Daniel 7:9-14
Revelation 12:7-12
Psalm 138:1-5
John 1:47-51

The Mind: a Heaven or a Hell

Have you seen the angels of God? Enter His gates. Go into His courts. First you will encounter angels. Ask the Blessed Virgin Mary. Ask Zechariah. Ask Isaiah and Daniel or St. John the Divine.

The Twelve were granted the great privilege of living near to a divine being yet did not see Him, really. We too have shared every detail of our lives with a divine being, yet most of us do not even acknowledge him, much less talk to him or press our hands together in prayers of thanksgiving. Yet, he is there, day and night. We have that on the word of God (Mt 18:10). And we have divine law, the words of Sacred Scripture:

More generally, a vast war dominates our planet. It is greater and more long-lived than any in recorded history, in continual progress for many thousands of years. Every Christian has given solemn vows at his or her baptism to engage in this war. At the point of His baptism, the Lord instantly went into the wilderness, the place par excellence of spiritual battle. Every vowed religious is plunged into its warfare simply by aspiring to holiness, for this provokes the Evil One who bitterly and jealously declares, "No one is holy!"

The Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, OCSO, has written,

Serving a Roman Catholic diocese in the United States years ago, the bishop told me that he had recently consented to receive a Franciscan hermitage into his care. He told me about his meeting with its one anchorite. "It must be wonderful," he said, "to be out there with nature and to hear the stillness of crickets and spring peepers as you fall asleep at night after Compline." "Oh no, Bishop," she replied. "It is nothing like that. A hermitage in the woods is a wilderness where you face the Evil One intentionally and directly." He told me that he could feel the weight and gravity of her words. And I looked in his face, and I could feel his sense of awe.

Spiritual warfare is well attested in the New Testament — certainly, in the Gospel of St. John, where we learn that the Evil One is "the ruler of this world" (John 14:30). And we read in the Pauline Correspondence,

The Where and What of this war fought between Heaven's angels and the fallen angels of earth, which is their domain, is well established. Less often discussed is Why. What is the reason and goal for this war? What are they fighting over? The answer is us. They are fighting over us. For what else on earth could possibly be of interest to God, and therefore to the Evil One? The earth has no ultimate value. The Psalmist teaches us that it is passing away, and we see its beauty disfigured more and more each day even in the space of our humble lifetimes. The only thing in our world that is permanent, of lasting beauty, and of enduring value to God is ourselves. He created us alone to be permanent and to be holy. He called us to be His adopted children. Manifestly, He goes to great lengths to bring us safely home to Himself.

We are the battlefield, and we are the prize. Merton's eyes on the desert signified his destiny. He follows Jesus into a wilderness, yes, to encounter God, as the people Israel did in their flight from Egypt (signifying fleshly life), but also to encounter the one who is determined that we must never see God.

Exactly where then is the battlefield? It is our minds and our souls. For fallen angels, whom we call demons, have no material dimension. They are forbidden from entering the Kingdom of Heaven. They have no traction in this world unless they dwell in us, for God created us to be Heaven-made-small, and we are free, to borrow Milton's words, to make a Hell of this Heaven (Paradise Lost I.265). We are the battlefield, and in the sovereignty of our personal freedoms, this is our fight to fight.

Like the figure Geppetto in the story, Pinnochio, God has aspired to make much more than wooden puppets. He does not care to be surrounded by wooden puppets lying dumb and lifeless upon a wall. Nor is our God fascinated by robots, no more than we are, finally, as we gaze into a storefront windows at Christmas season watching brightly colored figures move in limited repetition. No, our Creator's art is the marvel of life, which He alone is able to create. In order to bring about this marvel, He endows each human creature with an essential, however dangerous, power, which is the freedom of choice. And to crown this achievement, He has endowed the angels and ourselves with the one-of-a-kind gift of consciousness — self-awareness, the ability to envision and weigh moral consequences as He does. And, of course, this completes the meaning of Pinnochio, a story crafted to reflect on God's dilemma and the risks He has taken in making us. Nonetheless, it could never be otherwise, for the ability to weigh and choose, even to choose for things that God finds repugnant, is the only solution if we are to aspire to the other side, which to bear His Image in true likeness, not in lifeless, mocking dissimilarity.

We hear stories of people repudiating their Christian faith because of choices that humans have made: mass shootings, Nazi death camps, weapons of mass destruction. Certainly, these people do not believe themselves to be robots programmed by God. Nor do they believe that other people are. That's a "Twilight Zone" proposition. Even the ruinous hurricanes we have faced can be traced to the choices of men. We have known about the Greenhouse Effect for generations, and the temperature of ocean surfaces is not open to debate. The thermometer reads what it reads. The connection between warm oceans and spawned hurricanes is Meteorology 101. I was thrilled as a thoughtless and selfish high school student to see the new hurricane spawned in the Yucatan Peninsula where hurricanes are born. That's where the warm water is! The waves were coming! (as I devoted my young life to surfing).

Evil in the world and the damage it does is by human choice. God cannot nullify these injuries nor mass slaughters nor our dying planet without nullifying our dignity and freedom. If the twentieth century, with its world wars, death camps, and nuclear weapons, has taught us anything, it is that God will not enter history and take over the trajectories of our actions. No. He enters history by helping us to turn the tide against evil. And He gives His angels charge over us to protect and assist us in that good fight. Choosing for Him, Who alone is good, and choosing for His friendship, which consists in doing His commands (Jn 15:14), living by His rule of life, then Heaven, the Heaven He made within us, solidifies and shines with a radiance. This is what victory looks like in spiritual warfare: radiance. And we ourselves become a witness to goodness, which encourages others.

What does defeat look like? If we choose against God, disregarding His commands, if we should listen to demons who tell us there is no God, who tell us, "You only go around once!" then we begin to dim down. Have you seen the loss of light around us? It is not hard to notice! We lose our light. For the element and atmosphere of Hell is despair, the loss of hope, and the overwhelming weight of depression. We try to cheer ourselves through stimulation: drinking, drugs, pornography, compulsive eating, and finally we become grotesques of the Heaven God made us to be and to have. We become grostequely obese people, grotesquely leering people, and grotesquely alchoholic people. This is the world turned on its head, which is a formal definition of Hell and the goal of every demon: to turn Heaven upside down. Did you know that these are the liturgies of Hell? Not that I dabble in Satanism, but certainly I studied the occult in university. Satanist rituals all consist in turning Sacred Liturgies upside down. You see, demons are like viruses. They have no is-ness of their own. They must take over our bodies to live and thrive.

True, we were made to be permanent, but soon we realize that our permanence, our eternity, might be spent with them. Truly, misery loves company .... or is it envy, jealousy, and covetousness which describes the mind of a fallen angel? They hate humans because humans have Heaven. And we discover that the Final Judgment has been ours all along: each person will receive in the end the things that dominated his thoughts every day of his life.

If we believe that spiritual warfare is about angels and demons rushing into our lifeworld and changing the course of our world and personal histories, then we misunderstand. For surely God Himself would step in and change the world if that were His purpose. More locally, our Guardian Angels would have fought off every demonic invader and every unwholesome influence if our role was to be strictly passive. Instead, our angels remind us through the prick of conscience that evil approaches. And they touch us with a vision of Heaven when we fix our minds on good. But those who ignore conscience finally go off to see a psychologist to help them nullify the healthy apprehensions of guilt, working hard and spending their hard-earned money to provide what every fallen angel seeks: a home. It is called possession.

Does this shock you? Why should it? Do you not see possessed people all around you? Your husbands? Your wives? Your children? Alcoholism, drug addiction, and pornography dominating their lives. In many cases these people say they have lost control. And they have: have relinquished control to a fallen angel. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote the obvious when he said that habitual vice soon hardens into vicious behavior and finally to vicious life: viciousness. And this problem has manifestly become epidemic. Here is an excerpt from a recent article in the respected English newspaper, The Guardian:

During the early fourth century, when Christians had not yet accepted the Divine Person of the Holy Spirit as universal doctrine, St. Basil the Great wrote about the Holy Spirit's action in the world. He said that if we cover ourselves with mud, then good influences depart. The sunlike rays of the Holy Spirit cannot penetrate mud. You cannot go into a secret cave in your double-life and expect the sunlight to shine upon you. The foul stench of mud-covered life drives out divine influence, for holiness cannot dwell in the midst of moral stink. Nonetheless, when we take the smallest step to wash off a little patch of mud, the Holy Spirit's rays flood our souls with His power, and we begin to smell that stench too. We wash off more and more mud, and the Spirit's goodly rays increase.

Possession is no more than a soul who has surrendered control to evil. When we resist bad impulses, we act in a spiritual war that spans the globe. We act for God and His cause. Everything, of course, hangs in the balance.

Have you heard the story of the three little demons who are about to graduate into the world? They must first be examined by Satan. To the first he said, "And what will do you if I grant you your wings?"

And the demon said, "I will tell them that there is no Hell."

"Oh, that will never do!" Satan admonished him with a sour face. "For they have seen war. They have endured betrayal by those they loved best. They have seen the dregs of foulest sin. Depend on it, they know there's a Hell."

So he turned to the second little demon and asked, "What will you do if I loose you into the world?"

"I will tell them," he replied, "that there is no Heaven."

"What?! No Heaven?! My little imp, they have known true love. They have birthed children. They have lived under His soaring, blue skies! No Heaven?! Only fools believe there is no Heaven!"

Finally, he turned to the last little demon. "What will you do," he asked, "if I give you leave to haunt the world?"

In an air of confidence, he replied, "I will tell them that there is all the time in the world."

"That will do," said our Ancient Enemy. "That will do."

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.