1. Let us imagine the eternal battle for souls, between the Church Militant on one side, then there is Lucifer and the devils on the other side. Let us imagine the standing of both armies before hostilities begun. All of this is imagination for easier and better understanding of what is happening in the world today where hostilities are between principalities and dominions. It is important to know where we stand, and on which side we are.
The place where each army stand is purely imaginary. It never stood there in the first place. Each army had been sifting positions from the beginning and forever more. What interest us is where each one stand today and on whose side we are. Where we stand does not necessarily say on whose side we are since battle lines keep on sifting. Being in a particular place could describe whose side we are but exactly the same spot can make us belong to the exact opposite side the next moment.
2. Let us now describe the two armies.
Let us call the first, the Catholic Church. Let us call the other group, Lucifer and his devilish cohorts. We shall personify the Catholic Church with the name ‘I,’ as in ‘I am a Catholic. And we shall personify the devilish forces as ‘Lucifer.’ So the battle is between ‘I’ and Lucifer. Let us now describe the weaponry of each group.
3. The ‘I’ and the Catholic Church.
‘I’ am within the Catholic Church. As such my greatest weapon is the presence of the Blessed Trinity within me. In such a state there is absolute nothing that can destroy my soul.the devil cannot even approach me. And the devil never attacks such a person. He has an angelic nature and he knows when a person had become invincible against him and his cohorts.
The devil attacks ME when I am on the way to entering the Catholic Church. As long as I am outside the Church, I am very vulnerable, not only against the slightest attacks of the devil. I am even in danger in stumbling all by my self.
As a ‘viatores’, i.e. still on the way towards the kingdom of God, the Catholic Church, but not yet quite inside, the devil’s attack are relentless. What other weapons do I have? An intellect and a Free will. Together with these two faculties are accompanying helps like actual grace, a knowledge of Divine Revelation, devotion to Mary, the Guardian angels, the sacraments, and ascetical practices like meditation. Note that the soul on the way into the safety of the Church has a lot of sophisticated weaponry for its defence referred to by St. Jerome as a ‘super abundance of graces’. Those just mentioned above are just a few.
4. Lucifer and his cohorts has these weapons.
An angelic intellect and a pure spiritual nature. He, also has the ‘world,’ as defined by St. Augustine, at his service to destroy the soul of man. The very flesh of man with its concupiscence is, also, at his service. There are also the millions of other devils all out with the intention of destroying souls and countless of human cohorts under their orders; priest, bishop and anti-popes.
And the devils have their intense pride and envy towards any man with the possibility of going to heaven.
5. Between these two forces is a biased judge, God.
This battle is God’s way of testing the children of man to see if they deserve eternal life or not. The whole thing is God’s show. It is totally under God’s control. If ‘I’ play by the rules of God, He helps me in everything and makes me victorious making the devil lose in every battle. But if ‘I’ do not fight according to God’s rule, He abandons me and ‘delivers me up to Satan,’ as St. Paul wrote.
6. The real battle or contest.
The battle is really man against himself. Can he convince God that he is on His side……then he wins the battle. If God is convinced he is in Lucifer’s side…..then he loses the battle and is condemned. In effect, man knows all the time who is the winner because he decides at every moment who will win.
7. Let the battle begin.
Satan attacked a man endowed with full knowledge. He aimed at the intellect by thwarting man’s reasoning so man can rationalise and do what he wanted though the intellect knew that what he wanted was against the command of God not to eat of the fruit. Man, following his defective reasoning forced the free will into acting. Man ate the forbidden fruit and sinned. Lucifer won the first round. God punished man and all his children. That is how serious was the sin of Adam and Eve.
Lucifer, the pure spirit would never change his tactic. It worked the first time; it will work up to the end of the world. Lucifer’s strategy was simple; deceive the intellect into error and the free will following the dictates of concupiscence will follow.
Because all men are born with original sin, their intellects are obfuscated; they cannot think right unless well trained in Philosophy, which is rare. With a defective intellect, Lucifer simply had to arouse the concupiscence of men through the things of the world; eateries, tourist spots, women, food, fashions, ambitions, money, high positions. With all these stimuli, the concupiscence takes over the free will independently of the erroneous intellect.
Add to this the concept of lineage. Let’s go to Cain and Abel. Cain sinned. In that state, unable to repent, he kept on falling into sin after sin. The longer he lived, the more grievous his state of soul became. Then Cain gives birth to children whom he cannot train well because he was in sin. So Cain was contributing to the population sinful souls. These sinful souls will be multiplying and giving life to more sinful souls. Along this one line of Cain, one cannot imagine the number of sinful souls that will populate the earth.
Now, let’s go to Abel. He was the good boy. He dies young killed by his own brother. His is unable to bring forth siblings that he could have trained well in the worship of God. The line of Abel is cut off while Cain’s progeny multiplies exponentially by leaps and bounds.
Imagine if Cain and Abel lived in the same house. Ten years after the murder of Abel, that house would easily be a house of juvenile delinquents. The way the world is right now.
So Lucifer would simply confuse the mind of all men so that it is their concupiscence that will rule their free will; they will all end up following their passions while their intellect wallow in error and ignorance. With this scenario the devil have just to wait for the fruits to fall from the tree. Men would go directly to hell.
If Lucifer would like to do a little work, he would simply increase the stimuli that would be a source of sensual entertainment to the five senses. With the five senses occupied with five stimuli, the free will will be forced to follow whatever passion or concupiscence that is aroused by the five senses. Lucifer being an angel knows how to combine sensual stimuli to move the passions and concupiscence to dictate to the free will to satisfy the pleasure elicited by the senses.
Following St. Augustine definition of sin, i.e. ‘aversion a Deo et conversio ad creatures,’ Lucifer just have to multiply the creatures that will bombard the senses to stimulate the passions and concupiscence and these will in turn dictate to the free will to choose the stimulated sensual pleasure…..and there we have a sure formula for sin.
8. The children of Cain and Abel.
Abel could not produce any priest or bishop because he did not have any children. While Cain would produce schismatics, heresiarchs, murderers, thieves and politicians. If there were seminaries that time, they would be filled with Cain’s sons and not Abels. Well, that is what happened with our seminaries.
If our seminaries were filled with the children of Cain, those children of Cain would eventually say, ‘let us consecrate our kind as
Bishops.’ Why not? And eventually they would say, ‘why don’t we chose one of our kind as Pope. And that happened more than 40 times in the history of the Catholic Church.
Of course, God would always raise saints. But like Abel, they are good, they die and leave no children. While the children of Cain multiply like rabbits. Hmm… who said that?
9. So today…
The world is filled with the children of Cain. The head of states, the judges, the members of the police and military, every parent, doctor, judge……the priests, bishops, cardinals and even the present Pope is a child of Cain. And out of envy and pride, just like Lucifer and Cain, they want to kill Abel. Just watch how the present Pope exposes the underground Catholic church in China to the Chinese Communist government in his attempt to be popular to the Chinese government just as other governments expose their population to dangerous immigrants with the encouragement of the Pope.
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