temptation, as if faced with a danger that overwhelms us or that we cannot control, a fire that blazes. The sayings of the desert fathers are full of examples of this kind, when they were tempted on their genuine faith or on the chastity they had chosen. There is a beautiful painting by Matthias Grünewald, preserved in Colmar in France, where the father of the desert is seen, Saint Anthony the Abbot, stretched and attacked on all sides by beasts representing demons with their temptations. But he doesn't give in or give up. The account of the battles of Saint Anthony the Abbot against the devil is told to us in these terms by Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria who wrote, having known him in life, a biography of the holy anchorite:

«The place seemed to have been shaken by an earthquake, and demons, almost as if they were breaking down the four walls of the shelter they seemed to penetrate through them, and appear in the form of beasts and creeping things. The place suddenly filled with lion shapes, bears, leopards, Market, snakes, aspidi, scorpions, and each of them moved according to its nature".

It has rightly been observed that sermons on demons constitute

«… a great example of Christian psychology, in which human excesses are described in the form of demons recalled from the abyss of the unconscious, a sort of Freud ante litteram with the power of Dostoevsky.» (Louis Goosen, Dictionary of saints, Mondadori, 2000).

From what has been said so far it is clear that, humanity being fragile, it is easy for us to give in to sin as a result of temptation. Yet we know from all revelation that we cannot be tempted beyond our ability, that God is our strength in all circumstances. And even if we fall, God loves the repentant man and always welcomes him in his great goodness, as the parables of mercy that we read in the Gospel teach us. So much so that Jesus himself asks us to imitate him in forgiving others and to convert.

Give in to temptation and passively accept sin it does not just appear as a serious act of irresponsibility and immorality; I would also say that it is an act against the beauty and value of the dignity and freedom that God himself has given us. His grace and his love, which has revealed to us in the course of the history of salvation and above all in Christ our Lord push us to free ourselves from the bonds of temptation to live habitually in virtue.

In a next episode we will be able to better analyze the equipment of the virtuous man and what weapons we have from God to fight demonic assaults. In the meantime, to tone down the serious tones a bit, I leave you with a reading recommendation, the beautiful book by C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters. This book is a satirical story in epistolary form in which an elderly devil, «his powerful Abyssal Sublimity, Undersecretary Screwtape», instructs his nephew Malacoda, a young devil apprentice tempter. Screwtape advises Wormwood on how to ensure the damnation of the soul of a young human assigned to him, referred to as the "patient", while God is the «Enemy». So he wisely states, in the introduction, the Lewis:

«There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall regarding devils. One is not to believe in their existence. The other is to believe it, and have an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and greet a materialist or a magician with the same pleasure.".

Santa Maria Novella in Florence, 3 July 2024

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