These three saints battled some of the worst spiritual attacks and prevailed through God’s graces. Read this excerpt from Saints Who Battled Satan!
St. Benedict and the Poisoned Cup
When the abbot in a nearby monastery died, his monks came to Benedict and sought earnestly to persuade him to become their new leader. For a long time he refused them, warning that his way of life was stricter than theirs. But finally they overcame his caution by their persistent pleading, and he became their abbot.
As it turned out, Benedict’s concerns were well grounded. His discipline seemed to the other monks too severe, and in time, they became resentful. Eventually, resentment gave way to bitter rage, and at the Enemy’s provocation, they plotted to kill him.
Benedict’s wine was poisoned. The monks brought the wine glass to him first to receive the abbot’s blessing, as was their custom. But when he stretched out his hand and made the Sign of the Cross over the glass, it shattered, as if he had cast a stone at it.
The abbot knew immediately what had happened. As St. Gregory observed, “The drink of death could not endure the sign of life.” Benedict stood up, and his face showed no sign of anger, because his mind was at peace.
Calling the monks together, he addressed them. “May Almighty God forgive you, brothers. Why have you dealt with me in this way? Didn’t I warn you that my way of life and yours wouldn’t agree? Go and find a superior to your liking, for you can no longer have me with you.” Then he left them and returned to his previous way of life.
Once again, the Enemy’s plans had been thwarted. Now men from many places came to join Benedict, and soon he had established twelve monasteries, each with twelve monks and a superior.
Padre Pio and the Stigmata
Despite his health problems, which had inescapably made his studies more difficult, Pio was ordained a priest in August of 1910, at the age of twenty-three. Holy cards were distributed to those who attended the ordination, with a prayer the young man had written: “With Thee, may I be for the world the way, the truth, and the life, and through Thee, a holy priest, a perfect victim.”
Four weeks after his ordination, Padre Pio received for the first time a form of the stigmata, the wounds of Christ appearing on his own body. After a short time, they became invisible, but he could still feel the pain. Our Lord was providing him a seal of his sacrifice as a victim soul, a seal that would later become visible again.
Meanwhile, Satan’s assaults continued and intensified. The saint suffered especially from temptations to impurity, fears of unconfessed sins, and despair about his salvation. Nevertheless, Our Lord provided consolations as well. The priest once wrote to his spiritual director: “All the ugly fantasies that the Devil introduces to my mind vanish when I abandon myself to the arms of Jesus. . . . I suffer immensely, but it is a grief that does me good.”
The young priest wrote as well of an inexplicable spiritual joy that supported him in his trials. He found he could repel the malicious attacks of the Enemy’s temptations more and more easily as he offered himself to God. Soon that gift to Our Lord took on a new meaning, three months after his ordination. With his spiritual director’s permission, he made an explicit offering up of his life as a victim for poor sinners and for souls in purgatory. He placed himself on the Cross with Christ as a sacrifice to the Father in union with the Son.
St. Teresa of Avila and the Interior Castle
In the following years, Teresa grew in holiness and in spiritual discernment. Eventually, she founded a new Carmelite convent with a strict rule that gave birth to similar convents and brought considerable reform to the order. The Enemy’s opposition to her work was at times severe; as is usual when reforms take place, many were comfortable with a more lax rule and felt threatened by the new movement.
To offer guidance to the sisters who looked to her for leadership, Teresa wrote several works that have become spiritual classics and led to her declaration by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as the first woman Doctor of the Church. Among these classics was The Interior Castle. It was inspired by the vision God gave her of “a most beautiful crystal globe like a castle” that was illuminated by Christ the King, who was enthroned at the center of the fortress “in the greatest splendor. . . . But outside the castle all was darkness, with toads, vipers, and other poisonous vermin.”
Then, however, the vision took a disturbing turn. While Teresa was admiring the beauty that God gives to souls:
The light suddenly disappeared and, although the King of Glory did not leave the castle, the crystal was covered with darkness and was left as ugly as coal and with an unbearable stench, and the poisonous creatures outside the wall were able to get into the castle. Such was the state of a soul in sin.
In many ways, Teresa’s personal mission was that of the soldier assigned to guard that interior castle—both her own and those of the women under her care—from the diabolical forces outside.
ooo
This article is taken from a chapter in Saints Who Battled Satan by Paul Thigpen, PhD which is available from TAN Books.
