Great Saints and Martyrs Knew How to Fight Evil

The following comes from William van Ornum:

“The devil went down to Georgia. He was lookin’ for a soul to steal.”

But he didn’t stop there, of course. In May, he made an appearance at Harvard -- a trip that’s usually good for some choice morsels -- but he actually ended up losing a few souls that had been within his grasp. Bad enough that the celebratory Black Mass fizzled out. Worse, a local church was S.R.O. with “Catholics” adoring his sworn enemy.

Fortunately for satan, the enemy’s followers were aglow from spoiling his big night and from the “grace” of Adoration. They’re now convinced he’s back in the netherworld and give him scarcely a thought. They never even see him coming.

That’s a mistake C.S. Lewis tried to keep us from making. In fact, he wrote a sort of playbook that lays out Satan’s tactics: The Screwtape Letters. Written in 1939, when the bombs started falling in Britain, Lewis tried to warn his countrymen that there’s one enemy of Christians even worse than the Nazis. (For this, he received scathing criticism.)

The book is an exchange of letters between a young devil-in-training named Wormwood and his “supervising” satanic uncle (Screwtape). Wormwood delights at the  declaration of war, hoping that killing, rape, destruction, and evil of all kinds will ensue. Screwtape rebukes him sharply. Wars, he explains, are also opportunities for heroism and self-sacrifice. They can be a catalyst for many men and women to save their souls.
 

When I told you not to fill your letters with rubbish about the war, I meant, of course, that I did not want to have your rather infantile rhapsodies about the death of men and the destruction of cities. In so far as a war really concerns the spiritual state of the patient, I naturally want full reports.

Now that it is certain the German humans will bombard your patient’s town and that his duties will keep him in the thick of danger, we must consider our policy. Are we to aim at cowardice -- or at courage, with subsequent pride, or at hatred of the Germans. (Letter 28, Screwtape to Wormwood)

How about us? Do we spend our days thinking about how we’d correct the evils in the world or do we try to develop compunction and contrition for our own failures? 

The Screwtape Letters presents many of the smaller battles in daily life that ultimately may matter more for our salvation than great campaigns against global evils. 

Screwtape suggests that turning Christians against each other on moral issues is a great way to stir up pride -- a cardinal sin. It’s possible for Christians to be “correct” in their moral stance but “sinners in pride” because they are being sanctimonious, hypocritical, or prideful. And Satan knows what comes before a Fall, doesn’t he? 

Maybe it’s better to meditate on one’s failure to be a truly supportive spouse rather than constantly carping about the gay agenda? Or better to quell one’s own anger when it’s about to erupt than to lament the evils of terrorism? This list of priorities can, of course, be individualized about six billion ways. I’m sure that, with a little thought, you can create your own list.  

Great saints and martyrs are people who became very skilled at fighting Satan. The place of combat isn’t a battlefield or a coliseum; it’s wherever you are in your daily life.

First, remember that your eternal salvation is priority number one. Everything else follows from this. A recent article in Aleteia reminded readers how easily sin can be downplayed, even forgotten. C.S. Lewis is unapologetic about the priority that should be given to the “supernatural” aspects of Christian faith. So was psychiatrist Karl Menninger, who authored Whatever Became of Sin while Lewis was writing about Screwtape. Even small sins are important:
 

You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is to the extent to which you separate the man from the enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is not better than cards, if cards will do the trick. (Letter 11, Screwtape to Wormwood)

Second, beware of ideologies or moral causes that make Christians fight against each other. In his time, Lewis pointed out the rancor between pacifists and those who were giving their lives for their country. How could pacifists be Christians--it is obvious they were cowards, so many of the faithful thought. One wonders what issues Lewis would single out in our time that have this same effect?  (Stop now and wonder, too.) 

“A nation divided among itself can not stand.” This comes not from Lincoln, but the Old Testament.

Read the rest here.

Prayer for Generosity (St. Ignatius of Loyola)

Lord, teach me to be generous.

Teach me to serve you as you deserve;

to give and not to count the cost,

to fight and not to heed the wounds,

to toil and not to seek for rest,

to labor and not to ask for reward,

save that of knowing that I do your will.

Those Who Love God

Pope Francis: Evangelizing is all about joy!

(CNA/EWTN News) In his second homily while visiting Ecuador, Pope Francis spoke on Tuesday of the importance of fostering unity through evangelization, which he said is not done by preaching at people, but rather by being a joyful witness to the Gospel we have received.

“We evangelize not with grand words, or complicated concepts, but with the joy of the Gospel, which fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus,” the Pope said July 7.

"Evangelization does not consist in proselytizing, proselytizing is a caricature of evangelization; rather, evangelization is attracting by our witness those who are far off, humbly drawing near to those who feel distant from God and the Church, drawing close to those who feel judged and condemned from the start by those who feel they're perfect and pure, drawing near to those who are fearful or indifferent."

Pope Francis’ Mass took place in Quito on the second full day of his apostolic journey to his home continent of South America. The July 5-13 tour will also include stops in Bolivia and Paraguay.

Set in Quito’s Bicentennial Park, the Mass followed a casual meeting with Ecuador’s bishops earlier that morning. The park commemorates the 1809 Ecuadorian call for independence from Spain – the first of its kind in Latin America – which he noted “arose from being conscious of a lack of freedom, of exploitation and despoliation.”

In his homily, which was packed with references to his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis centered on Christ's prayer in John 17:21 that his disciples “be one … so that the world may believe.”

Referring to the “cry” of Christ to his Father and the Ecuadorians' early cry for independence, he said that “I would like to see these two cries joined together, under the beautiful challenge of evangelization.”

“We who are gathered here at table with Jesus are ourselves a cry, a shout born of the conviction that his presence leads us to unity.”

Even though Christ was experiencing “the worst of this world” in his own flesh at the moment of his prayer, he didn’t back down or complain. Rather, he welcomed his task and calls us to the do the same, the Pope said.

“We too encounter daily a world torn apart by wars and violence … But is it precisely this troubled world into which Jesus sends us,” he said, explaining that we shouldn’t respond to this call “with nonchalance, or complain we do not have the resources to do the job, or that the problems are too big. Instead, we must respond by taking up the cry of Jesus and accepting the grace and challenge of being builders of unity.”

Pope Francis remarked that “there was no shortage of conviction or strength in that cry for freedom which arose a little more than two hundred years ago. But history tells us that it only made headway once personal differences were set aside, together with the desire for power and the inability to appreciate other movements of liberation which were different yet not thereby opposed.”

“Evangelization can be a way to unite our hopes, concerns, ideals and even utopian visions,” he said, noting that “the desire for unity involves the delightful and comforting joy of evangelizing, the conviction that we have an immense treasure to share, one which grows stronger from being shared, and becomes ever more sensitive to the needs of others.”

He stressed that from this comes “the need to work for inclusivity at every level, to avoid forms of selfishness, to build communication and dialogue, to encourage collaboration.”

“Our unity can hardly shine forth if spiritual worldliness makes us feud among ourselves in a futile quest for power, prestige, pleasure or economic security,” he said.

Pope Francis then turned to the Church’s salvific mission, saying that part of her identity is to embrace all nations on earth without discrimination.

Using a phrase he frequently repeats in Evangelii Gaudium, the Pope said that becoming a “missionary Church” means constantly striving to foster communion, since mission implies more than “outreach alone.”

“We also need to be missionaries within the Church, showing that she is a mother who reaches out, a welcoming home, a constant school of missionary communion.”

Francis then noted the importance of maintaining a spiritual life based on a personal encounter with Christ.

“This encounter leads us in turn to encounter others, to become involved with our world and to develop a passion for evangelization.”

He stressed that the unity to which Christ calls us is not a mere uniformity, but rather implies living in harmony amid our differences.

Unity is not something “we can fashion as we will, setting conditions, choosing who can belong and who cannot,” he said, adding that “none is excluded.” Such a “religiousity of the elite is not what Jesus proposes,” the Pope added.

Nor, he reflected, does unity mean we all have the same tastes or gifts.

“We are brothers and sisters because God created us out of love and destined us, purely of his own initiative, to be his sons and daughters … that is the salvation which God makes possible for us, and which the Church proclaims with joy: to be part of the divine ‘we.’”

The Pope concluded his homily by praying that Ecuadorians would be a sign and witness of fraternal communion for the world by caring for one another.

When we give ourselves in service to others, “we discover our true identity as children of God in the image of the Father and, like him, givers of life; we discover that we are brothers and sisters of Jesus, to whom we bear witness,” the Pope said.

“This is what it means to evangelize; this is our revolution – for our faith is always revolutionary – this is our deepest and most enduring cry.”

Passion - My Beloved (featuring David Crowder)

Pope Francis: Evangelizing Evangelicals

(CNA/EWTN News) Pope Francis’ attendance for the second consecutive year at the Catholic charismatic movement’s Renewal with the Spirit convocation shows his attention to charismatic movements as means to foster ecumenical path.

Not by chance, Renewal with the Spirit styled the convocation to be heavily ecumenical.

During the meeting with Pope Francis’ in St. Peter’s Square, prayers were raised by Cardinals Kurt Koch and Leonardo Sandri, president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity and Prefect of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches; the Anglican Archbishop David Moxon, who represents the Archbishop of Canterbury toward the Holy See; and Msgr. Barnaba El Soryani, Coptic-Orthodox Bishop, as a delegate of Theodore II, Patriarch of Alexandria.

Also present were Msgr. Athanasisu Matti Shaba Matoka, Syriac-Catholic archbishop emeritus of Baghdad; His Eminence Polycarpus Eugenio Aydin, vicar of the Syriac-Orthodox diocese of the Netherlands; Rev. Louie Giglio, from the Passion City Church of Atlanta; Jonas Jonsoon, from the Lutheran Church of Sweden; and Giovanni Traettino, president of the Evangelical Church for Reconciliation in Italy.

This varied presence aligns with Pope Francis’ commitment to ecumenism. Beyond the recently opened dialogue with Orthodox and Anglican Churches, the Evangelical world is a big challenge for ecumenism, and perhaps one of the most important ones.

Dialogue with evangelical groups, especially Pentecostals, has been called “the fourth ecumenism” by several authors, including the Catholic sociologist Massimo Introvigne, an international authority on religious sects.

According to Introvigne, the fourth ecumenism – that of the new Protestant sects born at the beginning of the 20th century – is perhaps the most fruitful ground for ecumenical dialogue.

Attempts at such dialogue have limits: for example, a search for parties to represent the Pentecostals. Although they make up three-quarters of Protestants in some parts of the world and as much as one-third of all Christians, Pentecostals are very fragmented. The diversity within the group presents difficulties for dialogue.

This might be why Pope Francis has chosen to foster dialogue specifically with individuals and small groups.

On July 28, 2014, the Pope paid a private visit to the evangelical pastor Giovanni Traettino’s Church in Caserta. The two had met in 2006 and have maintained good relations ever since.

That meeting came at the end of a series of meetings Pope Francis had with evangelical leaders in 2014.

Televangelist Joel Osteel, pastor Tim Timmons and president of the Evangelical Westmont College Gayle D. Beebe visited Pope Francis June 4, 2014.

Pope Francis then met June 24 of that year with the televangelists James Robins and Kenneth Copeland, with the bishop Anthony Palmer of the Communion Evangelical Episcopal Churches, with the spouses John and Carol Arnott from Toronto and – among others – with Geoff Tunnicliffe and Brian C. Stiller, respectively general secretary and ambassador of the World Evangelical Alliance.

According to the prominent Italian vaticanista Sandro Magister, through these meetings Pope Francis is putting into action a broad effort to “win the favor of the worldwide leaders of those ‘evangelical’ and Pentecostal movements which especially in Latin America are the most fearsome competitor of the Catholic Church, from which they are snatching enormous masses of the faithful.”

Attending the Renewal with the Spirit convocation is part of this effort. Pope Francis himself acknowledged – during his trip back from World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro – that he used to look at charismatic movements with suspicion, and that he later changed his mind, and now he believes that “this movement does much good for the Church overall.”

Renewal with the Spirit president Salvatore Martinez, an academic of music and musician, who has been committed to the movement since his youth, had the occasion to meet with Pope Francis at the very beginning of the pontificate, after the Mass the Pope celebrated in the Vatican parish Sant’Anna March 17, 2013, four days after his election.

After that, Martinez had a private meeting with Pope Francis in September 2013, and there the invitation to the 2014 annual convocation was forwarded directly to the Pope, who accepted, probably considering it as a part of his ecumenical commitment.

Speaking in front of the convocation June 1, 2014, the Pope voiced hope that both evangelical and Catholic charismatic groups, gathered in the International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services, would share the same office as a sign of ecumenism. They did it.

Meeting with them Oct. 31, 2014, the Pope praised the decision, and stressed that “unity is not uniformity… it does not mean doing everything together, nor thinking the same way, nor losing identity.”

Pope Francis went further. Last May 23, he sent a video message to the participants of the Day of Dialogue and Prayer organized by the Diocese of Phoenix, which gathered Catholics and evangelical Pentecostal pastors. In the message, the Pope asked them to pray “together for the grace of unity,” that unity that “is flourishing among us, and begins with the only Baptism all of us received.”

All of these signals suggest that Pope Francis has indeed changed his mind and, starting from an initial skepticism, he later found in charismatic movements a privileged path to seek ecumenism.

There could be another pressing factor in the Pope’s enthusiasm for such meetings – a wave of conversions, particularly in Latin America, where it is estimated that100 million Catholics have converted to evangelical Christianity. Now, it appears that Pope Francis would like to evangelize the evangelicals.

His spiritual ecumenism, putting prayer at the center, and even making it a diplomatic tool, represents the most logical meeting point with the Protestant world.

Attending a large Catholic charismatic event could be the bridge the Pope needs to reach his final goal, to turn the evangelicals from rival to allies and push ecumenical efforts forward.

Pope Francis visits Ecuador