The Dark Shadow Of Lucifer

Lucifer (aka Satan) has been in the news lately.

Well, lets take a look at him.

There is currently, for the first time ever, a couple in the process of being made saints. The French intellectual married couple, Jacques and Raissa Maritain are currently in the beatification process. They met in 1900 in Paris. She was a Russian Jewish emigre. Together they searched for truth, the truth of God. They considered themselves atheists for a while and considered committing suicide together, until they discovered St. Thomas Aquinas. They then both converted to Roman Catholicism. In 1929, in the midst of a European rise of fascism/totalitarianism/authoritarianism (namely, Stalin in the USSR, Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, and Franco in Spain), she wrote an essay called The Prince of This World. In it she writes:

“Lucifer has cast the strong though invisible net of illusion upon us. He makes one love the passing moment above eternity, uncertainty above truth. He persuades us that we can only love creatures by making Gods of them. He lulls us to sleep (and he interprets our dreams); he makes us work. He then does the spirit of man brood over stagnant waters. Not the least of the devil’s victories is to have convinced artists and poets that he is their necessary, inevitable collaborator and the guardian of their greatness. Grant him that, and soon you will grant him that Christianity is unpracticable. Thus does he reign in this world.”

Now clearly, you do not have to believe in the devil to understand the philosophical worth of what is being said in this essay. There is darkness, there is evil…even if you only consider it as the absence of light and the absence of love. The world is immersed in darkness on many levels: war, terrorism, genocide, and hatred of any faces. Even here in the U.S. we are purposely being thrown at each other in unnecessary class warfare, religious freedoms are being abolished by our government and we are being told that Jesus wants our taxes raised. Not pretty, for sure. But, and of this I am sure—light and love will prevail, and the darkness (including its Prince, if in fact he does exist) will be defeated. Keep the faith.

Godspeed!