Even a cursory read of the Gospels illuminates the struggle between Jesus Christ and Satan from the very beginning of the Lord’s advent into human history.
Even as a newborn child, Jesus is perceived as a threat by King Herod who seeks to destroy Him. Immediately after His Baptism, Jesus experiences the temptations of the devil in the wilderness.
From the beginning of His public ministry, Jesus casts out demons, as He confronts the powers of darkness.
This ultimate confrontation between the Son of God and the devil will play out in a definitive and final way in Jesus’ death and Resurrection, which Simeon obliquely prophesizes to Mary and Joseph in the Presentation in the Temple which we celebrated last Sunday.
The devil is one of the first to recognize who Jesus is and why He has come to Earth.
“In their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit; he cried out, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are — the Holy One of God!” (Mark 1: 23-24).
Fighting sin and Satan
The devil has it right. We know that Jesus came to Earth, preached, healed, taught, forgave, cast out demons, and ultimately died on the Cross and rose from the dead to defeat the power of Satan and to set us free from the nefarious darkness of sin and death.
The Lord did not come to build an Earthly utopia, to clean up the environment, to alleviate global poverty, to confer Earthly happiness, or to simply be nice. The precision of His mission, which He never forgot for a moment, was to destroy the power of evil, and to rescue the human race from the devil.
Satan is a fallen angel, one who rebelled against God, and is forever seeking to pull humanity away from the Lord and the path of salvation.
While we certainly cannot blame all of our sinful and selfish actions on the devil, we must prudently and soberly acknowledge the existence and actions of a supernatural malignant spirit who wants to defeat the Kingdom of Christ and to draw all of us down to Hell.
Modernity often dismisses the possibility of Satan, viewing such a belief in the demonic as an archaic, medieval leftover, meant to explain away the evil in the world. As said above, such a reductionism is not the Biblical view. Nor should it be ours.
In each of us is fought the struggle between Christ and the devil, grace and sin, life and death, Heaven and Hell.
Our role in the battle
We are so precious to God that He sent His Son to rescue us from Satan’s power, but we must embrace the saving Good News of the Gospel and be serious about rooting sin out of our lives.
We have free will to choose the blessing or the curse.
Beginning in Baptism, we renounced Satan, all his works and empty promises, as well as the glamor of evil.
We spend the rest of our time here seeking to live out those Baptismal promises as we grow into the full stature of Christ.
We practice our Catholic faith as disciples of the Lord, we evangelize others in the power of the Gospel, we perform works of charity and service, all because we passionately want the Lord Jesus to reign in our hearts and to become the saints that He has called us to be. We want everyone to be saved and come home to Heaven.
For such holy desires to flower and reach fruition within us, we need to acknowledge that we are sinners and we need a savior.
This humble recognition of our radical need for Christ and His mercy is a difficult hurdle for many today.
We live an easy comfort and material prosperity which previous generations and many in the world today could not even imagine possible.
Science and technology give us the illusion that we can control everything.
We can easily think we do not need God; our self-sufficiency can make us complacent and even practical atheists.
Our post-modern society often dismisses the reality of personal sin or the need to be saved from the powers of darkness.
Think of the Pharisees in Jesus’ time who did not think they needed Him. They could not accept Christ because He radically challenged how they understood God and themselves. The Lord could perform no miracles for them or even win a hearing from them because their hearts were closed to His identity and message.
Turning to the Lord
Sometimes, only a bad shock can spiritually wake us up — a tragedy which we cannot undo, a problem we cannot fix, a challenging situation we cannot control, a sin committed which deeply hurts both others and ourselves.
In such moments, coming face to face with our broken humanity, painful wounds, and consequential sins, we can either continue to try being our own God or we can turn to the Lord and cry out for mercy, pardon, and salvation.
Think of the Prodigal Son who finally comes to his senses and returns to his Father’s house.
When we truly repent of our sins, admit our inability to save ourselves, immerse our souls in the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation, and turn to Jesus, we come to know the joy of salvation, and the Lord defeats the power of evil in our lives.
This Jubilee Year of Hope is an opportune moment to truly repent of our sins and hand our lives over to Christ in a deeper way.
May each of you know the wondrous power of the risen Christ working in your life!