“In the wilderness, Jesus freed Himself of Satan, and now He can deliver from Satan. It is what the Evangelists highlight with the numerous studies of deliverance from possession”, Pope Francis said in the catechesis for the Wednesday General Audience, devoted to the Gospel’s account of Jesus tempted by the devil in the desert, “and Jesus casts out the demons, with the aspiration of the kingdom of God”, the Pope said: “At a certain cultural level, it is held that he simply does not exist. He would be a symbol of the collective subconscious, or alienation; in short, a metaphor.”
But “the cleverest ruse of the devil is to persuade you he does not exist!”, the Pope remarked: “He is astute – Francis added off-text: “he makes us believe that he does not exist, and in this way he dominates everything.”
“And yet our technological and secularized world is teeming with magicians, occultism, spiritualism, astrologers, sellers of spells and amulets, and unfortunately with real satanic sects”, is the paradox underlined by the Pope: “Driven out the door, the devil has re-entered, one might say, through the window. Driven out of faith, he re-enters with superstition.”
In his concluding remarks, Francis referred to the “unacceptable” escalation in Lebanon. The Holy Father expressed his closeness to the Lebanese people, calling on everyone to pray for peace and for the all war-torn countries in the world.
“If you are superstitious, you are unconsciously conversing with the devil. One does not converse with the devil!”, Francis exclaimed in unscripted remarks. “The battle against the spirit of evil”, he said, “is won as Jesus won it in the wilderness: by striking with the word of God. Jesus does not converse with the devil, He never conversed with the devil. He casts him out.”
“Never converse with the devil”,
reiterated the Holy Father: “When he comes with the temptations stop -. Raise your heart to the Lord, pray to Our Lady and banish him, just as Jesus taught us.” “After Christ, on the cross, defeated forever the power of the ‘ruler of this world’, “the devil is bound, like a dog on a chain – the comparison chosen by the Pope for his catechesis – he cannot bite anyone except those who, defying the danger, go near him… He can bark, he can urge, but he can bite only those who want.” “If you are a fool and you go to the devil and say, ‘Ah, how are you?’, and everything, it ruins you”, Francis continued off-text: “The devil – distance. One does not converse with the devil. One banishes him. And all of us, everyone, we have experience of how the devil approaches with some temptation. The temptation of the ten commandments: when we feel this, stop, keep your distance: do not approach the chained dog.”
“The strongest proof of the existence of Satan is found not in sinners or the possessed, but in the saints!”,
Francis said. “It is true that the devil is present and working in certain extreme and ‘inhuman’ forms of evil and wickedness that we see around us”, the Pope argued: “But by this route, though, it is practically impossible to reach, in individual cases, the certainty that it is truly him, given that we cannot know with precision where his action ends and our own evil begins. This is why the Church is so prudent and so rigorous in performing exorcism, unlike what happens, unfortunately, in certain films!”. “It is in the life of the saints that the devil is forced to come out into the open, to place himself ‘against the light’, Francis remarked: “All the saints, all the great believers, some more, some less, testify to their struggle with this obscure reality, and one cannot honestly assume that they were all deluded or mere victims of the prejudices of their time.”
“Modern technology, besides the many positive resources that are to be appreciated, offers also countless means to ‘give an opportunity to the devil’, and many fall in the trap”,
Francis’ warning cry: “Think of online pornography, behind which there is a flourishing market: we all know this. It is the devil at work, there. And this is a very widespread phenomenon, which Christians should beware of and strongly reject.”
“Any smartphone has access to this brutality, to this language of the devil: online pornography”,
he added off-text. “Awareness of the action of the devil in history should not discourage us”, Francis said in his concluding words: “The final thought must be, also in this case, of trust and security: ‘I am with the Lord, be gone’. Christ overcame the devil and gave us the Holy Spirit to make His victory our own. The very action of the enemy can turn to our advantage, if with God’s help we make it serve our purification” “Beware, the devil is astute – but we Christians, with God’s grace, are more astute than him”, Francis concluded.
