Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me… for meeee… for MEEEEEEE…

Wow, sorry for the hiatus there.

My good excuse (for not posting so often) is that work (at a church, so no fair yelling at me!) was crazy busy with our spring retreat, then Confirmation, then prepping to go on vacation for a week (it was loverly!).

My bad excuse (for not posting at ALL): Holy cannoli has the Devil been working at me lately!

Honestly, I think Lucifer’s afraid of the strides I’ve been making in my spirituality.

Have you ever noticed how much you get spiritually attacked RIGHT when you’re on the path to something really good? How you start out all fired up, but then all these doubts and distractions start pushing in at the edges?

Some people say that the Devil isn’t real. But he is. Not the little red horned, pitchfork-wielding, spiky-tailed incarnation that we’ve made him out to be, but rather, a fallen angel, the embodiment of pride, jealousy, and temptation who works at your mind and leads you astray — especially when you’re closest to doing the best work for God! The one who talked Eve into falling, the one who tempted Jesus using Scripture quotes and everything, the one who incited the mobs with such anger and furor on the way to Calvary.

They say in the movie The Usual Suspects, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.” And though it’s just a movie quote, that’s a great observation. If we don’t believe he exists, then we never tell him to go away, and we give in to his temptations because we think it’s just following our instincts. Because if the Devil doesn’t exist, then all these bad things we do, all these primally evil things, are only part of our humanity, and that makes humans innately evil, and that means that God created evil, which disproves His existence entirely, since by definition, God is all-good…

Now, I realize that this is both bordering on the complicated and a watering down of millions of pages of theological discussion, but the point is that spiritual warfare is very real, and it’s a very dangerous thing not to believe in it, because you will ignorantly be sucked right into it.

If you want more, read C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters: letters from Screwtape, an upper management demon, to Wormwood, an entry-level demon, coaching him on how to handle humans. C.S. Lewis, the greatest Catholic writer never to convert to Catholicism, really (and quite scarily) breaks down the snares of the Devil in a very creative modern day parable.

So when you feel attacked, tempted, apathetic, etc… try starting with telling the Devil (Beelzebub, Lucifer, Satan, Lord of the Flies, Baal, Sparky: whatever you wanna call him!) to GO AWAY.

See if it helps. I think it might. It works for me.

Deserted

[Sorry for the blackout there for a couple days: 24 hour silent retreat followed by a full weekend o' fun and religiosity.]

The retreat I went on was called Poustinia. It’s the Russian word for “desert”, and it originated in the Eastern Rite of Catholicism, but is now a more common practice across Catholic traditions.

Basically, you spend 24 hours in a “cell” with just you, a Bible, a journal and pen, a loaf of bread, and water.

That’s it.

And it was AWESOME.

We did it in the empty rooms at the seminary, so they were single rooms that were your decent, old, bare, dorm rooms with a bed, a sink, a desk, and a window.

Nothing crazy weird or anything happened, just lots of great insights and personal peace.

After the first hour or so of just concentrating on being open, I was thinking about my post earlier about “that generation” it occured to me that I’d heard that Moses was never allowed into the Promised Land, but I’d never actually heard what he did that was so terrible. So I followed a lot of cross-referencing (side note: If you’ve never done this, I HIGHLY recommend it: It’s an experience in and of itself to see how tied together the ENTIRE Bible is!) to find out. Basically, he gave up on God’s mercy for sinners. He got short — and sort of downright mean, the way I read it — with the complaining Israelites! They were complaining for the second time of not having water in the desert, and he’s like (paraphrasing, obviously), “You Rebels!” (And I wonder if that actually had a swear-word connotation back then, as though he was saying something equivalent of “You ************s!”… food for thought…) “We’re just gonna get water out of the rock here again for you, even though you don’t deserve it, you ingrates…” And he has to strike the rock a second time because the first time doesn’t work, whether Moses was lacking in faith, or his negativity got in the way, or whatever the reason for not being able to perform a miracle is.

So God comes in and tells him that he just blew his chance at getting to enjoy the Promised Land. Now, obviously, he made it to heaven, seeing as how he appears with Jesus and Elijah at the Transfiguration, but while on earth he only gets to see the Promised Land, he does not actually get to enter.

So lesson: DO NOT, whatever you do, DO NOT think that you are any better than the next sinner, because God’s Grace is going to have to get BOTH of you through the Pearly Gates. And your sin of pride and lack of faith in God’s mercy is going just going to cause you suffering.

I also felt like I didn’t know enough about the Prophet Elijah. He’s the spritual father of the Carmelites, and beyond knowing that he was a big-time OT prophet, I didn’t really know him.

I highly recommend 1st and 2nd Kings, if you’re interested in him and his successor, Elisha. Not only did it really open my eyes as to why they were so important, but it also gave me an idea of why Jewish people kept calling Jesus just a prophet even with all the signs he was performing. Because they did a lot of the same kind of miracles! Ordering fire and water around? Bringing people back to life? Elijah did it! Multiplication of loaves and fishes? Elisha did it! So if you just heard about Jesus and His works and didn’t actually hear any of his preaching, you’d probably come to the same conclusion!

Plus, I got to the real roots of Carmel: Mount Carmel was the original place where Elijah did his greatest feat: Proving that God was the only god, and slaying all the prophets of Baal. Totally didn’t know all that.

So there’s the tip of the iceberg of awesomeness that is the insight I gained.

In other words: go into the desert — it’s pretty sweet out there