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We Fear Nothing With Christ, Says Father Cantalamessa
Pontifical Household Preacher Comments on Sunday’s Gospel
ROME, FEB. 11, 2005 (Zenit.org).- In his commentary on the Gospel of the first Sunday of Lent, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the preacher of the Pontifical Household, alerts the faithful about the devil’s action and reminds them that Christ has conquered him.
"…Today the devil, Satanism, and other related phenomena, are gaining momentum and this is very disturbing. Our technological and industrialized world is overrun with wizards, witches, occultism, spiritualism, voluble fortune tellers, vendors of spells and amulets, as well as authentic Satanic sects. Thrown out the door, the devil has come back in through the window. That is, expelled from faith he has returned with superstition.
The episode of Jesus’ temptations in the desert helps to clarify matters. First of all, does the devil exist? Does the word devil really indicate a personal reality, gifted with intelligence and will or is he only a symbol, a way of speaking to indicate the sum of the moral evil of the world, the collective unconscious, collective alienations, etc.? Among intellectuals, many do not believe in the devil understood in the first sense.
But we must note that great writers and thinkers, such as Goethe and Dostoyevsky, took the existence of Satan very seriously. Charles Baudelaire, who was certainly not of the race of saints, said that “the devil’s greatest cunning is to make people believe he doesn’t exist.” The principal proof in the Gospels of the devil’s existence is not in the numerous episodes of exorcism of the possessed, because the interpretation of these events might have been influenced by beliefs on the origin of these illnesses. The real proof is in the saints!
And Jesus, who was tempted in the desert by the devil, is the obvious confirmation of it. Proofs also are the many saints who fought in life with the prince of darkness. They are not “Don Quixotes” who fought against windmills. On the contrary, they are very concrete men of very sound psychology.
If many find it absurd to believe in the devil it is because they base themselves on books, spend their lives in libraries or at a desk, while the devil is not interested in books, but in people, especially saints. What can someone know about Satan who has never had anything to do with the reality of Satan, but only with the idea of him, namely, with cultural, religious, ethnological traditions about Satan? They usually address the topic with great certainty and superiority, dispatching it all as “Medieval obscurantism.”
But it is a false certainty. As someone who boasts of not being at all afraid of a lion, adducing as proof that he has seen many paintings and photographs of lions which have never terrified him.
Moreover, it is all together normal and consistent that someone who doesn’t believe in God doesn’t believe in the devil either. It would even be tragic if someone who doesn’t believe in God believes in the devil! The most important thing that the Christian faith has to tell us is not, however, that the devil exists, but that Christ has conquered the devil. Christ and the devil are not for Christians two equal and opposing princes. Jesus is the only Lord. Satan is only a “ruined” creature. If he is granted power over men it is so that men will have the possibility to make a free choice, and also so that they will not “become proud” believing that they are self-sufficient and not in need of a redeemer.
"…Satan, said an early Father of the Church, after the coming of Christ, is like a dog tied to a pole: he can bark and hurl himself as much as he likes, but if we don’t get close to him, he cannot bite. Jesus in the desert freed himself from Satan to free us from Satan! This is the joyful news with which we begin our Lenten journey.
[Original in Italian published in “Famiglia Cristiana.” Translation by ZENIT]
www.zenit.org
ZE05021106
Pontifical Household Preacher Comments on Sunday’s Gospel
ROME, FEB. 11, 2005 (Zenit.org).- In his commentary on the Gospel of the first Sunday of Lent, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the preacher of the Pontifical Household, alerts the faithful about the devil’s action and reminds them that Christ has conquered him.
"…Today the devil, Satanism, and other related phenomena, are gaining momentum and this is very disturbing. Our technological and industrialized world is overrun with wizards, witches, occultism, spiritualism, voluble fortune tellers, vendors of spells and amulets, as well as authentic Satanic sects. Thrown out the door, the devil has come back in through the window. That is, expelled from faith he has returned with superstition.
The episode of Jesus’ temptations in the desert helps to clarify matters. First of all, does the devil exist? Does the word devil really indicate a personal reality, gifted with intelligence and will or is he only a symbol, a way of speaking to indicate the sum of the moral evil of the world, the collective unconscious, collective alienations, etc.? Among intellectuals, many do not believe in the devil understood in the first sense.
But we must note that great writers and thinkers, such as Goethe and Dostoyevsky, took the existence of Satan very seriously. Charles Baudelaire, who was certainly not of the race of saints, said that “the devil’s greatest cunning is to make people believe he doesn’t exist.” The principal proof in the Gospels of the devil’s existence is not in the numerous episodes of exorcism of the possessed, because the interpretation of these events might have been influenced by beliefs on the origin of these illnesses. The real proof is in the saints!
And Jesus, who was tempted in the desert by the devil, is the obvious confirmation of it. Proofs also are the many saints who fought in life with the prince of darkness. They are not “Don Quixotes” who fought against windmills. On the contrary, they are very concrete men of very sound psychology.
If many find it absurd to believe in the devil it is because they base themselves on books, spend their lives in libraries or at a desk, while the devil is not interested in books, but in people, especially saints. What can someone know about Satan who has never had anything to do with the reality of Satan, but only with the idea of him, namely, with cultural, religious, ethnological traditions about Satan? They usually address the topic with great certainty and superiority, dispatching it all as “Medieval obscurantism.”
But it is a false certainty. As someone who boasts of not being at all afraid of a lion, adducing as proof that he has seen many paintings and photographs of lions which have never terrified him.
Moreover, it is all together normal and consistent that someone who doesn’t believe in God doesn’t believe in the devil either. It would even be tragic if someone who doesn’t believe in God believes in the devil! The most important thing that the Christian faith has to tell us is not, however, that the devil exists, but that Christ has conquered the devil. Christ and the devil are not for Christians two equal and opposing princes. Jesus is the only Lord. Satan is only a “ruined” creature. If he is granted power over men it is so that men will have the possibility to make a free choice, and also so that they will not “become proud” believing that they are self-sufficient and not in need of a redeemer.
"…Satan, said an early Father of the Church, after the coming of Christ, is like a dog tied to a pole: he can bark and hurl himself as much as he likes, but if we don’t get close to him, he cannot bite. Jesus in the desert freed himself from Satan to free us from Satan! This is the joyful news with which we begin our Lenten journey.
[Original in Italian published in “Famiglia Cristiana.” Translation by ZENIT]
www.zenit.org
ZE05021106
to the infinite degree.