Invisible and malicious

I wrote this reflection for our parish's church bulletin this week.  The readings for this weekend are here.

The Invisible

When we recite the Nicene Creed together, we profess that God made all things, “visible and invisible”.  This phrase originally comes from Scripture: it appears in Colossians 1:16, “For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible.”

Isn’t it interesting that we believe in things that are “invisible”?  What is meant here by “invisible”?  Science tells us of the existence of various things that aren’t visible to our naked eye, such as single-cell organisms, X-rays and particles such as atoms and electrons.  But those are not the sorts of things that the authors of Colossians and the Nicene Creed had in mind.  By “invisible”, they meant the spiritual realities of our world.  They knew, even though we sometimes forget, that the world consists of both material and spiritual realities.  Those realities are just that: they are real, even though we don’t typically apprehend them the same way we apprehend the physical world, via our five senses and the use of scientific reason.  Instead, we know the spiritual world through scripture, faith, experience, personal testimony and wisdom. 

The spiritual includes such realities as our souls, as well as angels, devils and the Holy Spirit.  Perhaps there is much more to the spiritual world than these, but these are among the realities that are revealed to us by Scripture and the sacred tradition of the church.

Our contemporary world doesn’t deal very well with spiritual realities.  One common error is to deny entirely the existence of spiritual reality.  According to such a mistaken view, humans have no souls, and angels and devils (and even God) are figments of the human imagination.  Another error is to insist that the spiritual world consists only of ghosts – spectral shades of the dead, who may communicate with us via mediums or seances.   Yet another mistaken view is that the spiritual world is a benign place, filled with the sort of cuddly cherubs that appear on Valentine’s Day cards.   Over and against these erroneous views of spiritual reality, Christianity insists that spiritual beings such as souls, angels and devils are real; and we humans exist in a world that is both physical and spiritual – it is both visible and invisible.  Furthermore, some of these spiritual beings are potent, and spiritual reality for us is not all peace and serenity; it involves spiritual conflict - and spiritual peril to us.

The Devil

We see spiritual conflict in today’s Gospel reading, in which Jesus is tempted by the devil.  All three temptations seem designed to drive a wedge between Jesus and his Father – something that we should take note of: we would be wise to spiritually arm ourselves for something similar when the devil sets his sights on us.  Jesus emerges from the conflict victorious, thus announcing to the spiritual world that the devil has no power over him. 

Who is the devil?  According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy.  Scripture and the Church’s Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called “Satan” or the “devil”.  The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: ‘The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing.’ [Lateran Council IV].  Scripture speaks of the sin of these angels. [2 Peter 2:4].  This ‘fall’ consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign.” [Catechism of the Catholic Church, 391-392]

As we see in today’s Gospel reading, the devil attacks us by tempting us to sin.  All of us are subject to temptations throughout life – I know I am.  Some are indeed diabolical in the ways they tempt me to sin.  When we submit to temptation, it is common these days to attribute our failure to human weakness. Undoubtedly, we are responsible for our sins; but it is also likely that we have lost sight of the fact that behind temptations to sin is not just human imperfection, but also a malign spiritual being who wants us to fail, and who works for our destruction. 

When I was a child, I often “gave up” things for Lent: candy, or soda pop, or something similar.  These days, that sort of Lenten discipline is often deprecated as being too childish for adults.  Yet I’m a strong supporter of adults following the spiritual practice of giving up during Lent those things that we greatly desire.  Voluntarily giving up the things that tempt us helps us to listen to God’s voice urging us to resist temptation.  We may need this habit in our own spiritual battles against the devil.

The Father of Lies

The devil is often referred to, rightly, as “the father of lies”.  These words are Jesus’s [Jn 8:44].  As we look around us at the world in which we live, we become aware that so much discourse, both public and personal, is untruthful.  This is especially and deplorably true in the case of political rhetoric: a few minutes of watching election ads on television shows us that any claim can be made, no matter how untrue, if it helps win the next election or make an opponent look bad.  This debasement of the truth in our public discourse is a very serious problem in our world.  Our standard in this is Jesus, who is not only the Way and the Life, but also the Truth.  Reverence for Jesus should lead us to revere the truth.  Jesus was fearless in speaking the truth, even when he was on trial for his life.  Subordinating truth to the desire for power, which is what we see in our political discourse today, sounds very much like the temptations which the devil tried on Jesus in today’s Gospel message.  It’s a temptation we must resist.

I learned as a child, as I suppose many children have, that it is both easy and tempting to lie.  I told many lies, usually to avoid getting in trouble for bad things I’d done. As I’ve matured, both spiritually and as a human, I’ve learned that lying usually causes more problems for the liar than telling the truth.  It is also wrong in itself.  Yet the temptation to lie persists.  In my case, the person to whom it is easiest for me to tell a lie is myself.  I delude myself with lies rather than face difficult truths.  “I can handle this situation.”  “I have the ability to do this without God’s help.”  I need to be aware that the devil may be whispering these comforting falsehoods in my ear.

One way we can mark this season of Lent is by resisting the culture of lies which surrounds us.  Let us stand as witnesses to the truth.  We can resist the political lies which come at us from the traditional and social media each day.  We can also resolve to be truthful to one another, to ourselves, and to God.  Facing and telling the truth can help separate us from the father of lies and grow closer to Jesus during this time of Lent.