Friday, February 08, 2008

On Satan and Christ's victory by Father Cantalamessa

From Father Raniero Cantalamessa's First Sunday of Lent commentary:

Demons, Satanism and other related phenomena are quite topical today, and they disturb a great part of our society.

Our technological and industrialized world is filled with magicians, wizards, occultism, spiritualism, fortune tellers, spell trafficking, amulets, as well as very real Satanic sects. Chased away from the door, the devil has come in through the window. Chased away by the faith, he has returned by way of superstition.

"Do demons really exist?"

Many intellectuals do not believe in demons in the first sense. But it must be noted that many great writers, such as Goethe and Dostoyevsky, took Satan's existence very seriously. Baudelaire, who was certainly no angel, said that "the demon's greatest trick is to make people believe that he does not exist."

Brilliant! Both in the demon's strategy and in Baudelaire's recognition of it.

Yet the most important thing that the Christian faith has to tell us is not that demons exist, but that Christ has defeated them...Satan, said an ancient Father of the Church, after Christ's coming, is like a dog chained up in the barnyard: He can bark and lunge as much as he wants, but if we don't go near him, he cannot harm us.

The key, of course, is to stay away from Satan, and close to Christ.

Here's the whole sermon.