Something thats been disturbing me for as long as I can remember

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Chazemataz

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God protects all His followers, right? Then why are saints, popes, nuns ect. always claiming to be attacked by demons? Can you please answer why you think, or give biblical proof, it may help me to have a lot more restful nights. Thanks.
 
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Chazemataz:
God protects all His followers, right? Then why are saints, popes, nuns ect. always claiming to be attacked by demons? Can you please answer why you think, or give biblical proof, it may help me to have a lot more restful nights. Thanks.
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You mean like Job?
 
God allows it to happen to those he feels can handle it and reject the evil.
 
Spirituality is a journey - a path of purging one’s self from many impurities. They work diligently on the virtues and they spend time in true devotion to the Lord and saints. This gives them graces. One example of a grace is if you do something good, then find suddenly that you are patient when you know that you are not ordinarily that way. Graces come from prayers, good works, and so on. Just the urge to go to confession can be a grace and acting on it will lead to more graces.

Many saints have perfected themselves and have learned to be virtuous and self-disciplined to a very high level. This not only drives the angel of darkness nuts, but God enables them to reach such holy people as a test to further toughen them (gold is tested in fire!).

Many of us succumb so easily to sin, there is no reason for the devil to “show” himself to us. But for very holy people when all else fails, the devil gets drastic and the Lord permits it to enable the person to become perfected even more.

Jesus himself was tempted if you recall, when the devil appeared as a human and tried to get him to fall into sin. But Jesus stood firm.

Another thing that many saints, and even ordinary christians deal with is dryness. While it may not be the devil, it can be bad. Lets say you pray a rosary each morning, but then it becomes difficult, when you don’t get any pleasure out of it. God may test you to see if you will stay with him when he turns of the sweetness switch. The idea is to remain true to your plan to pray the rosary each morning at the same time regardless of how it makes you feel. This is “true devotion”. Many saints go years in dryness and some even lose the comfort that comes from believing in God. We all lose that some time or another. But will you “stay awake” with Him for that hour?

Does this help?
 
Well, that last bit really helped me. I have become a bit ‘dry’ but didnt have a word for it (except for bored, perhaps, or maybe lazy is a better one). I started saying the rosary then gave up. I even often feel like not keeping up the evening and morning praying, wondering in my heart, I’m tired now, does He mind if i don’t? Your words really helped me. I will go back to it, heartened!
 
This is just my opinion but I think Saints generally do such wonderful things in the name of the LORD. That must really bug Satan so I think he attacks them to try to get them to stop. He hates all that is good & Godly so I think he must hate Saints more than anyone.
 
If I recall correctly, wasn’t Christ tempted by Satan also. Just a thought.

PS. Who said God keep demons from attacking us?
 
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Chazemataz:
God protects all His followers, right? Then why are saints, popes, nuns ect. always claiming to be attacked by demons? Can you please answer why you think, or give biblical proof, it may help me to have a lot more restful nights. Thanks.
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God does not aim to “protect” us, but rather to save us. There is a huge difference.

No, God does not protect his followers in the way you mean.
 
posted by Lux_et_veritas

Another thing that many saints, and even ordinary christians deal with is dryness. While it may not be the devil, it can be bad. Lets say you pray a rosary each morning, but then it becomes difficult, when you don’t get any pleasure out of it. God may test you to see if you will stay with him when he turns of the sweetness switch. The idea is to remain true to your plan to pray the rosary each morning at the same time regardless of how it makes you feel. This is “true devotion”. Many saints go years in dryness and some even lose the comfort that comes from believing in God. We all lose that some time or another. But will you “stay awake” with Him for that hour?
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Does this help?
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Helped me!🙂 Knew about dryness, have experienced dryness, but failed to recognize it this time around. Thank you for the timely words. Truly, I thank you!

Maria
 
God protects all His followers, right? Then why are saints, popes, nuns ect. always claiming to be attacked by demons? Can you please answer why you think, or give biblical proof, it may help me to have a lot more restful nights. Thanks.
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Only He knows, and I doubt the answer is the same in every case. Remember John Chapter 9 where Jesus healed the blind man. The disciples asked whether he was blind due to his own sin or that of his father. Jesus answered that it was neither, but so that God’s power could be revealed. I think the answer is sometimes the same here.

By allowing the saints to be attacked and to triumph in the end He gives us heroic examples of what can be accomplished by the gift of His grace, and he teaches us not to despair, but persevere and pray also for His gift of grace. So, in other words, when we hit a dry spell we have role models to imitate and we can have confidence in God’s power.
 
In a mysterious way, suffering is a gift. It allows us to unite our will more fully to Christ. When we suffer and bear it to our best ability–we are being Christ-like. He is the Suffering Servant.
 
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Chazemataz:
God protects all His followers, right? Then why are saints, popes, nuns ect. always claiming to be attacked by demons? Can you please answer why you think, or give biblical proof, it may help me to have a lot more restful nights. Thanks.
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Hi, friend.

Obviously, those folks are not “always” claiming to be attacked by demons.

I do believe that such demonic attacks occur. (a) I have personally witnessed people being attacked by visible poltergeist-like assaults. (b) Many including yourself assume that “saints, popes, nuns, etc.” are somehow fundamentally different from you or I. In truth, they are the same, subject to the same temptations – and sometimes they commit mortal sin. I personally believe that God permits demons to “break through” and assault the mortal sinners whom He wants to be saved, to “scare them straight.” (c) One can see such demonic activity in the New Testament, in Paul. Paul at 2 Corinthians 12:7 Paul confesses that God gave Paul what Paul refers to as “a thorn in the flesh,” which Paul expressly defines as “an angel of Satan to beat me.” There you have it – Biblical precedent for a holy man under attack by a demon.
 
Jesus was as pure as the fallen snow and yet he was tempted by Satan.

Isn’t it that if we say the name of Jesus or pray to God or make the sign of the cross that the demon will dissapear?
 
All Christians, whether lay people, approved saints, Popes, nuns, priests or whatever WILL suffer persecution for the faith.Hebrews 11. God never promised immunity from Satan and his demons in this life. Nor perfect health. Even Paul the apostle suffered a “thorn in the flesh” in his late years. Most believe it was glaucoma. All the apostles were mostly martyred, as well as the early Catholic saints in the reigns of Dominitian and the madman Nero.
Our reward of peace and immortality is when God welcomes us home either after we pass from purgatory or at Christ's return at the resurrection of the body. This world of sin is a veil of tears, we all must endure and pray to God to see us through each and every day.
 
From the book of Acts comes a story of demonic attack that resulted in the name of Jesus being held in high esteem and further spread of the gospel:

Then some intinerant Jewish exorcists tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those with evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches.” When the seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish high priest, tried to do this, the evil spirit said to them in reply, “Jesus I recognize, Paul I know, but who are you?” The person with the evil spirit then sprang at them and subdued them all. He so overpowered them that they fled naked and wounded from that house. When this became known to all the name of the Lord Jesus was held in great esteem. Many of those who had become believers came forward and openly acknowledged their former practices. Moreover, a large number of those who had practiced magic collected their books and burned them in public. They calculated their value and found it to be fifty thousand silver pieces. Thus did the word of the Lord continue to spread with influence and power.
–Acts 19:13-20

God protects His followers, but that does not mean they won’t suffer. It means He will save their souls and work good through things that appear evil, just as He worked good through the crucifiction.
 
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Thea:
Well, that last bit really helped me. I have become a bit ‘dry’ but didnt have a word for it (except for bored, perhaps, or maybe lazy is a better one). I started saying the rosary then gave up. I even often feel like not keeping up the evening and morning praying, wondering in my heart, I’m tired now, does He mind if i don’t? Your words really helped me. I will go back to it, heartened!
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Glad it could help. I’d like to tell you that it just took a priest to remind me of this when I asked him why it was that I couldn’t get into prayers like the Rosary or other similar prayers (keep in mind I’m a product of 70’s catholicism which did not get into these things in my area, at least).

Father went on to talk about devotion which is also something that was lacking from my catechetical upbringing. He spoke of the need for discipline as I stated above.

Here is a pretty good article.

goccn.org/diocese/spcl/RefArcC/17OTC.asp

And then, because I didn’t understand the significance of the Sacred Heart and blew it off all these years, I found this great article, which comes through the home page of the link in my sig. It is on devotion to the Sacred Heart but gets into the whole notion of devotion (wow that rhymed) and discipline. They really go hand in hand and the article helped me even more on this very topic.

opusangelorum.org/English/Sacredheart.html

Furthermore, if you go to the homepage of this site, click on Youth Circulars and then choose “A Good Start is Half the Battle” which also touches on prayer and discipline.

Hope this helps you all. Keep that homepage for Opus Sanctorum Angelorum bookmarked. It is one of the greatest spiritual water holes I’ve found on the web.
 
St. Alphonsus de Liguori said,
" The saints of whom the Church sings are precisely these choice stones, which are reduced to shapeliness and beauty by the strokes of the chisel,–that is, by temptations, by fears, by darkness, and oter torments, internal and external,–till at length they are made worthy to be enthroned in the blessed kingdom of Paradise."

This is basically another way of stating what others have already said: that temptations and even demonic oppression are God’s way of perfecting us into the saints He calls us to be.
 
“no weapon formed against us shall prosper” the weapon is still formed against you…see satan can still attack you…but you have the authority of christ you are empowered to destroy the works of the devil…that is why your such a threat to him…he’ll try to get you to not operate in the authority that christ has delagated out to you, because ultimately it hinders his work…

Ceasar
 
One of my favorite stories about St Teresa of Avila is how she would take her broom and sweep the devil out of her convent…I think that sometimes, saints’ being harassed by evil is allowed to see what their reaction will be. (Read the book of Job!!) St Teresa responded in a very “earthy” & courageous way, by attacking right back…
There is nothing particularly shocking about demons attacking holy people. They are offending satan by obeying God; why would the devil bother to attack someone he all ready had on his side???
 
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