Robert Spitzer - Christ versus Satan in Our Daily Lives: The Cosmic Struggle Between Good and Evil

CHRIST VERSUS SATAN IN OUR DAILY LIVES

Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D.

The Cosmic Struggle
between Good and Evil

Volume One of the Trilogy:
Called Out of Darkness: Contending with Evil
through the Church, Virtue, and Prayer

IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the BibleSecond Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition) copyright 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Nihil Obstat : Reverend Joseph Son Nguyen, M.Div., MA, BCC, S.T.D. Censor Librorum

Imprimatur : +The Most Reverend Kevin J. Vann, J.C.D., O.D. Bishop, Diocese of Orange
August 28, 2020

Cover art:
Detail from The Three Crosses , etching by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1653.
Image in the public domain

Cover design by John Herreid

2020 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-62164-417-0 (PB)
ISBN 978-1-64229-137-7 (eBook)
Library of Congress Catalogue number 2020938409
Printed in the United States of America

In loving memory of my mother and father, who showed me the path out of darkness through faith and virtue .

And to my many brothers in the Society of Jesus who provided wisdom and modeled holiness through their faith and friendship, particularly Father Thomas King, S.J.; Father Gordon Moreland, S.J.; Father James Schall, S.J.; Father John Navone, S.J.; Father Joseph Koterski, S.J.; Father William Watson, S.J.; Father David Leigh, S.J.; and Father Patrick Conroy, S.J .

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, Gods own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light .

1 Peter 2:9

Part One:
The Reality of Divine Goodness and Spiritual Evil

Part Two:
Satans Tactics: From Temptation and
Deception to the Eight Deadly Sins

Appendix:
Scientifically Validated Miracles Associated with the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saints, and the Holy Eucharist

I am most grateful to Joan Jacoby, whose invaluable work brought mere thoughts into reality through her excellent editing suggestions and research. It is not easy to do research for a blind scholar, transcribe multiple copies of his dictation, clean up the manuscript, and endure his many edits, but she did so with great patience, care, competence, and contributiona true manifestation of her virtue and dedication.

I am also grateful to Kathy Wilmes and Gabriella Negrete for their input and considerable assistance in preparing the manuscript.

I would also like to express my appreciation to the board and benefactors of the Magis Institute who gave me the time and resources to complete this Trilogy on spiritual and moral conversion.

We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate standard consists solely of ones own ego and desires .

Pope Benedict XVI

The need to confront the dictatorship of relativism should not be underestimated, for as we shall see, it is leading not only to a decline in transcendence, faith, morality, and purpose in life, but also to an underestimation of the true dignity and destiny of every person, and ultimately to a decline in civility and civilization itself. In an interview with Peter Seewald, Pope Benedict nuanced this point further:

A large proportion of contemporary philosophies, in fact, consist of saying that man is not capable of truth. But viewed in that way, man would not be capable of ethical values, either. Then he would have no standards. Then he would only have to consider how he arranged things reasonably for himself, and then at any rate the opinion of the majority would be the only criterion that counted. History, however, has sufficiently demonstrated how destructive majorities can be, for instance, in systems such as Nazism and Marxism, all of which also stood against truth in particular.

Could the contemporary world degenerate into a culture of narcissism or worse? Might it affect not only individuals and cultures, but also religions and social institutions? Even a remote possibility of this scenario bodes ill for civilization and all mankind. Yet Jesus Christ has called us out of darkness and has given us the light of the Holy Spirit in the Church and her rich moral, spiritual, and intellectual wisdom. This Trilogy attempts to summarize the Churchs moral wisdom. In so doing, it complements my previously written Quartet Happiness, Suffering, and Transcendence , which summarizes her intellectual and spiritual wisdom. For the moment, suffice it to say that the more we know about the moral teaching of Jesus and the Church, the more we will understand ourselves, our true dignity, and our destinyand the more we understand this, the more we can act to restore the true freedom of Christ within the dictatorship of moral relativism.

I approach this work with great trepidation because I do not want to imply that I have achieved even a high state of moral conversion or perfectionfor I have not. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I have a long way to go on my moral journey. Nevertheless, I have come a considerable way because of the grace of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the Catholic Church, and the insights of the spiritual and moral masters presented in this Trilogyparticularly Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint John of the Cross, and Saint Teresa of Avila. Throughout the years, I have learned a great deal about spiritual and moral conversionand because I started out fairly low on the moral totem pole, struggled with many of the deadly sins, and resisted deeper moral conversion even in the midst of spiritual conversion, I thought I could provide some very helpful insights to people like myselfinsights into the reality of spiritual evil and how it works, the deadliness of the deadly sins, and most importantly, insights on how to fight temptation and grow in virtue. Though I am no saint, I have gleaned some important practical insights to help egocentric and obdurate personalitieslike myselfto follow Christ out of the darkness into the light. If I implied that I have arrived, I beg the readers forgiveness, because that would be both false and hypocritical.

Despite all this, I am making small progressive steps out of the darkness and have learned much about the power of graceand how to submit to it through suffering, faith, and prayer. I hope the insights, most of which are borrowed from truly great saints, will be useful to people struggling with spiritual darkness and evil through the light and grace of Jesus Christ.

I. How the Quartet Connects to the Trilogy:
Three Dimensions of Conversion

The combination of my previously written Quartet ( Happiness, Suffering, and Transcendence ) and this Trilogy ( Called Out of Darkness: Contending with Evil through the Church, Virtue, and Prayer ) is intended to help Christians negotiate the challenges of conversion in the contemporary world. Some of these challenges are the following:

Being immersed in a culture of Level One (sensual and materialistic) and Level Two (ego-comparative) happiness and purpose

Being confronted by skepticism about God, the soul, and Jesus

Being discouraged by suffering and Gods seeming involvement in it

Being undermined by the cultures critique of the Church and her moral teachings

Being inundated with violence and pornography on the Internet

Being pushed into the egocentric and often narcissistic world of social media

Being drawn into a permissive and often hypersexualized social milieu

Being desensitized to ethical principles and the promptings of conscience