By Tom Thomas.
These days it is so easy to fall away from the State of Grace that one may be in. All it takes is one click, one glance, in fact just one thought, in our modern fast-paced digital world. The justification that everyone is doing it—what is the harm if I do it?—also sinks in. How can one maintain a state of purity or grace in Christian life? It seems so difficult to do.
Therefore, it is refreshing to see that Holy Father Pope Francis addressed this topic in a new catechesis on Virtues and Vices recently.
We are taken back to the Book of Genesis, and the serpent with Eve and Adam. In the Garden of Eden, there appears the serpent, “this character who seduces. The snake is an insidious animal: it moves slowly, slithering along the ground, and sometimes you do not even notice its presence—it is silent—because it manages to camouflage itself well in its environment, and above all, this is dangerous.
When it begins to converse with Adam and Eve, it shows that it is also a refined dialectician. It begins as one does with wicked gossip, with a malicious question. He says, “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?’” (Gen 3:1). The phrase is false: in reality, God offered man and woman all the fruits of the garden, apart from those of a specific tree: the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This prohibition is not intended to forbid man the use of reason, as is sometimes misinterpreted, but is a measure of wisdom. As if to say: recognize your limit, do not feel you are the master of everything, because pride is the beginning of all evil. And so, the story tells us that God establishes the progenitors as lords and guardians of creation, but wants to preserve them from the presumption of omnipotence, of making themselves masters of good and evil, which is a temptation—a bad temptation, even now.
This is the most dangerous pitfall for the human heart. ”All temptations begin this way, with the planting of a single thought by the evil one. The Holy Father goes on to add, “….With these accounts, the Bible explains to us that evil does not begin in man in a clamorous way, when an act is already manifest, but the evil begins much earlier, when one begins to fantasize about it, to nurse it in the imagination, thoughts, and ends up being ensnared by its enticements. The murder of Abel did not begin with a thrown stone, but with the grudge that Cain wickedly held, turning it into a monster within him. In this case too, God’s recommendations are worthless.
One must never dialogue, brothers and sisters, with the devil. Never! You should never argue. Jesus never dialogued with the devil; He cast him out. And when in the wilderness, [with] the temptations, He did not respond with dialogue; He simply responded with the words of Holy Scripture, with the Word of God. Be careful: the devil is a seducer. Never dialogue with him, because he is smarter than all of us and he will make us pay for it. When temptation comes, never dialogue. Close the door, close the window, and close your heart. And so, we defend ourselves against this seduction because the devil is astute and intelligent. He tried to tempt Jesus with quotes from the Bible! He was a great theologian there. With the devil, you do not dialogue. Do you understand this? Be careful. We must not converse with the devil, and we must not entertain ourselves with temptation. There is no dialogue. Temptation comes, we close the door. We guard our heart.
And that is why we do not converse with the devil. This is the recommendation—guard the heart—that we find in various fathers and saints: guard the heart. Guard the heart! He who guards his heart guards a treasure.”
In these words, the Holy Father offers a concrete solution to guarding one’s heart. Never dialogue with the evil one under any circumstances.
In 2014, the Holy Father also meditated on the same subject, The heart on guard. In this communication, the Holy Father exhorts us to undertake the examination of conscience daily to check, who have we let into our hearts, as the devil is always on the prowl and we must be ever vigilant. In this meditation, the Holy Father adds, “the devils come back, always, even at the end of life”. And to keep watch so the demons do not enter our heart, it is essential to know how to “be in silence before one’s self and before God”, in order to check whether someone we don’t know has entered our house, and whether the key is in place.”
The Desert Fathers knew the importance of keeping at bay the devil, guarding their heart, even when they had given up everything else worldly. Reading about their lives also gives us some pointers on guarding our hearts. Sample this:
“A brother said to the Abba: There does not seem to be any conflict in my heart. He received this reply: You are like a house that is open to the four winds, so that anyone who likes can go in or out without you noticing. If you only had one door to it, and choose to shut it in the face of wicked thoughts, then you would notice them and you would have to fight against them. “
May the Lord help us to always guard our heart from evil. The Enlightened One said in plain words, “Get behind me, Satan.”