Eamonn Clark, STL

Hollywood is fascinated with the Devil. Every year it seems there’s a new film about possession, the occult, or demonic infestation. The public – i.e. normal people – eat it up: clearly, we are fascinated too. And that’s just what the Devil wants.

I have never dealt with anything like demonic possession or infestation directly, though I have priest friends who have. If you had any doubt, let me assure you, all that stuff is plenty real. And yet somehow, so many of the people who flock in droves to see blockbuster hits about these things might also believe they are real – and they don’t do anything to change their lives in response to the terrifying world of Hell and its inhabitants. There is one simple reason: they have mistaken these second-class encounters with the Devil for first-class ones.

The Devil, when most successful, stays most hidden. It is hard for him, as he loves to show off – and ultimately, there is always some tell-tale sign of his wicked presence, even if we can’t quite notice it. Eventually, like Odysseus sailing away from the cyclops, he will simply have to tell you that it was him – he wants all the credit, you see, all the glory. He can’t have a quiet victory, not in the end. He has to taunt his opponent.

But he is willing to wait, at least sometimes, staying quite hidden. Ironically, things like possessions and infestations and apparitions are part of this overall strategy. By making so many people aware of his activity in these extraordinary phenomena, he deceives a great number: they think that this is the point of the Devil’s work, namely, to make things float around a room, to take control of someone’s body and mind, to make himself appear in fantastical shapes. Well, it isn’t. While we look at the “bright and shiny things,” our attention is diverted as the real goal is accomplished, slowly but surely – temptation leading to sin: a first-class encounter with the Devil. When one is really distracted, thinking not only that extraordinary manifestations of the Devil are first-class encounters, but that they are in fact the only encounters, one will likely not even recognize temptations to be temptations, thus not seeing sins to be sins. Game, set, match.

Finally, the one who does not believe in the Devil at all is likely to be quite firmly grasped in his wicked clutches – and one day, he will let that person know definitively who won his soul from God. And then they will be miserable together forever.

The truth is that the Devil is boring. Sin is boring too. God, and virtue which leads to God, are interesting when rightly seen, as their “horizon” is infinite love, while the Devil is just a creature, and sin leads only to creatures, all finite, many quite unloving. Friendship with the Infinite One – a first-class encounter with God, the life of charity – now that is worth more than a few hours at the cinema to sit back and enjoy… it is worth an eternity of fixation, and a life of self-sacrifice.