The Fall of Man and every sin that flows from it is founded upon a single lie from the mouth of the Serpent, “You shall not die… you shall be like God.” Satan, the Father of Lies, has thus enslaved all men and drives them on the road of perdition. By our sin we further the reign of Satan and spread his empire of deceit. As children of God by grace, we are called to reject this slavery to sin and reflect the image of Our Lord Jesus Christ who is Light and Truth.
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
In the Garden of Eden the devil enlisted man in his rebellion against God by using tricks and lies. Thanks to his underhanded ruse, he achieved his goal of seducing man in order to enslave him.
Satan hates the truth. He takes pleasure in the darkness of his lies. His title of “Father of lies” is truly deserved.
Man should have learned a lesson from this first diabolic attack and moved forever away from that lie that is nothing less than a sacrilegious impiety towards God. But, unfortunately, man has not done so. Wounded by this first sin, man is now attracted by evil and, in turn, he uses lies as weapons to resist authority and to thwart his fellow men.
Even worse, this habit is quickly acquired. From an early age, the child lies to escape his parents’ authority and sometimes, even without noticing it, he makes his own one of the very first words of Adam with God: “It wasn’t me” – a feeble excuse that, in fact, only serves to accuse the one who uses it.
If it becomes a habit, this lie of the child is tragic because it breaks the current of affection that binds him to his parents, as the first lie broke the bond of affection between God and His children. However, this emotional bond is the basis of all true education. Once broken, the parents’ influence is reduced because their opinions and their examples are subtly repelled by an invisible but real wall that surrounds the child’s soul.
Lying is a serious act, leading us along the tortuous path traced by the devil. This path resembles a cobweb of lies in which man finds himself ensnared and soon enslaved.
Indeed, with his lies, the liar builds something resembling the Tower of Babel. One lie calls for another, which is in turn built upon by a third and the infernal cycle becomes unstoppable. At the top of this tower, the liar is like a tightrope walker contorting himself to maintain balance. In order not to fail in the face of his accumulating lies, he ends up taking the lie as the truth. In other words: to justify himself, he is forced to say what is false is true and he is forced to deaden his conscience to what he is doing.
This justification is the denial of the principle of reality: what is, is. Our Lord Jesus Christ taught it to us in other, clear words that have the advantage of denouncing the paternity of lies: “Let your yes be yes, the rest is from the devil” (Mt 5:37).
A man who has reached this ultimate point of lies does not simply lie to others; he lies to himself by living in a terrible illusion, foreign to reality. Even worse, he lies to God by claiming, in his madness, to be equal to Him, deciding on his own what is true or false.
A lie destroys man in his relation to God, others and himself; it is a worm that devours man from within. Incapable of distinguishing truth from falsity, and thus incapable of finding God in daily life, the liar already lives in the antechamber of death.
When man openly mocks God and His laws, the lie spreads its empire. Today, when the satanic doctrines of liberalism triumph, the complaint of the psalmist is more current than ever: “the lies have abundantly spread among the children of men.”
Made children of God by His grace, it is for us, in all our actions, to be the ardent defenders of the truth and always to enter the fray on the side of the truth. In our lives there must be no room for half-truths, which are the part of the devil. In a world darkened by lies, let us be witnesses of the “Light that came into this world to give testimony to the Truth.”
In Christo Sacerdote et Maria.
Fr. Yves le Roux