IS Satan real? In other words, does he exist and still influence our thoughts and actions? This is a fundamental question that often comes to our minds.
Well, I’m sure we can answer this question by merely looking at the evil things going on around us and in the world. Among them are corruption, greed, murder, drug trafficking, sexual exploitation, pornography, deceptions, lies, injustice, racism, and many more, not to mention our personal struggles of envy, malice, pride, hopelessness, and despair.
Where do these evil things come from? If we, human beings, were created “good” from the beginning, how can people become agents of these sinful ways and deeds? It’s because Satan exists and can use people to destroy the human soul and world that God created. All that he wants is to take us away from God.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God, referring to Lateran Council IV: “The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing.” (391)They fell to sin by their own free choice, radically and irrevocably rejecting God and his reign.
And so, Satan and his allies would do anything even today to prevent us from building the Kingdom of God on earth through our faith in Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.
In his homily on May 9, 2020, at Casa Santa Marta, Pope Francis warned us about Satan’s work today. He said, “The devil uses envy to try to thwart the proclamation of the Gospel. On the other hand, there is the Lord, there is the Holy Spirit who makes the Church grow, and it grows even more. This is true. But on the other hand, there is the evil spirit that seeks to destroy the Church.”
In a Lenten sermon this year, the pope also said that the devil “mixes his own voice” with the many other voices that try to tame our conscience. He tempts us to walk alternative paths that hose of God, paths that give us “the sensation of being self-sufficient, of enjoying life as an end in itself.”
Friends, the devil exists, and his influences are even strong in this pandemic when people fall in despair, hopelessness, boredom, and anxiety. He comes to destroy the Church, families, marriages, other relationships, and even countries by sowing divisions among us.
He manifests himself in our experiences of discouragement, disillusion, doubt, cynicism, and all forms of negativity.
It’s how we understand the Gospel this Sunday (Matthew 16:21-27), when Jesus told Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me.” Satan was using Peter to divert Jesus from fulfilling his Father’s mission, which is love, mercy, forgiveness, reconciliation, and salvation through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, and the Church.
Let’s not make Satan win. Let’s fight all his attempts to destroy us. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “The power of Satan is, nonetheless, not infinite. He is only a creature, powerful from the fact that he is pure spirit, but still a creature. He cannot prevent the building up of God’s reign.” (395)
* * *
Fr. Rodel “Odey” Balagtas is the pastor of Incarnation Church in Glendale, California.