by
Damien F. Mackey
“He who holds the entire world under his sway, instead dominates through
lies. Jesus says of Satan: ‘He was a murderer from the beginning and does not
stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks
according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies’ [John 8,
44]”.
Cardinal
Caffarra
Cardinal
Carlo Caffarra gave this talk at the Rome Life Forum on May 19, 2017.
It is a
perfect illustration of Satan as the ‘ape of God’.
ROME,
May 19, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) -- “When I
am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself” [John 12, 32].
“The whole world is under the power of the Evil One” [1 John, 5, 19].
Reading
these divine words gives us perfect awareness of what is really happening in
the world, within the human story, considered in its depths. The human story is
a confrontation between two forces: the force of attraction, whose source is in
the wounded Heart of the Crucified-Risen One, and the power of Satan, who does
not want to be ousted from his kingdom.
The area
in which the confrontation takes place is the human heart, it is human liberty.
And the confrontation has two dimensions: an interior dimension and an exterior
dimension. We will briefly consider the one and the other.
1. At
the trial before Pilate, the Governor asks Jesus whether he is a king; whether
- which is the meaning of Pilate’s question - he has true and sovereign
political power over a given territory.
Jesus
responds: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came
into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth
listens to my voice” [John 18, 37].
“Jesus
wants us to understand that his kingship is not that of the kings of this
world, but consists of the obedience of his subjects to his word, to his truth.
Although He reigns over his subjects, it is not through force or power, but
through the truth of which he is witness, which “all who are from the truth”
receive with faith” [I. De La Potterie].
Thomas
Aquinas puts the following words into the mouth of the Saviour: “As I myself
manifest truth, so I am preparing a kingdom for myself”. Jesus on the Cross
attracts everyone to Himself, because it is on the Cross that the Truth of
which he is witness is resplendent.
Yet this
force of attraction can only take effect on those who “are from the truth”.
That is, on those who are profoundly available to the Truth, who love truth,
who live in familiarity with it. Pascal writes: “You would not seek me if you
had not already found me”.
He who
holds the entire world under his sway, instead dominates through lies. Jesus
says of Satan: “He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the
truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to
his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies [John 8, 44].
The
wording is dramatic. The first proposition – “He was a murderer from the
beginning” - is explained by the second: “and he does not stand in the truth”.
The murder which the devil performs consists in his not standing in the truth,
not dwelling in the truth.
It is
murder, because he is seeking to extinguish, to kill in the heart of man truth,
the desire for truth. By inducing man to unbelief, he wants man to close
himself to the light of the Divine Revelation, which is the Word incarnate.
Therefore, these words of Jesus on Satan - as today the majority of exegetes
believe - do not speak of the fall of the angels. They speak of something far
more profound, something frightful: Satan constantly refuses the truth, and his
action within human society consists in opposition to the truth. Satan is this
refusal; he is
this opposition.
The text
continues: “because there is no truth in him”.
The
words of Jesus go to the deepest root of Satan’s work. He is in himself a lie.
From his person truth is completely absent, and hence he is by definition the
one who opposes truth. Jesus adds immediately afterwards: “When he lies, he
speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies”. When
the Lord says “speaks according to his own nature”, he introduces us to the
interiority of Satan, to his heart. A heart which lives in darkness, in
shadows: a house without doors and without windows.
To
summarise, this therefore is what is happening in the heart of man: Jesus, the
Revelation of the Father, exerts a strong attraction to Himself. Satan works
against this, to neutralise the attractive force of the Crucified-Risen One.
The force of truth which makes us free acts on the heart of man. It is the
Satanic force of the lie which makes slaves of us.
Yet, not
being pure spirit, the human person is not solely interiority. Human
interiority is expressed and manifested in construction of the society in which
he or she lives. Human interiority is expressed and manifested in culture, as
an essential dimension of human life as such. Culture is the mode of living
which is specifically human.
Given
that man is positioned between two opposing forces, the condition in which he
finds himself must necessarily give rise to two cultures: the culture of the truth
and the culture of the lie.
There is
a book in Holy Scripture, the last, the Apocalypse, which describes the final
confrontation between the two kingdoms. In this book, the attraction of Christ
takes the form of triumph over enemy powers commanded by Satan. It is a triumph
which comes after lengthy combat. The first fruits of the victory are the
martyrs. “The great Dragon, serpent of the primal age, he whom we call the
devil, or Satan, seducer of the whole world, was flung down to earth… But they
[= the martyrs] overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of the
testimony of their martyrdom” [cfr. Ap. 12, 9.11].
2. In
this second section, I would like to respond to the following question: in our
Western culture, are there developments which reveal with particular clarity
the confrontation between the attraction exerted over man by the
Crucified-Risen One, and the culture of the lie constructed by Satan? My
response is affirmative, and there are two developments in particular.
The
first development is the transformation of a crime [termed by Vatican Council
II nefandum
crimen], abortion, into a right. Note well: I am not
speaking of abortion as an act perpetrated by one person. I am speaking of the
broader legitimation which can be perpetrated by a judicial system in a single
act: to subsume it into the category of the subjective right, which is an
ethical category. This signifies calling what is good, evil, what is light,
shadow. “When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar
and the father of lies”. This is an attempt to produce an “anti-Revelation”.
What in
fact is the logic which presides over the ennoblement of abortion?
Firstly,
it is the profoundest negation of the truth of man. As soon as Noah left the
floodwaters, God said: “Whoever sheds the blood of a man, by a man shall that
person’s blood be shed, for in his own image God made man” [Gen. 9, 6].
The
reason why man should not shed the blood of man is that man is the image of
God. Through man, God dwells in His creation. This creation is the temple of
the Lord, because man inhabits it. To violate the intangibility of the human
person is a sacrilegious act against the Sanctity of God. It is the Satanic
attempt to generate an “anti-creation”.
By
ennobling the killing of humans, Satan has laid the foundations for his
“creation”: to remove from creation the image of God, to obscure his presence
therein.
St
Ambrose writes: “The creation of the world was completed with formation of the
masterpiece which is man, which… is in fact the culmination of creation, the
supreme beauty of every created being” [Exam., Sixth day, Disc 9, 10.75; BA I,
page 417]. At the moment at which the right of man to order the life and the
death of another man is affirmed, God is expelled from his creation, because
his original presence is denied, and his original dwelling-place within
creation - the human person - is desecrated.
The
second development is the ennoblement of homosexuality. This in fact denies
entirely the truth of marriage, the mind of God the Creator with regard to
marriage.
The
Divine Revelation has told us how God thinks of marriage: the lawful union of a
man and woman, the source of life. In the mind of God, marriage has a permanent
structure, based on the duality of the human mode of being: femininity and
masculinity. Not two opposite poles, but the one with and for the other.
Only thus does man escape his original solitude.
One of
the fundamental laws through which God governs the universe is that He does not
act alone. This is the law of human cooperation with the divine governance. The
union between a man and woman, who become one flesh, is human cooperation in
the creative act of God: every human person is created by God and begotten by its
parents. God celebrates the liturgy of his creative act in the holy temple of
conjugal love.
In summary. There are
two pillars of creation: the human person in its irreducibility to the material
universe, and the conjugal union between a man and woman, the place in which
God creates new human persons “in His image and likeness”. The axiological
elevation of abortion to a subjective right is the demolition of the first
pillar. The ennoblement of a homosexual relationship, when equated to marriage,
is the destruction of the second pillar.
At the
root of this is the work of Satan, who wants to build an actual anti-creation.
This is the ultimate and terrible challenge which Satan is hurling at God. “I
am demonstrating to you that I am capable of constructing an alternative to
your creation. And man will say: it is better in the alternative creation than
in your creation”.
This is
the frightful strategy of the lie, constructed around a profound contempt for man.
Man is not capable of elevating himself to the splendour of the Truth. He is
not capable of living within the paradox of an infinite desire for happiness.
He is not able to find himself in the sincere gift of himself. And therefore -
continues the Satanic discourse - we tell him banalities about man. We convince
him that the Truth does not exist and that his search is therefore a sad and
futile passion. We persuade him to shorten the measure of his desire in line
with the measure of the transient moment. We place in his heart the suspicion
that love is merely a mask of pleasure.
The
Grand Inquisitor of Dostoevsky speaks thus to Jesus: “You judge of men too
highly, for though rebels they be, they are born slaves …. I swear to you that
man is weaker and lower than You have ever imagined him to be! Man is weak and
cowardly.”
How
should we dwell in this situation? In the third and final section of my
reflection, I will seek to answer this question.
The
reply is simple: within the confrontation between creation and anti-creation,
we are called upon to TESTIFY. This testimony is our mode of being in the
world.
The New
Testament has an abundantly rich doctrine on this matter. I must confine myself
to an indication of the three fundamental meanings which constitute testimony.
Testimony means to say, to
speak, to
announce openly and publicly. Someone who does not testify in
this way is like a soldier who flees at the decisive moment in a battle. We are
no longer witnesses, but deserters, if we do not speak openly and publicly. The
March for Life is therefore a great testimony.
Testimony means to say, to announce openly and
publicly the divine Revelation, which involves the original
evidence, discoverable only by reason, rightfully used. And to speak in
particular of the
Gospel of Life and Marriage.
Testimony means to say, to
announce openly and publicly the Gospel of Life and Marriage as if in a trial [cfr.
John 16, 8-11]. I will explain myself. I have spoken frequently of a
confrontation. This confrontation is increasingly assuming the appearance of a
trial, of a legal proceeding, in which the defendant is Jesus and his Gospel.
As in every legal proceeding, there are also witnesses in favour: in favour of Jesus
and his Gospel.
Announcement
of the Gospel of Marriage and of Life today takes place in a context of
hostility, of challenge, of unbelief. The alternative is one of two options:
either one remains silent on the Gospel, or one says something else. Obviously,
what I have said should not be interpreted as meaning that Christians should
render themselves… antipathetic to everyone.
St
Thomas writes: “It is the same thing, when faced with two contraries, to pursue
the one and reject the other. Medicine, for example, proposes the cure while
excluding the illness. Hence, it belongs to the wise man to meditate on the
truth, in particular with regard to the First Principle …and to refute the
opposing falsehood.” [CG Book I, Chapter I, no. 6].
In the
context of testimony to the Gospel, irenics and concordism must be excluded. On
this Jesus has been explicit. It would be a terrible doctor who adopted an
irenical attitude towards the disease.
Augustine
writes: “Love the sinner, but persecute the sin”. Note this well. The Latin
word per-sequor
is an intensifying verb. The meaning therefore is: “Hunt down the sin. Track it
down in the hidden places of its lies, and condemn it, bringing to light its
insubstantiality”.
I
CONCLUDE with a quotation from a great confessor of the faith, the Russian
Pavel A. Florenskij. “Christ is witness, in the extreme sense of the word, THE WITNESS.
At His
crucifixion, the Jews and Romans believed they were only witnessing a
historical event, but the event revealed itself as the Truth”. [The philosophy
of religion, San Paolo ed., Milan 2017, page 512].
Years ago, from her convent, Sr. Lucia wrote a letter to Cardinal
Carlo Caffarra, saying: “Do not be afraid … Our Lady has already crushed his
head.”
