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I .
. . wonder about evil. It would be easy to say the devil made me do
it!
 vil is simply the refusal to serve
God. This is what caused the fall of Lucifer along with all the angels who
followed him. Unwilling to submit to God’s authority, evil makes
self-interest, at the expense of others, into its own god.
Therefore, you are vulnerable
to the influence of Satan—once called Lucifer, the angel of light, and
now known as the devil—in proportion to the extent that you are influenced
by
unconscious psychological
defenses. These defenses serve essentially
to protect your pride and ego in the face of family
dysfunction and hypocrisy and, commonly because of your anger at the
failures of your father, these defenses often seek
the unconscious satisfaction of undermining all paternal
authority—including the Church and, ultimately, God Himself.
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The easiest opening
the devil can follow into your heart is the path opened by your desire to
get revenge for injuries inflicted on you. Because this desire is often
unconscious, rather than conscious, especially in regard to childhood traumas,
you might even say that you are certain that you don’t want revenge
on anyone. But unconsciously you do desire revenge—and any of those
behaviors that “the devil made me do” are the evidence.
So, do you need
an exorcism? Well, actually, you can “exorcise” yourself simply
by creating an environment within your “house” that is boring to
the devil. It’s like when a neighbor always comes to your house and
helps himself to the soda or beer in your refrigerator. You can put an end
to the mooching just by not keeping soda or beer in the fridge.
Therefore, in
regard to the devil, don’t keep “revenge” in your house. That
is, purge from your house anything that breeds on revenge: sports, television,
politics, newpapers, video games, and so on. Even though these things are
accepted hook, line, and sinker by our secular culture—and even by those
who claim to be Christian—they have no spiritual value and are just
breeding grounds for the desire to get revenge on others. The same for addictions
(smoking, drinking, drugs, gambling, eroticism); these things breed revenge
because by hurting yourself you hurt your parents
(and God). |
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So, on the one hand, if you are
carrying in your heart all sorts of bitterness about
past injuries and injustices, then, when new
trials afflict you, all that unconscious bitterness
in your heart will gush forth in anger—along
with envy, and rivalry, and pride, and on and on—and you will fall right
into all the snares of self-sabotage,
disobedience, and sin
the devil has laid out for you.
On the other hand, if you live
a chaste lifestyle, if you have detached yourself
from the worldly need to defend your pride, if
you respect yourself and your
body, if you are free from self-punishment and
believe that God desires your salvation, if you
can face everything with patience and
humility, and if you
pray constantly for those who
hurt you—in short, if you have really
died to the world as the early Church (and
the Catholic mystics through the ages) understood the term—then you
truly are serving God from the depths of your heart and the devil’s
influence will not cause you to sin.
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Do not let the
sun go down on your wrath; do not give the devil a chance to work on
you. |
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—Ephesians 4:27 |
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