Let us now turn attentively to the means that Satan
uses to bring about the damnation of every human being. Let us remember
that satan still has his angelic nature…not that he is angelic. In
addition, we are told that he held a very high position in the court of
heaven. His intellective qualities were of the highest calibre; the power
coming forth from his angelic will was exceedingly great. He is assuredly
well equipped to carry out his heinous objective of bringing every human
being to an eternal ruin. He is no match for any mere human being. In
fact, putting to use the perfection's given to him in his creation, he can
readily outsmart and cunningly overpower all human beings put together with
the exception of her, who is the Immaculate one. He can neither outsmart
her nor has the slightest power over her.
As the great deceiver, satan is very clever. He can run circles around
anyone of us. He can influence our thinking without our knowing it. He is
able to manipulate our minds in such a way that we are led to behave in
opposition to the Will of God. He can so jam the network of our intellect
that the very notion of God can be blotted out. He can - and does - keep
our minds so stimulated with new incoming thoughts that there can be not
even one thought left of God and goodness in them. As the prince of this
world, and, with the angelic powers which are his, satan has easily led
mankind to a culture which wholly centers around intellection, to the
degree that there is no room for the activities of the will. Not only can
he do this, as has been said, but also he has already done it.
Satan cannot tamper with our wills. This is off limits to him by God's
command. God has made the will to act freely and only He can work with it,
move it, and yet, it remains free to act. Satan can get to the will,
though. H can do it indirectly. How? He can and does enter into the
mind. Through the mind he gets into the emotions and through the emotions,
when we act emotionally, he enters into our behavior. His power is great
over the person who lives by his/her feelings. Satan knows that emotions,
by and large, can control our everyday behavior especially in those
individuals who are ignorant of the gift of the will and act only by how
they feel. One FEELS like or does not FEEL like doing something. When one
allows himself/herself to be governed by feelings, it is not the same as
positing behavior with a clarity of mind and a freedom of the will. Satan
has so worked things in today's lifestyle of people that he pretty well
dominates what is done in our present day world.
One of the other subtleties of satan is that he so cleverly works things
that it becomes part of the way we live in our day, to take life EASY.
DON'T EXERT, is the order of the day. Well, you may say, what's so bad
about that? When we don't exert, we do not have power to resist evil, nor
do we have energy to do that which is virtuous. We become like strands of
straw in a fast flowing river. When we do not put forth effort into life,
we become victims of every force in life. Every fad, every promotion of
the media governs our behavior. We do not have the energy to make
decisions for ourselves. Because satan has taken the world to be his own,
he governs it in the way that serves his purpose; he, together with the
demons under his charge, men and women who have given themselves over to him.
CONFUSE THEM! That is the order that satan gives to his legions. When the
mind does not know what to do or what even to think, satan has us in the
palm of his hand. We know what it feels like when we are driving along to
a destination and we become confused because we either took a wrong turn or
missed a road sign. Satan thrives on confusion. Hardly does our world
today recognize the darkness it has been put into because of the
manipulations of satan in bringing mankind into a state of utter confusion.
NEXT WEEK: Part Five of the sublteties of satan