Be sober and alert; the devil prowls like a roaring lion looking for whom he may devour. The devil’s total hatred for God does not only concern Him; it extends also to the soul living in sanctifying grace. In his malice and envy, Satan works tirelessly to lead holy souls astray and into the pit of eternal misery. Against this adversary, we place all our hope in the Cross of Christ, the Cross that conquers for all time.
March 1st, 2018.
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
God is liberal. When His creatures oppose His Majesty by using the gifts He has given them, He restores order but He does not take away the fruit of His first liberality. What God gives is given for ever. He never repents of His gifts.
Thus, Lucifer has retained the use of his natural gifts after his fall, a fall due to the fascination with the power of his intelligence. In his foolish pride, he believed that he could do without God and refuse His plan. His own forces appeared to him sufficient to penetrate into the divine intimacy. By a justjudgment of God, he was precipitated into hell, where he lives in hate.
Moved by hate, he does not cease bringing to hell a multitude of souls. He is the “roaring lion unceasingly turning around its prey, seeking to devour it” as St. Peter describes him.
This hatred is not surprising. Like iron attracted by a magnet, the devil is attracted by God… Whom he can no longer reach and against Whom he has therefore devel- oped a total hatred. This mixture of fundamental attraction and repulsion is the very principle of his torment.
His hatred of God extends to souls in the state of grace. He wants to remove this incandescent divine Presence which is the center of the faithful soul and which causes him an unbearable pain.
Moreover, he knows that this soul is called to replace him for all eternity in the bosom of God. He cannot endure the idea that such frail beings have been called to be the ministers of eternal adoration. Thus his hatred, magnified by his jealousy, knows no limits. He pounces on the faithful soul as the lion on its prey.
But he does this in a cunning way, disguised.
His supreme weapon is, indeed, knowing how to make himself forgotten. He ad- vances disguised and plays, often with impunity, a paramount role behind the scenes in the events of the world.
Nowadays, he has woven his web by means of the perverse doctrine of Natural- ism, which denies any supernatural reality, and by the coarser doctrine of Materialism, which leads man to the unrestrained seeking of pleasure. Hedonism is a powerful tsunami that destroys in man any inclination to consider the essential questions of exist- ence and to live by faith.
This subtle attack reveals the satanic intelligence. The devil is careful not to attack the faith directly, even if its destruction is his ultimate objective.
He sets the trap of materialistic naturalism, knowing that it will catch us by irre- mediably destroying in us the spirit of faith.
Without the spirit of faith, the faith weakens and dies, choked by the lack of an atmosphere allowing it to develop.
Satan knows all too well that a man led by the spirit of faith keeps his soul vigi- lant, always ready to reply intelligently against those deadly attacks, knowing how to discover and reject them.
It is time to wake up and engage ourselves in the combat that Christ, like a giant – as the Psalm calls Him – was the first to wage against the devil. He has overcome by His Cross. There is no other way, no other combat, no other victory.
We enter into Passiontide, which is the heart of Lent. This is the time to make ours the words of the liturgy: Ave Crux Spes unica. Since our hope is in the Cross of Christ, let us receive it and use it against the attacks of the devil.
In Christo Sacerdote et Maria.
Fr. le Roux