Spiritual Warfare and the Power of Christ

Fr. Cliff Ermatinger came to the Diocese of Tucson to speak to clergy and laity about spiritual warfare, the occult, and the power of Christ. The following text is adapted directly from Fr. Cliff Ermatinger’s presentation.

We are Spiritual Beings Made for Worship

As our culture retracts and becomes more distant from Christ, we must remember that we are spiritual beings as well as physical. Saying ‘I’m spiritual but not religious’ is like saying ‘I’m physical but I don’t take showers.’ We are all spiritual by nature and we are all physical by nature. We are body and soul. But we are also made to be religious; we are made for worship. That is something that we can’t deny. One of the problems with the Enlightenment is that it was the beginning of atheism in which the Enlightenment thinkers wanted to make God so transcendent, so distant from our experience, that it would make our moral lives, to a certain extent, independent of His will. They were trying to put God in a corner. But that doesn’t last long. If we’re made for worship, then we’re going to find some other way to worship.

How can we worship Him if we live outside of His law, outside of His will? It’s schizophrenic to think that I can live a sinful life and also please God in my worship. It doesn’t work. 

Where Did This Interior Division Begin?

It all begins in the beginning: with the Fall of Adam and Eve. In the book of Genesis, we see the first cracks in this dialogue between Satan and Eve. We see the substance of just about every temptation. We are given a choice of if we want to continue in the dialogue. There’s a choice. Eve chose to continue the dialogue with Satan, rather than dismiss it. Satan puts forward the question as a prohibition that questions our own dignity: “You’re old enough. You should be able to eat this.” She knows what God’s will is, but she starts to consider the fruit and look at it: she saw that it was pleasing to the eye; it tasted good; it gave knowledge. She was looking at all the reasons why this is enticing. The Devil promised, “If you eat this, you will be like gods; you will be divine.” 

This is called superstition: when there is disproportion between cause and effect. When you get a divine effect from a less-than-divine cause, that’s called superstition. This was the first act of superstition. Our first parents came up with this problem at the Devil’s behest. 

Adam and Eve were created in the state of grace. Actual Grace is given to us in a moment to help us do what we’re supposed to do. The Angels were also created in a state of grace with Actual Grace. A third of them chose not to follow God’s will and were condemned. They became demons. But they were created good.

Saint Thomas Aquinas tells us that original sin has brought about Four Wounds: Mortality, Disordered Passions, Darkened Intellect, and Proclivity to Malice.

Original Sin was the original act of superstition. These wounds are going to be the space/place that the evil one is going to use to promote His agenda: false worship in the form of superstition, magic, idolatry, etc.

For all of the Wounds, the Devil wants to promote his own agenda. Because we have these wounds, we have a tendency to look for solutions outside of God’s will. But for each of the wounds, Our Lord has a response. There is a Demonic Counterfeit and a Divine Remedy for each one of the wounds.  

Following is a description of each of the Four Wounds as well as the Demonic Counterfeit and the Divine Remedy for each.    

The Four Wounds

1) Mortality

Death is the divorce of body and soul. 

Demonic Counterfeit:
We have a natural apprehension of death. As we become more godless, we build more gyms and drug stores. Being in comfort and health really becomes a new religion that will let us down some day. Mortality is not a problem, just a situation. The attempts to achieve the fountain of youth or everlasting life – they always fail. The Devil cannot prevent death. There is a certain superstition and idolatry in this desire for eternal life through means that are not given to us by Our Lord.

Divine Remedy:
Our Lord promises us Eternal Life through Baptism, in the Eucharist, in Confession. He gives us the means – the real means – to Eternal Life. It’s not some prolongation of this existence; it’s a different mode of existence. 
 

2) Disordered Passions, Concupiscence

Where the body and the soul meet are our emotions and feelings. Our passions are blind; they aren’t evil but they’re blind. I have reason to mediate my feelings. Feelings are morally neutral. Our passions are there for our survival. Anger is there to protect ourselves. 

Concupiscence is those passions that address the body: food tastes good; eat; procreate. The problem with these things is that they want to get out of line. The passions want to take on a life of their own. When we give our passions and emotions free reign, they take over. 

Think of the real epidemic in this country – the virus of internet porn – and how it exploits the passion of Concupiscence. Just imagine how different your life would be if you use all of that time you spend looking at unworthy images – spend all that time in Adoration and prayer. Don’t you think your life would be a bit different? You are made to worship, you are made to be a man or woman of prayer. This passion wants to compete if we don’t keep our passions reigned in and if we don’t orient them towards Our Lord. Our narrative must become, “I love Him infinitely more than this passion. I give Him all my feelings.” Our passions aren’t evil but they will take upon themselves a life of their own and demand totality, much like true worship demands totality. We can’t parse out our faith, hope, and charity – the theological virtues which also demand totality. We have to moderate all the other moral virtues. Relationships and love demand totality. Our Lord wants that from us. 

Demonic Counterfeit:
Satan’s counterfeit is for us to make idols of our passions. All the time and attention people give to whatever their obsession or addiction is: drugs, alcohol, sex, clothing – it doesn’t have to be something that is in itself bad. If I’m giving this more attention than our Lord, there’s a problem there. If I think about something more than God, there’s a problem there. 

Divine Remedy:
We were given a heart and a mind to love the Lord and know Him in this life, and this life is very short. This is our only opportunity to merit salvation. Virtues make us whole; vices fragment us and break us apart. Vice breaks things down. Virtue brings about our cohesion. Virtue breaks the chain.

In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5), Jesus discusses how the law said, “don’t kill or you’ll answer to the tribunal for judgment. But I tell you if you are angry with your brother (to be angry as a habitual state) and on your way to the Temple, first be reconciled with your brother and then go to the Temple and make your offering.” Why? Because that’s an obstacle to worship. If I’m cultivating anger, if I am an angry person, it closes my heart off from the Lord and I create a false idol of anger. 

If there’s somebody I haven’t forgiven, I can’t have any union with Christ. When we say the Our Father, we condition our Lord’s mercy – forgive us as we forgive others – that’s audacious. So, if there’s someone I haven’t forgiven, I am closing myself off from God’s mercy. It becomes a false idol, and the Devil is laughing.

You can’t worship two masters; you have to make a choice. Passions demand totality. If we’re serving our passions, we aren’t serving Our Lord. Don’t dismiss the passions – don’t pretend they’re not there – don’t squash them. But channel our passions – give them to our Lord. Love Him with all our heart, mind, and soul – that involves our passions. We are not essentially evil. The Catholic Church has never and will never teach that we are evil.

Our Lord gives us grace. When I’m in a state of grace, I have infused virtues. Through the presence of the Holy Spirit in my soul, my passions can become the cause of my holiness through channeling them towards Our Lord. What happens? Infused grace reaches down to the most base passions I have. 

Temptations don’t leave us the same; either we fall into temptation, or we grow in virtue. Temptations are opportunities for holiness. This is how our Lord responds to disordered passions. Those who allow their passions to be the pathway to their holiness – the martyrs are the greatest examples of this – rather than offending Our Lord, they give their lives for the Lord. 
 

3) Darkened Intellect

We don’t see with the original clarity that Adam and Eve had. 

Demonic Counterfeit:
Psychic readings, palm readings, ouija boards, tarot cards, divination – “I want to know the future, if my spouse is cheating on me.” What is behind all magic, divination, idolatry? Fear. Something that I don’t control. When you look at pagan religions, that’s really the underlying principle – “I’m afraid of these gods because I’m like a puppet to them.” So they sacrifice to the gods. What’s behind all these false religions? Manipulation. “If I do this, I will force the gods to do that.” This is the demonic counterfeit of worship. Manipulate the laws of nature, and hope it works.

Divine Remedy:
There is a universal law that none of us voted for called Natural Law. It’s written on our hearts. Its most universal expression is ‘do good and avoid evil.’ This natural law is also something that we find in every culture, people, and age. There are things that you don’t do, like theft or killing. That is part of Natural Law. Once we reach the age of reason, we are responsible for our choices. 

The priest at Mass acts In Persona Christi – it’s not the priest manipulating laws or gods. It is God Himself doing it through the priest for our benefit. It’s real and effective. That’s why we really offend God when we go to Confession then continue to dwell on our sins – you’re questioning God’s mercy and the efficacy of His word. God forgave you.

God also gave us Revelation, what He revealed to us through the Sacred Scriptures. But that’s not all. He also gave us Tradition, Liturgy, and the Magisterium – the official teaching office the Church to interpret the content of tradition and scripture. And that’s not all.

We also receive something very personal: the Light of Faith, the ability to understand truths in as much as I am in a State of Grace, living a life of prayer, Sacraments, and virtue. Everything we believe as Catholics is right there in the Catechism. We put everything on the table. Everyone has access to it; there are no secret handshakes. Catholicism is an exoteric religion. 

Light of Faith means that we do not always understand everything but to accept it, and to better understand things. An extreme case was Edith Stein (St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross). She read the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila and had an overnight conversion. She had infused knowledge. Light of Faith is a divine help to help us to accept the concept of faith and then to approach it with our intellect to better understand it. 

Msgr. Raul Treviso’s grandmother said, “I’m not a Catholic because I believe in somebody else’s grace or their sins. I believe because of what our Lord teaches.” That’s the definition of faith.

Our Lord gives the Bread of Life discourse in John 6 and all those people walk away. Peter said, “Where else would we go? You have the words of everlasting life.” That’s the definition of Faith. “I don’t understand everything you said, but I understand who you are. I might not understand everything in the moment, but it comes.” Light of Faith comes with time and experience – experience of Our Lord in prayer, virtue, and Sacramental life – intimate experience. That’s how the Lord addresses the wound of our darkened intellect.
 

4) Proclivity to Malice

This is a tendency to do bad things. It doesn’t mean we’re going to do them, but we have a tendency.

Demonic Counterfeit:
Witchcraft in the area of curses. All witchcraft is black – none of it is acceptable. There are varying degrees of evil. The worst kind of witchcraft is the kind that tries to harm someone else. This is carried out as a mockery of our Sacramental system. The Church has blessings; they have curses. We have Sacramentals (medals, crucifixes); they have physical objects that are cursed. Satanists follow the Church Liturgical calendar. We have the Sacrifice of the Mass, and they have the Black Mass. We have Religious Life and Baptism; they have consecration to Satan. Everything they do is a mockery of what Christ gave the Church. 

Divine Remedy:
The Church gives us true worship, the Sacramental system, which is God at work in the Sacraments, in our prayers, and blessings. The greatest prayers we can have are for the salvation of souls – this is the greatest act of charity that we can do. 

If we understand the principle that superstition is the attempt to achieve a divine effect from a less-than-divine cause, it’s going to help us understand things. We don’t use non-Catholic symbols – those are outside of the Catholic church. We have a rich variety of symbols and sacramentals and prayers. We don’t have to go looking for them. 

There are so many in-roads of superstition and the occult that it becomes main-stream. And it has deeper in-roads the farther away our society gets from true worship and our Lord and the mind of Christ. If we understand the principles, it’s a lot easier to see the expression of it. These things don’t have any attraction for us. We see them for what they really are.
 

A Note On Sin

Asking ourselves, “Is this a sin?” is a valid question but that shouldn’t be the first question that we ask. The first question that we’ve got to ask is, “Is this good? Does this give God glory?” – when that is what directs our choices, “Does this please you, Lord?” – that’s a lot easier to answer. It changes everything. We leave off the schizophrenic life between sinning and Sacraments – that’s tiring because we’re serving several Masters. My entire life is not oriented towards God if I’m falling into grave sin, if my life outside of Mass and prayer and Sacraments doesn’t reflect that. The Mass is called the Source and Summit of our faith. I receive the Eucharist and I live in consequence of the Eucharist. That ought to direct my life, words, actions.  We are living in a deep relationship with Christ.
 

Ordinary Means of Salvation

There are three ordinary means for salvation: Sacraments, Prayer, and Virtue. When we have these three things going, we’ve got Heaven won.

1.    Sacraments keep us in a state of grace.
2.    Prayer cultivates my relationship with Christ.
3.    Virtue orders all of my relations with others, God, and myself.

St. Teresa of Avila gives us nine degrees of prayer. The first degree of prayer is Vocal Prayer: Rosary and devotions. The second degree of prayer is Meditation and Mental Prayer – this is the way out for porn-addicts and people who’ve been involved with Eastern religious practices like yoga, tai chi, centering prayer, etc. People develop an addiction to those things but the more they dedicate time to Mental Prayer: Lectio Divina, meditating on the Scripture of the day and allowing it to seep into their minds and down into their hearts – all of a sudden, the Lord begins to reappropriate our imagination and affections, and our relationship with Him becomes ordered.

Your participation in Mass and Communion is going to be fortified by Confession and fed by your mental prayer. We need our daily devotions and Rosaries but mental prayer is going to be the key to holiness. All of the popes who have spoken about prayer have talked about the importance of mental prayer. 

Catholic Meditation, Lectio Divina, is not an emptying of the mind like it is in Eastern practices; it is a stilling of the mind so that I can think about Christ and the Truth of faith. Let that work on my mind and heart. I love Him. I quiet myself so I can have a conversation with my beloved. Spending time with my beloved, the spouse of my soul, my best friend.