We face many temptations in our daily lives, serious temptations. Satan is real, he is not just a figment of our imagination, or a story invented to scare us into acting correctly. Satan tempts us all, hoping that we will follow his lies, instead of the Truth offered to us by God.
The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: ‘The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing.’ Scripture speaks of a sin of these angels. This ‘fall’ consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign. We find a reflection of that rebellion in the tempter's words to our first parents: ‘You will be like God.’ The devil ‘has sinned from the beginning’; he is ‘liar and the father of lies.’” (CCC 391-392).
Satan, like all of God’s creation was created good, but angels, like men, were given free will by God. Satan and the other demons who joined him chose their path freely, and their choice, as we see, was irrevocable, permanent. It was an irrevocable choice because that is how it was made by Satan and his companions, not because of any lack of forgiveness from God. St. John Damascene teaches us that "There is no repentance for the angels after their fall, just as there is no repentance for men after death." (CCC 393).
We Christians should have no great difficulty in recognizing that the temptations of Satan are very real in our lives and the lives of our fellow believers, as is pointed out in 1 Peter. Every time we pray the words that Christ taught us, the Our Father, we petition, ask, God to “deliver us from evil”.
The Catechism tells us that “In this petition, evil is not an abstraction, but refers to a person, Satan, the Evil One, the angel who opposes God. The devil (dia-bolos) is the one who "throws himself across" God's plan and his work of salvation accomplished in Christ.” (CCC 2851).
How often does the devil throw himself across God’s plan in our own lives? How often do we know exactly what we should be doing in order to say “yes” to God, but then we are distracted from that path, and choose to walk away from God toward sin?
“When we ask to be delivered from the Evil One, we pray as well to be freed from all evils, present, past, and future, of which he is the author or instigator. In this final petition, the Church brings before the Father all the distress of the world. Along with deliverance from the evils that overwhelm humanity, she implores the precious gift of peace and the grace of perseverance in expectation of Christ's return.” (CCC 2854).
While the lines from 1 Peter may at first dishearten us, I believe that it is not just an omen of impending doom. These verses are here to encourage and strengthen us as Christians, to know that the Evil One is seeking to devour all Christians, but that we can resist his temptations by remaining steadfast in our faithfulness. God gives us every grace that we need to hold true to this challenge, we must only choose to accept and embrace the graces that are poured out upon us.
We must take it as encouragement that Satan seeks to throw us off our path to God, for that means that we must actually be walking upon the path to God. If we were not seeking the Truth and Freedom that exist only in God, then Satan wouldn’t have to bother with tempting us.
Some people might say that we shouldn’t think about Satan, that by thinking about him we might be more likely to let him influence our choices. However, we encounter the temptations of Satan in so many ways throughout each day, that I believe it is critical that we remember the words in 1 Peter – so that we can always be steadfast in recognizing the Evil One in our lives, and that so we may choose to reject the glamour of evil as he seeks to distract us from the Truth and Love of God.
Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us,
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Amen.
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