Читать книгу Deliver us from the Evil one - Bernardo Olivera - Страница 6

The ten or fifteen years after the Second Vatican Council represented a period of intense purification for the Catholic Church in general.1 Many different thought patterns tended to cloud the shining light of the Gospel. Even so, it was striking that Pope Paul VI proclaimed that defending ourselves from the Devil was “one of the Church’s greatest needs.”

What was even more surprising was the force with which he warned against the temptation to simply eliminate the Devil from Christian thought, “Whoever refuses to recognize the Devil’s existence has gone outside the frame of what the Bible and the Church teach.” At the same time, the Pope warned of a more subtle way of denying the reality of the Evil One, such as when someone explains the Devil “as a symbolic reality, a conceptual personification concocted to explain the unknown causes for our troubles.”2

Many of us have fallen into a certain disgust or naive denial of the active reality of the Evil One, but with time our personal struggles with evil help us to return to a healthy spiritual realism. Pope Francis has recently surprised us with several statements in his homilies and catecheses that echo those of Saint Paul VI and reveal the attitude of a father who warns his children not to be deceived and so fall into a trap. I recall several of his expression in this regard:

“We, too, experience the Devil’s attacks, because the spirit of evil does not like us to pursue holiness.” “We need the shield of faith, because the Devil does not throw us flowers, but burning arrows to assassinate us.” “We should not be naive: do you understand? We need to learn from the Gospel how to fight against the Devil.” “In those days they often confused epilepsy with demonic possession, but we can be sure that the Devil really existed…. The Devil is present on the first page of the Bible and the Bible ends with his presence, the victory of God over the Devil.” “Please, don’t make deals with the Devil! He wants to come back to his home and take possession of us…. Don’t take him lightly! Watch out! And stay with Jesus always!” “The Devil´s cleverness consists precisely in making us think that he does not exist.” “This generation and many others have been led to think that the Devil is a myth, a figure of speech, an idea of evil, but the Devil exists and we have to fight him!” “The Devil distracts us by luring us into passing pleasures and superficial entertainment, so we squander all the gifts God has given us.”3

It is now clear that the last petition of the Our Father, the Lord’s Prayer, is, “Deliver us from the Evil One.” It does not refer to evil in general, but specifically to the Evil One. Pope Francis reminded us of this when he commented on the Our Father. It is vital at every moment of the day, because the Our Father is a prayer for every day, which is why we ask for our daily bread, what we need to keep living for the day ahead (ton epiousion – for the coming day: Mt 6:11).

Moreover, the fact that Jesus himself “felt” the temptation of the Devil, even though it was impossible for him to fall into the trap, shows how much our human nature is threatened by the Evil One. The father of lies knows how to masquerade as an angel of light and damage the Church through our own negligence. He sows disdain and vanity underneath the defense of truth, self-satisfaction hiding under apparent wisdom, and violence beneath shows of strength.

However, is not enough to recognize the existence of the Devil or to enter into deep discussions about his precise nature. It is much better to ask ourselves what spiritual influence this real person has in our life. How does he relate to our personal path of holiness? That is why the subtitle of this book is “Inside the Spiritual Combat”. It could not be otherwise, given that a monk has written it from his own search for holiness and from the birth pangs of spiritual accompaniment.

He knows the joy of a true spiritual master who sees how his sons and daughters overcome their trials and how God opens up his own road in their life, letting them celebrate another victory over the power of the Evil One. That is why Jesus rejoiced so much with his disciples when they had fully given themselves to their mission of spreading the Gospel: “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning” (Lk 10:18).

These pages will help us to understand an element in the teaching of Pope Francis that is relatively unappreciated. He teaches us that recognizing God’s mercy does not mean being lax or giving up the fight against whatever can harm us. We often give way to our own weakness and sense of inferiority by not accepting our life, especially our spiritual life, as a combat. The struggle to stay on our feet is actually an expression of worth as persons, since that is how we acknowledge that our Father in heaven know us and loves us.

This book penetrates into an element of our faith that requires a specifically supernatural viewpoint. Although human reason can deduce God’s existence and that of a transcendent world – and even non-believers often repeat the words of Jesus – the reality of the Devil and his power is different. Acknowledging his existence and his influence presupposes accepting divine revelation and its ability to look at reality through eyes that are not of this world. The Devil is the unavoidable dark background of any healthy Christian vision of our existence on earth.

The book also helps us put into practice the advice of the many spiritual teachers who have spoken realistically about the most insidious temptations of the Devil, namely apathy, boredom, laziness and embitterment. Against such attitudes, the call for patience rings out to summon us to a very different mission from that of seeking success or victory in the world’s eyes.

Precisely because we live in a world of seeing and feeling, any healthy spirituality has to be aware of how an atmosphere of images, sensations and experiences can be an instrument of the Devil, just as the Desert Fathers taught. This means that persons who are unable to live beyond this level of experience expose themselves to the enemy. Thus the advice of the traditional spiritual masters of the last two thousand years becomes newly relevant today, especially the rules of discernment of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

I also want to emphasize that the author of this book, who writes with the same firm conviction and fatherly concern as we see in Pope Francis when he speaks about the Devil, also reminds us that the power of the Evil One is limited. God himself restricts the Devil’s action, because he always seeks the greater good of us humans, even to the point of drawing good for the victim from the evil the Devil tries to achieve. The Evil One tries to show forth a power that he really does not possess and we have to be careful to avoid being tricked by him. The secret is to entrust ourselves every night to the loving arms of our Heavenly Father and putting on our armor every morning.

We thank Bernardo, monk and brother, for his contribution to the Church’s life and particularly for this book that comes from his own experience of constant prayer. Your prayer, dear brother, is an important part of our protecting armor.

Víctor Manuel Fernandez

Archbishop of La Plata

Former Rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Buenos Aires

1 The adapted translation of this book is made from the original Spanish edition, Líbranos del Malo: El combate spiritual (Buenos Aires: Talita Kum Ediciones, 2018). All verses from Sacred Scripture are from The New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1990). The quotations from recent Popes, the Second Vatican Council and the Roman Congregations, unless otherwise indicated, are downloaded and sometimes translated from http://w2.vatican.va/content.html. The three most quoted documents from Vatican II are Lumen Gentium on the Church, Gaudium et Spes on the Church in the Modern World and Dei Verbum on Divine Revelation, abbreviated respectively as LG, GS and DV. The word, “Gospel,” is capitalized when it refers to the four written Gospels, but not when used as an adjective, as in “the gospel message.” To avoid confusion, the word, “Devil” is capitalized when he refers to the person of Satan. The other devils are demons.

2 Catechesis of November 15, 1972.

3 These quotations from Pope Francis are respectively from his Homilies at Saint Martha’s, April 11, 2014; October 30, 2014; October 10, 2013; from his Message to the Italian Association of Exorcists, October 27, 2014; from his Homily at Saint Martha’s on October 30, 2014; and the one from his Mass at Rizal Park, Manila, January 18, 2015.