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Smoke of Satan in the Church – Part 5

For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially toward you, with the simplicity and sincerity of God, [and] not by human wisdom but by the grace of God. For we write you nothing but what you can read and understand, and I hope that you will understand completely. (Corinthians 1:12-13) 

On the evening of Thursday, 29 June 1972, the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, in the presence of a considerable multitude of the faithful coming from every part of the world, the Holy Father celebrated the Mass and the beginning of the tenth year of his Pontificate as the successor of Saint Peter.

In His Homily referring to the situation of the Church today, the Holy Father affirms that, “from some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God.”

There is a story about a president of some country, who, when presented with new legislation would go to the janitor of his presidential palace and ask him for his opinion. Only if the document was simple enough and sensible enough that janitor could understand it, would the president sign it.

St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians is pointing to importance of simplicity “for we write you nothing but what you can read and understand”.

Keeping it simple

Simplicity and clarity is extremely important in avoiding mistakes and confusions. For example, in the Syllabus of Errors issued by the Holy See under Blessed Pope Pius IX, among listed errors we find socialism. Let us take the simplest definition of socialism we could find on the internet: “socialism is a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole”, and simplified it by replacing means of production, distribution, and exchange with one-word economy ,and words community as a whole with government, we can make it really simple, socialism is government interference in the economy.  Simplification allows us to avoid the traps of the devil and opposes him. In example of socialism simplification help us to follow a Syllabus of Errors, encyclicals, Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII, and Mater et Magistra, by St. John XXIII, which are saying that any such interference must be opposed by the Catholic Church and it is a big “No” for Catholics, who are bound by conscience to accept the teachings contained in these documents.

Once the devil said to St. John Vianney; Why dost thou preach so simply? That also makes thee pass for an ignorant man. Why not preach in the big style, as they do in towns?

If the devil doesn’t like simplicity then simplicity must be good. Sadly, in today’s culture “keep it simple” is not popular any longer.

Keeping it Simple – in order to build strong foundation of faith.

“There has been a running argument that has divided the church for centuries. Is grace necessary for salvation or is it fully sufficient for salvation? The Roman Catholic Church has said one thing, and the reformed church has had a different answer.” *

The opinion that the grace of God is sufficient for salvation is popular among Protestants, but it has also been embraced by many Catholics, living their lives in the same spirit.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, part three teaches: Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life. 1996

The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism. It is in us the source of the work of sanctification: 1999

A short consultation with a young, freshly confirmed catholic on those paragraphs showed the need to place them in the proper context with a simplification. In order to make it simple we have to establish and reveal the reality we are living in, hidden under the veil of everyday events.

From the book of Genesis we learn that God created everything starting with heavens and earth. God created mankind in his image. God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. (Genesis 1;28) and The LORD God formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each living creature was then its name. (Genesis 2;19)

From these short passages we can safely conclude that world was created for man.

Only God can create something from nothing. We may think that we are creating new things: a new car, airplane, computer etc. We may think that by burning a piece of paper we are making it disappear, but we are just changing its form. In reality we are only operating within God’s creation.

God gives each man a life, soul, guardian angel, body, brain, talents, understanding, everything necessary, and maintains man’s place in time and space. Because we are a creation of God, and everything comes from God, we deserve nothing, and we owe God gratitude, love and service in return. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, is correctly saying in point 1996 that: Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call, and It is in us the source of the work of sanctification. (1999)

According to St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica) and many Fathers of the Church it is likely that at the same time as corporeal creatures, God created angels. During the process of creation Lucifer and angels following him rebelled against God. Some say that Lucifer, the greatest of angels, proclaimed himself equal to God, others that he rebelled because he didn’t want to serve God by serving man, a creature inferior to angels in every aspect. Other claim that the prospective incarnation of Our Lord Jesus, God becoming man, caused this revolt. It is not important to us which of those versions is correct. What is important is that this started a never-ending war. It is never-ending because angels, human souls, and evil spirits do not expire, they will live forever. This revolt resulted in Lucifer and the fallen angels being thrown out of heaven. We may assume that this rebellion caused God to provide a simple challenge, a test for the first people Adam and Eve, and tempted by Satan (snake) they failed it. Because of those events today the Catholic Church is divided into Triumphant (Heaven), Suffering (Purgatory), and Militant (Earth). The Devil is powerless against God and so takes revenge on mankind, we are his target. We people on earth are on frontier of this war. That is why Catholics receiving the sacrament of confirmation become soldiers of Christ.

Grace is a participation in the life of God, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Since we are placed at the front line of the war against evil forces, then participation in the life of God is our participation in this conflict. In this fight man has two choices, either serve God or the devil. There is no neutral option.

Some information about the realities of this war are revealed to us in the visions of Saint Macarius of Alexandria who saw demons assailing the hermits at prayer. They put their fingers into the mouths of some and made them yawn. They closed the eyes of others and walked upon them with contempt when they fell asleep. They placed vain and sensual images before many of the brethren, and then mocked those who were captivated by them. None vanquished the devils effectively save those who by constant vigilance repelled them at once.

God gives man life, and the necessary tools in the Catholic Church to successfully pass this earthly test, some of us are called to service as a priest, monk, others as a father, mother, etc. We all are called, but it up to us to answer this call. By opening ourselves to this call and through our service we become children of God, participants of the divine nature and of eternal life. (1996)

Let us summarize and simplify this.

We are in the middle of the war between good and evil forces, in order to save our souls, we have to participate in this war on God’s side, by doing His will.**  We are no match against our enemy alone, but with God’s Grace, God’s help, we will prevail, like many saints before did.

O most blessed grace that makest the poor in spirit rich in virtues, and renderest him who is rich in many things humble in spirit, come Thou, descend upon me, fill me early with Thy consolation, lest my soul fail through weariness and drought of mind. I beseech thee, O Lord, that I may find grace in Thy sight, for Thy grace is sufficient for me, when I obtain not those things which Nature longeth for. If I be tempted and vexed with many tribulations, I will fear no evil, while Thy grace remaineth with me. This alone is my strength, this bringeth me counsel and help. It is more powerful than all enemies, and wiser than all the wise men in the world.  It is the mistress of truth, the teacher of discipline, the light of the heart, the solace of anxiety, the banisher of sorrow, the deliverer from fear, the nurse of devotion, the drawer forth of tears. What am I without it, save a dry tree, a useless branch, worthy to be cast away! “Let Thy grace, therefore, O Lord, always prevent and follow me, and make me continually given to all good works, through Jesus Christ, Thy Son. Amen.” (Imitation of Christ: Book 3 By Thomas a Kempis)

Suggesting that grace alone without our faith and participation in God’s plan, is fully sufficient for salvation is foolish and dangerous, it promotes an easy going and struggle free approach to life. No wonder that Protestant churches don’t have people fully devoting themselves to God, like Catholic priests, monks or nuns. If the Grace of God by itself is fully sufficient for salvation that means that we don’t need to follow Then Commandments, Holy Scripture and teaching of the Church because “Jesus paid already for our sins.” This creates a false image of God, undermining His justice. It promotes a pursuit for earthly pleasures under the banner “God wants us to be happy,” ignoring the only truth that real happiness is gained through service to God.

In the example of socialism, simplification makes it easy to stay in line with the teachings of the Catholic Church, and to recognize and oppose new traps of the enemy. Government has a monopoly on power and a tendency to abuse it. By meddling in the economy it creates an environment welcoming corruption. Corruption in the economy leads to corruption of hearts and souls. Government by influencing the economy expands its power and size, and for many it is replacing God. Over a hundred fifty years ago Blessed Pius IX and the Popes followed him, guided by Holy Spirit, recognized the dangers of the new reality created as an effect of the industrial revolution, and created guidelines to follow.

Simplifying the correlation between the Grace of God and salvation of a human soul by placing it in the context of spiritual warfare is bringing back the forgotten, or perhaps just ignored, perspective of sacramental life of the Catholic Church. Pious practices and good deeds performed for the glory of God, understood by many as a pointless, are actually armor and weapons against dark, evil forces. Morning and evening prayers, prayers during the day, avoiding the traps of Satan through discipline of mind, heart, speech, and action, healing wounds in the sacrament of penance, gaining powers in Holy Communion, grouping up with others during the Holy Mass and religious events, keeping close contact with God through devotions and mental prayer etc. become necessities on the spiritual battlefield.

Simplification and clarity was missing in the sermon of some priest, who before the recent presidential election tried to explain to his parishioners the criteria, which must be met by candidates for elected office to be acceptable to Catholics. After the Mass he was approached by three different people, each of them thanks him for reinforcing his choice of candidate. Two of them were about to vote for each of the two major party candidates, the third for an independent party candidate.

A lack of clarity is distorting the teachings of the Church.

To be continued.

*http://www.redemptionfellowship.net/grace-is-it-necessary-or-sufficient/

**“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21)

Smoke of Satan in the Church – Part 4

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.  All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:1-5)

On the evening of Thursday, June 29^th, 1972, on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, in the presence of a considerable multitude of the faithful coming from every part of the world, the Holy Father celebrated the Mass and the beginning of the tenth year of his Pontificate as the successor of Saint Peter.

In His Homily referring to the situation of the Church today, the Holy Father affirms that he has a sense that “from some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God.”

The Smoke of the Satan is distorting the teachings of the Church.

On the first of September, 1910 in a Motu Proprio entitled Sacrorum Antistitum Pope Pius X issued the oath against modernism. It mandated that “all clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors, and professors in philosophical-theological seminaries” of the Catholic Church swear to it. This oath against modernism was a reaction to massive changes forced on society by sophisticated elites following the call of poet Ezra Pound to “Make it new!” and guided by philosophers such as Kant and Bergson, Friedrich Nietzsche, political scientists like Karl Marx, and biologist Charles Darwin etc.

Changes in every aspect of life: philosophy, economics, political environments, social structures, sciences, architecture, literature, fashion, music, arts, everyday activities, and religious faith, in order to replace any of its traditional forms.

Philosophers attempted to synthesize the vocabularies, epistemologies, metaphysics and other features of certain modern systems of philosophy with Catholicism in much the same way as the Scholastic order had earlier attempted to synthesize Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy with the Church’s teaching.

Modernism may be described under the following broad headings as a rationalistic approach to the Bible. The rationalism that was characteristic of the Enlightenment took a pro-materialistic view of miracles and of the historicity of biblical narratives. The final overall teaching of modernism is that dogmata (the teachings of the Church, which its members are required to believe) can evolve over time – not only in their expression but also in their substance – rather than remaining the same in substance for all time.

“I don’t fear God, I love God!”

In Sacred Scripture, the Church constantly finds her nourishment and her strength, for she welcomes it not as a human word, “but as what it really is, the word of God.” “In the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children, and talks with them.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, part one- 104)

Everybody who has studied the lives and teachings of the Fathers, Doctors and Saints of the Catholic Church, must admit their enormous respect for Holy Scripture. They recognize the unity of God and God’s word, they know that God’s Word is one with God, and shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us.” The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, “Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal.” (Luke 23:39-41)

In Holy Scripture fear of God, or fear of the Lord appears over a hundred times, the Catholic Church counts fear of the Lord as one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Writing in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Jacques Forget explains that this gift “fills us with a sovereign respect for God, and makes us dread, above all things, to offend Him.”

St. John Vianney for many years guided by fear of the God would recite the words: “My God, make me suffer whatsoever you wish to inflict on me, but grant that I may not fall into hell.”

“I would rather die than go to Hell” was the response of Christian children in the Middle East, asked to convert to Islam by their executioners from ISIS.

Today by many fear of the Lord is describe as “The feeling of amazement before God, who is all-present, and whose friendship we do not want to lose.” Jon Mallon the contributing editor in an article published in Inside the Vatican magazine an April 2006, writes that the “fear” in “fear of the Lord” is often misinterpreted as “servile fear” (the fear of getting in trouble) when it should be understood as “filial fear” – the fear of offending someone whom one loves.

How nice, but there is one problem, God didn’t put in to Holy Scripture that He “likes those who have feelings of amazement” before Him, or experience “filial fear” of Him. He used the simple term: Fear of God. The convicted criminal hanging on the cross next to Our Lord wasn’t talking about losing friendship, or offending someone whom one loves. He was talking about real fear, Fear of the Almighty, All-powerful, creator of the world, the just God, who rewards good and punishes evil.

If we truly believe in God – the creator of everything, then we must recognize that fear comes from God too.

Fear is an extremely important motivator in our everyday life. Fear of pain prevents us from harming ourselves, fear of losing the means to support ourselves motivates us to work, fear of punishment keeps us from trouble, etc.

The Fear of God is the greatest and most beneficial of all fears, because it is based on faith, on believing in God.

In the Lord’s Prayer we are calling to God, as our Father and we are His children. To better comprehend the importance of fearing God we can look at it in the context of the relationship between a parent and child.

From the time of birth the parent will prepare their child for adult life. In this process a caring parent will have to, in one way or another, punish the child for misconduct. Fear of punishment is a motivator for the child to get to know the parent, and to understand them in order to avoid future punishments. The Book of Proverbs 9:10 summarizes it in the words: “The beginning of wisdom is fear of the LORD, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

As fearing a parent is an important part of the process of growing into adulthood, the fear of the LORD is training for wisdom, and humility goes before honors (Proverbs 15:33) is important to grow in faith.

Over the time, when a child recognizes that punishment comes out of the consideration of a loving parent, slowly this fear will turn to admiration and love. One of the forms of the Act of Contrition reflects beautifully this transition:

O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven, and the pains of hell; but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen.

Fear of losing heaven, and the pains of hell is the foundation on which gratitude and love for God is build.

The idea of mercy above justice as propagated today by many, which is supposedly based on the revelations chronicled in the Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul, diminishes the importance of fearing God. But if we read whole diary, we will find under #741 an extremely important message:

Today, I was led by an Angel to the chasms of hell. It is a place of great torture; how awesomely large and extensive it is! The kinds of tortures I saw: the first torture that constitutes hell is the loss of God; the second is perpetual remorse of conscience; the third is that one’s condition will never change;  the fourth is the fire that will penetrate the soul without destroying it – a terrible suffering, since it is purely spiritual fire, lit by God’s anger; the fifth torture is continual darkness and a terrible suffocating smell, and despite the darkness, the devils and the souls of the damned see each other and all the evil, both of others and their own; the sixth torture is the constant company of Satan; the seventh torture is horrible despair, hatred of God, vile words, curses and blasphemies. These are the tortures suffered by all the damned together, but that is not the end of the sufferings. There are special tortures destined for particular souls. These are the torments of the senses. Each soul undergoes terrible and indescribable sufferings, related to the manner in which it has sinned. There are caverns and pits of torture where one form of agony differs from another. I would have died at the very sight of these tortures if the omnipotence of God had not supported me. Let the sinner know that he will be tortured throughout all eternity, in those senses which he made use of to sin.

I am writing this at the command of God, so that no soul may find an excuse by saying there is no hell, or that nobody has ever been there, and so no one can say what it is like.

Tell sinful souls not to be afraid to approach Me; speak to them of My great mercy. (Diary 1396)

In the diary of St. Faustina Our Lord is offering to us mercy in one hand, and condemnation and suffering in hell, in the other. It is a good-cop, bad-cop scenario, combining both negative with positive motivation to guide us towards good.

If we will think about our lives as a constant struggle through salvation, as a spiritual war that we are in the center of, we will reach the conclusion that ignoring, or minimalizing the importance of our Fear of God is a trap of the devil. Lack of fear of God influences our decisions and our actions. Poemen, one of the desert fathers, an early Christian monk living in the deserts of Egypt, noticed the importance of fear of God and expressed it in words, “They smoke out bees in order to steal their honey. So idleness drives the fear of God from the soul, and steals its good works.”

Protestants, by breaking from the Catholic Church, abandoned a lot of Her teachings, and by rejecting the powerful protection of our Holy Mather, the Blessed Virgin Mary, opened themselves to the influence of Satan. His poison entered their churches first.

Lutheran theologian Rudolf Otto coined the term numinous to express the type of fear one has for the Lord.

Anglican C. S. Lewis references the term in many of his writings, but specifically describes it in his book The Problem of Pain and states that fear of God is not a fear that one feels for a tiger, or even a ghost. Rather, the fear of the numinous, as C. S. Lewis describes it, is one filled with awe, in which you “feel wonder and a certain shrinking” or “a sense of inadequacy to cope with such a visitant of or prostration before it”. It is a fear that comes forth out of love for the Lord.

C.S. Lewis is saying that love is first, and fear comes from love. Isn’t this the opposite to what the Book of Proverbs says? Who knows better, C.S. Lewis or God? Fruits of such an approach are visible in many protestant churches: female pastors, recognition and acceptance of the same-sex “marriages,” loose interpretation of Holy Scripture, those are consequences of a lack of Fear of The Lord.

Sadly, the same poison (smoke of Satan) is now infiltrating the Catholic Church and Fear of the Lord is slowly diminishing.

As an effect we may hear Catholics proudly proclaiming;

I know where I am going after dead, I am going to heaven! 

If St. Andrew Avellino said with trembling: “Who knows what will be my lot in the next life? Shall I be saved or damned?” St. Louis Bertrand could not sleep during the night, because of the thought of the uncertainty of being damned or saved, the thought which would suggest itself to him: “Who knows whether thou wilt be lost?”  Padre Pio was working hard for whole his religious life trying to satisfy Gods justice, humbly hoping that if he won’t succeed at least he may plead for mercy.

Then how arrogant and self-righteous a person must be to disregard God, and God’s judgment and proclaim, “I am going to heaven.”

We may hope for it, but the last word belongs to God, our Lord Jesus Christ.

As an effect of the fading of the Fear of God, we are hearing new theories explaining the Gospel. Many Protestants long time ago decided that Blessed Sacrament is only a symbol, and that the consecrated host is not really the body of our Lord Jesus under the veil of bread, ignoring fact that our Lord Himself proclaimed “this is my body”, chronicled in the Gospels of St. Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Saints had extreme respect for Holy Scripture, they would do the private reading of It on their knees. To them words of our Lord from Matthew 4:4 “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God”, were not just a slogan, but reality, and by feeding on those words they gained eternal happiness.

Sadly, today many Catholics view the Bible as a subject of academic discussions and exchanges of opinions. They are falling into the same trap the Protestants have. A perfect example is the famous line; “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” On one of the catholic blogs we are reading;

“In my dealings with people – both Catholic as well as non-Catholic – I’ve heard the question raised many times: Why did Our Lord say those words? Was He abandoned by His Father? Was He doubting His divine mission? Was He rebelling against God? Did He lose hope? Did He lose faith? Every time, the person asking me is absolutely stunned when I tell them the following: Our Lord was quoting Sacred Scripture. Seriously. Every time. It’s one of the most well-known passages from Scripture, and yet apparently a huge number of people have no idea that Our Lord was quoting King David (Psalm 22).”*

By saying that Our Lord is only quoting Psalm 22 we are suggesting that His words have no factual basis, and if they have no factual base the sentence “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” must be structured differently, otherwise it is a lie. But we know that this is exactly what Jesus said from two sources, Gospels by St. Matthew and St. Mark. Is it possible that God, our Lord Jesus, after being beaten, scourged, crowned with thorns, carrying the cross, losing great amount of blood, then being nailed to the cross, with His whole body covered with bruises and wounds, while in enormous pain, on the verge of dead is only quoting Psalm 22? Only a theoretician separated from reality and inspired by Satan could come out with such an idea.

Many may not know and recognize the truth, that there is no greater joy for a human being than feeling the sweet hug of God, and the most painful experience is separation from Him.

The things Jesus did and said were done in fulfillment of over 300 Old Testament prophecies, then isn’t it better to say that our Lord’s cry out to his Father is in fulfillment of Psalm 22, which prophesied that the Messiah would cry out during his suffering on the cross, and His suffering was not limited to physical pain only.

These are only two examples of the smoke of the Satan infiltrating the Catholic Church, as an effect of the fading Fear of God. Each of us can point to other misunderstandings of Holy Scripture. Many may say that those are small insignificant mistakes. To soften steel you need just to heat it up, and let slowly cool down. Likewise with our faith, it is slowly cooled down by such small things.

To be continued.

*http://theradicalcatholic.blogspot.com/2014/09/