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Contents © 2001
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

FEBRUARY 2001 CONFESSIONS

SATAN WANTS ME

The New Year brought with it renewed resolve. A return to relative health allowed me to resume my old practice of ending showers with three Hail Marys under cold water, me silently proclaiming (in the hopes of its one day being true) "Lord, I love you more than my life," just before the water undergoes its shocking shift from hot to cold. ("Life" here refers almost exclusively to the life of the flesh -- food, drink, comfort, physical beauty, sex. And I am pleased (hopefully not proud) to report that I seem to have hit on a routine of daily prayer that I can almost manage -- the morning prayers, Mass readings and meditation from Magnificat, a sort of monthly prayer guide. My mother bought me a subscription -- anything to get her lazy son actually to pray.

Right alongside of this increase in spiritual exercise has come an increase in Satan's interest in me. He tends to leave me alone when I'm not struggling to escape his dominion -- and I do believe in his dominion. He may have been lying when he told Christ that the world was his to give; I don't know. I do know that God let him wreak havoc on His upright servant Job. And the January 9th meditation from Magnificat included this from St. Augustine: "At the time when it was said to the devil, 'You shall eat earth,' it was said to the sinner, 'You are earth, and into earth shall you go.' What is here implied is that the sinner has been handed over as food for the devil." He doesn't like it when his dinner makes a break for it.

I gauge Satan's increased interest by a sharp increase in temptations toward my more familiar sins -- lust, impatience, anxiety and sloth -- plus some less familiar: taking offense, complaining, speaking unkind words, harsh judgement, ill will, detraction, anger. The only benefit from all this is the assurance that I'm doing something right. It is Manichean silliness to think that if God exists, then the devil exists -- as if evil were a necessary part of being. It seems a little less silly to suppose that if the devil exists, then God exists. The devil is not a popular topic from the pulpit these days -- perhaps we don't want to be associated with screaming Fundamentalists, or thought to be ignorant, superstitious peasants. But when we are invited to renew the vows of our baptism, the series of questions still opens with, "Do you reject Satan? And all his works? And all his empty promises?" I like to imitate my father in my response, booming my enthusiastic "Yes!" as if the sheer volume of it could drive Lucifer further away.

My family has always taken the devil seriously, in particular, as a sower of discord. Almost every time we gather, soon after that first happy exchange of greetings, it comes. Just the wrong thing said at just the wrong time, sore spots touched, emotions snowballing, until charity is tossed by the wayside and people are thinking only of their personal wounds. In a family like mine, where theology is often discussed, this must bring him special pleasure. Sinning over God -- fabulous.

It is not always enough for one of us to pull back enough to name names -- to say, "This is an attack from the devil." But it certainly helps. If we said the old St. Michael's prayer a little more often, I imagine that would help as well. I love that prayer. I like the words associated with demonic action: snares, prowl, ruin. The devil is a tricky fellow.

In my office hangs a print of an etching made by Jacques Callot (1592-1635) of The Temptation of St. Anthony. It's something of a poor man's version of the famous Bosch painting -- the demons are more ridiculously ugly than the truly horrifying, though they do cavort in Bosch-like manner, especially with regard to sticking things in each other's bottoms. What I like about Callot's version is that Satan puts in a personal appearance, filling the sky along the top of the picture. His dragon head is turned, not toward the tiny saint in the bottom right-hand corner, but toward the viewer. His eyes gaze balefully outward -- "Here's looking at you, kid." I like to be able to see him.

Of course, you have to be careful with the devil. I don't want to shunt off my personal failings onto him -- my evil is my own. Satan won't be around at the judgement to share the blame. But I don't want to discount his power and influence, either. To ignore him is to let him move unseen, which is exactly where he thrives. I don't want to be cocky with him -- I sympathize with the old tradition of not saying his name, for fear of giving him an inroad. But neither do I want to cower before him -- I believe I have power over him. The trick is not to suppose that the power is my own. It also seems prudent to engage him on familiar ground -- my interior. From the aforementioned Augustine passage: "By overcoming within ourselves the inordinate love for things temporal, we are necessarily, within ourselves, overcoming him also who rules within man by these sinful desires."

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