Rome, July 1st, 2019
The Son of God was revealed (became incarnate) to destroy the works of the devil
Directory of Spirituality, 32
Dear Fathers, Brothers, Seminarians, and Novices,
“We must restore entirely all things in Christ, for he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet, and thus take possession of the entire universe for Christ, summing up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth.”
This paragraph of our Constitutions, while speaking of a specific responsibility to restore all things by making Christ reign, also tells us of the inevitable confrontation with his enemies that this task brings with it.
Who are these enemies?
The Word of God teaches us that they are those who deny that the Word has taken human flesh: every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh belongs to God, and every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus does not belong to God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist that, as you heard, is to come, but in fact is already in the world.
Given then, that “not only are we to live Christ’s life looking for God in everything, but we are to spread that life to others, and to endow the cultures of man with Christ’s life in order to elevate him,” but without being unaware that in this undertaking we live together with the enemy – like the wheat and the weeds – that is already in the world, I wanted in this circular letter to develop the splendid fact that Christ, by His death and resurrection, has definitively defeated all His enemies. That is to say, “they have no other expectation than the final breaking of their power and their eternal damnation.” Since it was precisely for this the Son of God became incarnate, to destroy the works of the devil.
1. Principalities and Powers
It is a fact that from the dawn of Christianity, the question of the powers of Satan and his battle against God and against what is of God has been present in revelation and in Christian reflection. Indeed, almost all the writings of the New Testament mention these powers that here, according to the expression of the Apostle Paul, we sum up with the words, principalities and powers.
Clearly and unequivocally, this reality has been frequently and triumphantly mentioned not only by Christ, but also by the Apostles, and so we can say that “it forms an essential part of the teachings of the apostles” in the New Testament. This in such a way that to not recognize the existence of these principalities and powers is to go against a part of the essential apostolic preaching. What is more, the devil “knows that he is never so strong as when men believe that he does not exist.”
Because the denial of the existence of the devil tends towards the absolute denial of the supernatural order.
“He who denies the reality of the Incarnation is necessarily lead to deny the reality of evil. For example, Docetism lead to fideism, and, denying the preambles of the faith, makes a pure fantasy of Redemption.
“In this way they make the mystery of lawlessness apparent. Or they scorn it, making men think that it is only to scare them and to subjugate those who speak of it. But the reality is there, and [the demons and their followers] carry on with their plans. And so, they deny responsible sex in the name of gender and abuse sex without responsibility. They abstain from wine, replace meat with vegetables, but they promote anti-natalism and contraception… Even more, they make the need for the Redemption only apparent even in the temporal order: in politics, economics, social life, culture, education, mass media, iconolatry, sacred music. They deny the reality of Satan, making it another case of Docetism. They do the same with the Antichrist. They deny him and by doing this, they serve him.
“They deny sin, like liberal Protestants and modernists, who deny that by sin ‘exists the true enmity of God towards men.’ They deny the reality of the fire of hell, or of heaven as a place, after the resurrection of the body. They deny the Social Kingdom of Christ the King. They use the love of God to destroy God’s justice. They deny the ‘terrible’ of human existence. They deny the reality of the fire of the final conflagration: waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved in flames and the elements melted by fire… They make the Code of Canon Law only apparent. They deny the wickedness of mortal sin, and so on and so forth to the point of saying that man himself is only an appearance, and the same with the sacraments, and that, although the Church is ‘the universal sacrament of salvation,’ it is only an apparent salvation…”
The fact is that many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh; such is the deceitful one and the Antichrist. And Satan’s great strategy is to try to make us not believe in his existence. Saint Faustina pointed it out to us after her vision of hell: “I noticed one thing: that most of the souls there are those who disbelieved that there is a hell.”
The New Testament shows us in at least 35 ways what these principalities and powers are. Each time it reveals some aspect of their nature, way of acting, abundance, power and place.
Saint John Paul II taught: “We find many other names that describe his nefarious relations with man: Beelzebub or Belial, unclean spirit, tempter, the evil one, and finally, antichrist. He is compared to a lion, a dragon, and a serpent. The name, devil, is often used to name him, which means ‘to cause destruction, to divide, to slander, to deceive.’ And to tell the truth, from the beginning, this has all happened through the work of the evil spirit who is presented in Sacred Scripture as a person, though it is stated that he is not alone: there are many of us, the devils cried to Jesus in the region of the Gerasenes; the devil and his angels, said Jesus in the description of the final judgment.”
However many of these spirits there are, it must be said that all of them correspond to the innumerable forces of Satan, that they are subordinated to him and work to deploy his power.
From his names, we can deduce that Satan – and his followers – have various characteristics.
His essential abode is in the human “heaven”. That is, as the prince of this world that he is, his desire is to make us believe that there is no other world and so to imprison man in immanence.
They are against God: in the letter of Jude, we read that the angels […] did not keep to their own domain but deserted their proper dwelling. This means that, even though they owe, before and after, their power to God, they have become independent and autonomous, and even more, egocentric and self-willed. Therefore, they now use their power as though it were their own: they are – or pretend to be – autonomous. Their nature is rebellion and autonomy, proclaimed in that non serviam of their insurrection against God. They seek to affirm their power, to dominate, and that as an autonomous power.
Their action is to take possession of the world and of man, to manifest in them and through them their nature of power. “According to Sacred Scripture, and especially the New Testament, the dominion and influence of Satan and of the other evil spirits extends to the whole world. […] Satan’s action consists above all in tempting men to evil, influencing their imagination and their superior faculties in order to orient them away from God’s law.”
“In certain cases, the evil spirit is even able to exercise his influence not just over material things, but also over man’s body, which is why we hear speak of ‘diabolic possession.’ It is not always easy to discern the preternatural in these cases, neither does the Church easily consent to or second the tendency to attribute many direct actions or interventions to the devil; but, in line with this principle, it cannot be denied that, in his desire to harm and lead to evil, Satan is able to achieve this extreme manifestation of his superiority.”
They also take possession of nature in order to imprint in it their own ominous “influence,” thereby ensuring that the pagans also fall under the perverted law that spells death.
They even take possession of history: in as much as certain historical institutions and situations have thus become the place and location, means and instruments of those powers. For example, Saint Paul affirms that Satan twice hindered him from visiting the community of Thessalonica in order to console them in their distress: We decided to go to you—I, Paul, not only once but more than once—yet Satan thwarted us. The combination of certain circumstances and relationships seem here to be caused satanically. Satan acts in and through them.
“The whole world is under the power of the evil one. These words also allude to the presence of Satan in the history of humanity, a presence that becomes stronger as man and society get further and further away from God. The influence of the evil spirit can ‘hide itself’ in a most profound and effective way: to go unnoticed is in his ‘interests’. Satan’s shrewdness in the world is to induce men to deny his existence in the name of rationalism and of any other system of thought that seeks any excuse to not admit the work of the devil.” That is why we can say that “penetrating the world and the circumstances of human life in order to exercise their power through them, they thereby conceal themselves in the world and in the everyday life of mankind. They withdraw from sight into the men, elements and institutions through which they make their power felt. To seem not to appear is part of their essence.”
The Ven. Archbishop Fulton Sheen, in a radio message in 1947, warns us of the same thing as Saint John Paul II, about the ability of the evil spirit to “hide himself” and pass unnoticed. Fulton Sheen said: “Our Lord tells us that he will be so much like Himself, that he would deceive even the elect […] He will come disguised as the Great Humanitarian; he will talk peace, prosperity and plenty not as means to lead us to God, but as ends in themselves. He will write books on the new idea of God to suit the way people live; induce faith in astrology so as to make not the will but the stars responsible for sins; he will explain guilt away psychologically as inhibited eroticism, make men shrink in shame if their fellowmen say they are not broadminded and liberal; he will be so broadminded as to identify tolerance with indifference to right and wrong, truth and error; he will spread the lie that men will never be better until they make society better and thus have selfishness to provide fuel for the next revolution; he will foster science but only to have armament makers use one marvel of science to destroy another; he will foster more divorces under the disguise that another partner is “vital”; he will increase love for love and decrease love for person; he will invoke religion to destroy religion; he will even speak of Christ and say that He was the greatest man who ever lived; his mission he will say will be to liberate men from the servitudes of superstition and Fascism: which he will never define. […] In the midst of all his seeming love for humanity and his glib talk of freedom and equality, he will have one great secret which he will tell to no one; he will not believe in God. Because his religion will be brotherhood without the fatherhood of God…”
It sounds familiar, does it not? As an illustration, I want to mention the statistics recorded by the American company, the Pew Research Center last October, 2018: 33% of Catholics in the USA believe in astrology, 36% believe in reincarnation, and 46% believe in paranormal or sensitive powers (psychics). What is more, 76% of Catholics in this country want the Church to allow birth control, 61% want the Church to allow cohabitating Catholics to receive Communion, 62% want the Church to allow divorced Catholics who remarry without getting an annulment to receive Communion, and 46% want the Church to recognize the marriages of gay and lesbian couples.
Not even Christian preaching escapes the power of the evil one. The clear warning of Apostle to the Gentiles is useful here: False apostles, deceitful workers, masquerade as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan masquerades as an angel of light. So it is not strange that his ministers also masquerade as ministers of righteousness. And in his First Letter to Timothy we read: The Spirit explicitly says that in the last times some will turn away from the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and demonic instructions. The Apostle Saint John issues a similar warning about false Christian prophets who are inspired by the spirit of the Antichrist: Do not trust every spirit. Because wisdom of this kind […] is earthly, unspiritual, demonic, opposed to the wisdom from above. “Even Christian doctrine can be exploited by the evil spirit.”
What is more, these principalities and powers show themselves as masters of the culture of death, of temptation, of sin, of lies: accusers of men. Saint John Paul II explained: “Satan is the destroyer of the supernatural life that, from the beginning, God had implanted in him and in the creatures made in the image of God: the other pure spirits and men. Satan wants to destroy life according to truth, life in the fullness of the good, the supernatural life of grace and love.”
All these activities, as I see it, have been described very well by the Argentinian philosopher, Dr. Alberto Caturelli: “Sin has its origin in Satan, and as evil has no nature, it is the negation of being, that is to say, the radical lie; with sin he began to operate negativity in history, which, like a second nature, acts like an anti-Yahweh or anti-Creator, since he tries to negate being. Therefore, in the devil there is no truth and he wants to exchange the truth of God for a lie; and if we think that the truth of a being is its conformity with the divine idea, Satan wants to change this Idea into its opposite: beauty into ugliness, truth into lies, goodness into evil, light into darkness, and thus being into nothingness: therefore, it means an inversion of the transcendentals, a kind of ontological dementia that put his irrepressible tendency to non-being into the depths of history. And as the rule of all truth is the Word, not only has the devil sinned from the beginning and is the father of lies, but is, for that very reason, verbicidal.
“[…] Satan hates order (which is his opposite) and puts all the radical disorder that he can into everything. […] To the Kingdom of God He opposes his own ‘kingdom’, a kingdom of negativity, whose members are all those who are subjected to him through sin. Whereas the living members of the Mystical Body are united by charity, the devastated members of the satanic anti-Body are ‘added together’ by supernatural hatred. […] And so, he who sinned from the beginning and is a murderer from the beginning, the father of lies (head of the anti-Mystical Body) and mediator of death, is by essence he who takes root in the world. In as much as ‘world’ means the environment of sin where the finite is absolutized and transcendence is denied, he is the prince of this world who impels men to self-destructive evil. Consequently, Satan not only hates transcendence, but all that is sacred; in today’s language, we can say that he is the god of immanence and the god of secularization, given that, as the Adversary, he must make of the ‘age’, of the ‘world’, an absolute that is not tied to God, but rather is self-sufficient. In this sense, without any doubt, we must say that the devil leads to and suggests total immanentism of life, self-sufficient secularism, and the desacralization of everything that is.
“As you can see, the world, this world closed in on itself, this age, our age, but in the immanence of itself, constitutes the empire of Satan or the counter-Kingdom that tries to take root definitively in the world. Consistent with all that has been said, Satan, just like he negates Creation (he is the anti-Creator), he wants to negate the transcendental God, resolving all into the immanence of the world. He is the god of total secularity, of absolute desacralization, and because of this, like a subterranean and devastating force, he tries on one hand to suffocate all supernaturally good works, and on the other, to lead man to annihilation.”
2. Jesus Christ and the evil powers
An untiring and uninterrupted battle against the essence of evil went on throughout our Lord’s life. This battle of Jesus’ against the powerful nature of evil is shown in the numerous accounts of driving out demons.
Jesus orders the demons to go out and they obey Him. What is there about His word? For with authority and power He commands the unclean spirits, and they come out. It is the word of the power of God that Jesus uses in His word.
And so, the Incarnate Word in His obedience to the Father, which means at the same time His abnegation for men, showed completely the basis of the power that made the demons yield. Because what overcame the spirit of self-glory was the same sacrificial love that led Jesus to die on the cross. There, the power of love that is obedient to God arrived at its fullness, which deprives the demons of their power, of their alleged autonomous power that is disobedient by essence. There, in the passion and death of Jesus Christ, prepared by the demons and by men instigated by them, Satan’s prolonged tyranny was rendered impotent by obedient love. Dying with the body of Christ on the cross is all the self-righteousness of men, and the spirit of self-glory that possesses them. On Jesus’ cross, the power of the principalities was shattered by the unbreakable power of love.
And this love of Christ did not end with His death, because, in fact, He rose from the dead, where He had descended. In this way the Father exalted Him far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age but also in the one to come. Therefore, we can affirm that every spirit of autonomous power died in Jesus Christ and that in Jesus Christ, obedient to God – risen from among the dead, ascended to heaven, and seated at the right hand of God – God’s power triumphs over all evil powers.
Consequently, with all certainty we can assert – and this has particular importance as much for each one of us as for all as members of the Institute – that there is no power that can do anything against God and against God’s works. Because all autonomous power trembles before God. This implies that we should not “make smaller” or “change” or “reduce” our ideals, and much less give in before any other power that is not Christ come in the flesh. Christ’s promise is involved here, and our salvation is at stake: Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father.
This is such that even if we were to live during the times of the Antichrist, and then with greater reason, we should never forget that our ideal and all our missionary and apostolic work should be directed towards Christ reigning. To act differently would be a clear sign of a certain apostasy in faith, because it would be to forget that he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet, as Saint Paul teaches.
“As a matter of fact, the faith of the Church teaches us that the power of Satan is not infinite. He is only a creature, powerful because he is a pure spirit, but always a creature, with the limits of a creature, subordinated to the will and dominion of God. If Satan works in the world out of hatred for God and His Kingdom, this is allowed by Divine Providence, which directs human and world history with power and goodness. If Satan’s action certainly causes a lot of damage – of a spiritual and indirectly even of a physical nature – to individuals and to society, he cannot, however, nullify the definitive finality to which man and all creation tend: the good. He cannot hinder the building of the Kingdom of God in which, in the end, will be the full implementation of the Father’s justice and love towards the creatures eternally ‘predestined’ in the Son-Word, Jesus Christ. Even more, we can say with Saint Paul, that the work of the evil one works for good and is useful for building the glory of the chosen.”
“Of course, for the time being, the triumph of the crucified, risen and glorified Jesus Christ over the principalities is hidden, and in that sense it is not yet final as far as the world is concerned. The overthrow of the principalities and of their master, and the breaking of their power will be revealed, finally for mankind at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, at his appearance in majesty at the end of time.
Here it is worth noting that This implies that, until that moment, the principalities can always be driven from the place which Jesus Christ occupies on this earth as well, from the body of Christ, which is the Church; and they have no choice but to yield. It is thus not to be supposed that the power of the principalities has been broken only provisionally by Jesus Christ, and that this will not be made manifest until His Second Corning, so that as far as the present time is concerned, nothing has actually changed. There has been a change, and it is decisive. Victory has been gained, and the principalities have been conquered. The victory has been gained by God in Jesus Christ for our sake. During this time, however, we must indeed be on the side of Jesus Christ and continue his victory. We must even now live from this victory in Him who has defeated the principalities.”
This is the great certitude of the Christian faith: the ruler of this world has been condemned. The Son of God was revealed to destroy the works of the devil. Therefore, Christ crucified and risen has shown Himself to be the “stronger one” who has defeated the “strong man,” the devil, and has dethroned him.
“Upon this solid base we must build our spirituality: solidified by trials, purified by tribulations, perfected by persecutions, and unshakable in the face of all the violent furies of hell, even if we must live in the time of the Antichrist. We follow the One who, today as yesterday, has all power. Therefore, there is no room for fear. Nothing can make us reject the revealed truth and love of Christ.” We can and must defend ourselves against the impotent powers of evil. What is more: “we need religious who are not only convinced that by the grace of God they have the power to resist the devil, but also are able to exorcise him.”
We cannot, however, deny the virulence of the evil spirit, fighting, in a certain sense, always more violently. This is due, according to Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, to the fact that “the devil, knowing that he has but little time, and now less than ever, to destroy souls, will every day redouble his efforts and his combats.” H. Schlier describes this as the “rage” and the “violence” of the evil powers, that grows when they perceive that because of their condition of creature, they cannot escape the universal causality of God… and even more, that in their battle and hatred against God and against what is God’s, they contribute, in the end, to the highest ends for which God in His Providence allows them to act, letting the wheat and the weeds grow together until the end of time. This is why until the end of times this fury and this violence increase.
Therefore, it becomes urgently necessary to follow the paternal and urgent warning of Saint Paul to the Ephesians: Finally, draw your strength from the Lord and from his mighty power. Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the devil. For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens. Therefore, put on the armor of God, that you may be able to resist on the evil day and, having done everything, to hold your ground. So stand fast with your loins girded in truth, clothed with righteousness as a breastplate, and your feet shod in readiness for the gospel of peace. In all circumstances, hold faith as a shield, to quench all [the] flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, with all prayer and supplication. Always knowing that the battle will end with the definitive victory of the good.
This putting on the armor of God is nothing else than relying on and clothing oneself with truth, justice, peace, hope, the Word of God, and among them, like a permanent foundation, faith, which is the shield to repel the fiery darts of the evil one, and also to smother and quench their flame.
This is why our proper law strongly exhorts us to ask for “a faith full of promptness to reject error even perceived through the weakest appearances, full of ardent zeal to spread the faith, but without bitterness and harshness; a penetrating faith that sees all things by the light of revelation – sub specie aeternitatis, that elevates the soul to the supernatural plans of God and allows us to consider ourselves “worthy of all afflictions”; an heroic faith – like the faith of the saints of the Old Testament – that triumphs over the world and over evil; that is able to build great things; that illuminates life and gives it meaning; one that strengthens, encourages, comforts, and casts out fear.”
And this because the struggle against the devil has its fundamental basis in each one of us. Therefore, each of us should resist and drive out the evil spirit, emphatically rejecting him while strengthening Christ’s spirit in himself.
“The New Testament repeatedly declares that this struggle against the principalities is an infinitely hard struggle because it is also a fight against sin. If justice, truth, peace and salvation generally, are to wrestle successfully with injustice, falsehood, unrest and havoc – which, since Adam have determined the course of the world because of the alliance between the principalities and sin – this will come about only through sacrifices, and finally through the sacrifice for which the sacrifice of Christ was the model. In every little sacrifice by which I yield to the justice and truth which have been manifested again in Christ, I imitate that model. The enemy is powerless against this sacrifice, for he has no foothold or support in it for his self-willed nature. He is passed over in this sacrifice as though he no longer existed, and indeed he is no more for the man who accepts sacrifice for the sake of God.”
This is the example that we have received from the martyrs of all times. In the eyes of this world they are evidently defeated; but this is their victory. Through their sacrifice they won hearts, communities, entire cities, where the power of the devil is no more, and the reign of Christ began.
Even more: for this victory over the principalities that begins in faith, progresses through good works, and reaches its consummation in suffering with Christ, prayer is of utmost importance. The Incarnate Word Himself gave us an example when he taught us to ask: deliver us from the evil one and when he prayed to His Father for his disciples saying: keep them from the evil one.
Every Tuesday when we pray Night Prayer, we read the exhortation of the Apostle Peter: Stay sober and alert. Your opponent the devil is prowling like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, solid in your faith. From this we can deduce:
Sobriety, which “here means freedom from illusions. Such sobriety is aware of the devil and his principalities and of the state of temptation and suffering created by him in this world; but this sobriety is not intimidated by the devil nor by the menace of the world under his domination.”
Watchfulness “guards against the snares of this spirit; it is calmly aware of what is really happening in this world.”
For all that has been said, continual spiritual discernment is of utmost importance in order to accept and follow the motions of the Holy Spirit and to reject those of the evil spirit. Since “it is only a clear and sharp insight which God grants us that can tell the difference, and dispel the mist which the evil spirit deliberately creates.”
3. One irreconcilable enmity
But I would like to add one more means to resist these principalities and powers. It is a means that we have close at hand and we should increasingly cling to it. It is a most powerful means: it is devotion to Mary Most Holy.
Because as Saint Louis-Marie explains: “God has never made or formed but one enmity; but it is an irreconcilable one, which shall endure and develop even to the end. It is between Mary, His worthy Mother, and the devil, between the children and servants of the Blessed Virgin and the children and instruments of Lucifer. [Because] the most terrible of all the enemies which God has set up against the devil is His holy Mother, Mary.”
This being the case, our Purest Mother has “so much industry in unveiling the malice of that old serpent, with so much power to conquer, to overthrow, and to crush that proud impious rebel, that he fears her not only more than all Angels and men, but in some sense more than God Himself.”
The Saint calls our attention to the fact that “God has not only set an enmity but enmities, not simply between Mary and the devil, but between the race of the holy Virgin and the race of the devil; that is to say, God has set enmities, antipathies, and secret hatreds between the true children and the servants of Mary, and the children and servants of the devil. There is no love between them; they have no inward correspondence with each other.
“The children of Belial, the slaves of Satan, the friends of the world (for it is the same thing), have always up to this time persecuted those who belong to our Blessed Lady, and will in the future persecute them more than ever […]. But the humble Mary will always have the victory over that proud spirit, and so great a victory that she will go the length of crushing his head, where his pride dwells. She will always counterwork his infernal malice and dissipate his diabolical counsels, and will guarantee even to the end of time her faithful servants from his cruel claw.
“But the power of Mary over all the devils will especially break out in the latter times, when Satan will lay his snares against her heel; that is to say, her humble slaves and her poor children, whom she will raise up to make war against him. They shall be little and poor in the world’s esteem, and abased before all, like the heel, trodden underfoot and persecuted as the heel is by the other members of the body. But in return for this, they shall be rich in the grace of God, which Mary shall distribute to them abundantly. They shall be great and exalted before God in sanctity, superior to all other creatures by their animated zeal, and leaning so strongly on the divine succor, that, with the humility of their heel, in union with Mary, they shall crush the head of the devil, and cause Jesus Christ to triumph.”
* * * * *
Dear all:
The apparently unstoppable advance of the enemy is a grave reality in the world, seen in the rise of the lie, of new heresies, of terrorism, of wars, in the perversion that some wield over the innocent, etc. It is obvious that we cannot be exempt from this advance, and that we must be conscious and prepared, since these snares are present and will perhaps be even more vehemently present if we are faithful, as always happens in the lives of the saints.
Nevertheless, the Incarnate Word continues to say to us: Go […], behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves. Our Lord insists: Go…, alerting us to the dangers that we will face. But at the same time He assures us that if we persevere we shall also reign with Him; because He put all things beneath His feet. Therefore, the triumph is from God and “His triumph is our triumph, His victory is our victory,” and a serene joy should spring from this.
We cannot be ignorant of the fact that “there will come a time when men will go astray from the truth and will delight in iniquity, a time in which the majority will not have true faith in Jesus Christ. The certainty that this universal apostasy will happen one day must prevent us from joining the triumphant march of any movement or ideology that is set apart from Christ, although it may seem that the whole world is following it. We must always follow Christ, and even though the enemies seem to be in the majority, we must say: ‘We are surrounded everywhere, don’t let them escape.’”
The truth is, “we are defenseless prophets; we only have spiritual weapons.” But it is also true that Christ is God, and is King, and is Judge, and that when we are weak, then we are strong.” And it is no more difficult for the Lord to grant victory by means of a few than it is by means of many, and generally He grants it by means of a few.
Therefore, may we not be merely spectators, may we take an active part in this battle because, as our Lord said: Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. And so the exhortation of the prophet is also valid for us: Hear me, you who know justice, you people who have my teaching at heart: do not fear the reproach of others; remain firm at their reviling. They shall be like a garment eaten by moths, like wool consumed by grubs; but my victory shall remain forever, my salvation, for all generations.
In this daily fight, may we not forget that beautiful phrase of Saint Vincent Ferrer that reminds us, “[…] My blessed Mother is yours to be your attentive and pious Mother; the earth is yours for you to serve Me on it, the heavens are yours because you will come to them; the devils and hell are yours, because you will humiliate them as slaves in prison.”
May the Most Blessed Virgin, Queen of all creation, bless and protect you always.
Sending you a big hug.
In the Incarnate Word,
Fr. Gustavo Nieto, IVE
