In holy souls, Satan tries to instill complacency and pride. Learn how to discern your own deeds and reject the Devil’s temptations with the wisdom of Saint John of Ávila!
The War for Souls
We’re waging a war in that which regards our soul; a war of great importance it is, and a business in which our whole heart ought to be occupied, and an office we have to be carrying out.
We don’t do this; we’re very flimsy, we occupy ourselves with other things that are worth less, we open our hearts so that God would help us in other matters, and we forget this one, though we’re so deep in it. This is not done well: we’re careless, as if there were no war.
And what do we lose? We open our door and house; it’s a sign that we have little to lose, and we leave it open. What we love greatly and consider great we guard greatly, and we put much security on it, so that we won’t lose it.
A great sign, and the most certain one, that you have God, is if you greatly fear to lose Him, and if you guard yourself against all the things that could separate you from Him, however great they be.
The Devil’s Ruthlessness
This one, our tempter and perverse enemy, there’s no kind of evil he doesn’t intend, nor is there a combat he could give us that he doesn’t give.
A thousand new arts and inventions he orders and fabricates; a thousand things he feigns, a thousand he conceals; here and there he tempts us; from all sides he assails us, and he never ceases, night and day, in every time and place, to persecute us; and, as Saint Jerome says, He has a thousand arts of hurting.
And even servants, and great servants, of God, after spending much time in His holy service, find themselves to be new recruits against this warrior, and He arms them with things they don’t know how to put their hands around, unless they have the particular aid of our Lord.
Flee, my brother, from every sin as from hell itself, for hell is that which brings you to hell. How do they not pull out their hair, how do they not weep, how do they not wander about sad and pensive, those who know they are subjects of such tyrants?
Complacency and Pride in the Faithful
The demon wages another war—much crueler and more dangerous, and as much crueler and more dangerous as he does it more secretly—against spiritual persons and times and places, and with arms and things that appear secure, and such is his evilness and cunning that there is no one who can escape his snares.
He will sometimes advise you to fast. A frightful thing, that a demon would say to a servant of God “fast, give alms, be abstinent,” and, if you do not do this, he jeers at you and condemns you and he holds you in little esteem, and he goads you and solicits you to be better.
And the traitor does all this, not because he gains something from it but rather because he hopes to make you lost in one way or another. He makes you depart from your sins and amend yourself so that, when you are praying for something, you would think that, since you have come so close to God, you are good and holy and pleasing in His eyes, and so that you would fall into a pestilence of pride, by which he will bring you to hell, be it by any path, be it by this or that. Who could count the tricks and ways he has!
You’ll see that someone is very chaste and that it is difficult to be so; he helps him to be even more chaste and makes him hate women, in order to assure him and drive him crazy, seeing himself so high in that virtue. What will I tell you about him? He becomes chaste with the chaste, meek with the meek, all in order to fish some fall from there; as much as he sees some inclined to a certain virtue, so much higher does he raise them in it.
He assures them on one side and gives them battle on the other; he feints on one side and wounds on the other, like a good fencer. For this reason, no one ought to be assured in little or in much, in evil nor in what appears good, because, in this, there are great dangers, through the security and appearance of good that he promises us.
How to Discern Your Own Deeds
“Then, Father, what will I do? How or in what way will I know if the good works that I do and the good words and thoughts that I have are from God or from the demon?”
How? From their fruits. Look, brother, when you have worked, or spoken, or thought something good, at how you remained [afterwards]; for if your soul stays a little crazy, if it’s stuck on something, if it despises others, if it compares itself to or esteems itself more than others, how clear it is that it is the demon who gave it. And when something good has been done, as I have said, and you find your soul empty of humility and crazed and vain in its own estimation, and content, renounce yourself and such goodness, for it proceeds from nowhere else but the demon.
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This article is taken from a chapter in My Burden Is Light by Saint John of Ávila which is available from TAN Books.
