Monastery of the Holy Cross

Archives for May 2026

The World, the Flesh, and the Devil: The First Precaution Against the Devil

John of the Cross offers us three precautions when engaging in spiritual warfare against the Devil. He is writing for contemplative religious, and so we will need to translate these into terms that will make sense in the world. But it probably is good to bear in mind his original teaching in its religious context, so that we don’t subtly weaken his points.

The first precaution is that we never take on any good work, outside of what is assigned under obedience and the obligations of our state. In translating this to the secular situation of the laity, it’s important to note that we cannot, for example, equate a boss, or a pastor, or even a spouse with a religious superior, to whom religious make an explicit vow of obedience.

Outside of the cloister, this then calls for discernment and an earnest effort through prayer and consultation to hear the Holy Spirit and have the docility to say yes. How does this work, practically?

First of all, the obligations of our state in life do present an analog between the cloister and the Christian life of the laity in the world. If we are students, we have an obligation to do our study, show up for class and the like. If we are parents, we have obligations to our spouses and children. If we are employed, we have obligations to our company and coworkers, and so on. If a new project will cause us to fail to meet these obligations, then it is probably not from God.

In cases that are unclear, Ignatian spirituality offers us a method for discernment. First, we must be clear about the likely outcomes of competing plans of action. Let me use an example from the late Cardinal George of blessed memory. When he returned from the conclave that elected Pope Francis, he spoke to a meeting of religious leaders and described the awesome responsibility of choosing, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the next successor to Peter.

The first question is, who are the candidates likely to be in the running? If there are, let’s say, three strong candidates, I need to ask myself: What are their strengths and weaknesses? What situations in the Church is each one likely to address? Are there situations in the Church that I find urgent, and how will each one meet these challenges?

The next step is the one that calls for prayer and deep faith. I need to imagine each person being chosen pope and imagine the likely good or lack thereof that will come of each candidate’s potential papacy. Only when I arrive at peace with the prospect of each candidate as pope, with all of his strengths, weaknesses, and personal experiences, will I be ready to vote. At that point, I will no longer be at the mercy of my own fears, whims, preferences and agendas. I can ask myself: which one of these options genuinely seems best for the Church? And answer it honestly.

So when we are presented with an initiative of some kind, if a colleague asks me to join in a new project, I need to be clear about what the likely effect will be of saying yes and of saying no. When I am ready to accept both options with peace in my heart, then I am ready to ask which one is best for me, for my family, for the Church.

There is one more piece to this process for those who do not have a religious superior. Are there persons in my life from whom I am obliged to seek counsel before a decision of this weight? Are there persons whose counsel I respect who could help me think through the decision? I said a moment ago that a spouse is not a religious superior. Spouses are not bound to obey each other in the way a religious obeys a superior. But married persons are bound to make important decisions only after consulting their spouses and listening to counsel openly, without trying to sway their response with emotional reactivity. The decision may still be yours to make, but it should take into consideration the counsel of the spouse. And if we trouble someone for advice, we should take it very seriously.

Another thought along these lines: when should I help someone? In the monastery, I’ve discovered that this isn’t as obvious as it sounds. Monks like to be helpful, but not everyone wants to be helped. Important questions include, “Has this person asked for my help, and am I willing to offer the help that he says that he needs?” “Is someone else supposed to be helping, and will my help be an implied criticism of someone in charge?” Helping someone can be delicate if there is an imbalance of power. Can I help in such a way that the person isn’t shamed by my magnanimousness? Can I do so as a true sister or brother rather than as a benefactor?

(Here is the Introduction to the whole series. Here are The First Precaution Against the World and The Second and Third Precautions Against the World. Here are Part 1 of the Introduction to Precautions Against the Flesh and Part 2 of the Introduction to Precautions Against the Flesh. Here are The First, Second and Third Precautions Against the Flesh. Here is The Introduction to Precautions Against the Devil.)

The World, the Flesh, and the Devil: Introduction to Precautions Against the Devil

By the sixteenth century, the era of Saint John of the Cross, the Church recognized three particular enemies of the soul: the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. While this formulation doesn’t appear explicitly until the high Middle Ages, the monastic Fathers wrote about spiritual warfare from a similar set of considerations. Their view of the soul was based on the three appetites or desires that move us to act. The lowest, the concupiscible, is our desire for bodily life and pleasure. The corruption of this desire is what Saint John calls the Flesh. He also says that the attacks against by the Flesh are the most tenacious and continue as long as the old Man survives in us. This comports well with what the monks of old warned their disciples, that sexual desire and the desire for inordinate eating will be temptations to the end of our lives for most of us.

The virtues that help us to govern these desires are especially temperance and courage.

More noble than the concupiscible desires are the irascible desires, which we normally think of as related to emotions like anger and sadness. We desire safety, honor, recognition, and the freedom to act, and when these are thwarted we are tempted to lash out in anger or grow sullen and cynical. These desires are nobler because they relate our souls to the world around us, rather than simply to our own bodies. The corruption of these desires is what John calls the World. He says that these are the simplest temptations to vanquish.

The virtues that we need to cultivate to fight back against the World are courage and especially justice.

The most difficult temptations to understand arise from the Devil, and these attack the intellect and will. The will is our “intellectual appetite,” meaning it is what we want to do after we’ve weighed options and made a decision. The vice that is especially dangerous here is pride, which is the vice that characterizes the Devil himself. The cardinal virtue that needs cultivating in this case is prudence. The Church’s own reflection on the Incarnation helps us to see the importance of the dispositions of humility and obedience.  These two stances, modeled for us by Christ Himself, show us how to develop a truly Christian prudence, one that can fight back against the Devil’s temptations.

What are these temptations? The Devil wants us to misjudge, to choose what is evil disguised as good. In other words, we are likely to be led astray by projects that appear to be good, but in fact weaken our docility to God and to the obligations attached to our state of life. This is connected to pride because we often choose tasks with an unrealistic view of our own ability to bring them to a good completion. We may seek out projects that will make us appear more virtuous to others than we are, rather than choosing a less spectacular path that leads to genuine virtue.

John of the Cross offers us three precautions when engaging in spiritual warfare against the Devil. He is writing for contemplative religious, and so we will need to translate these into terms that will make sense in the world. But it probably is good to bear in mind his original teaching in its religious context, so that we don’t subtly weaken his points.

(Here is the Introduction to the whole series. Here are The First Precaution Against the World and The Second and Third Precautions Against the World. Here are Part 1 of the Introduction to Precautions Against the Flesh and Part 2 of the Introduction to Precautions Against the Flesh. Here are The First, Second and Third Precautions Against the Flesh.)

The Word, the Flesh, and the Devil: The First, Second and Third Precautions Against the Flesh

(Here is the Introduction to the whole series. Here are The First Precaution Against the World and The Second and Third Precautions Against the World. Here are Part 1 of the Introduction to Precautions Against the Flesh and Part 2 of the Introduction to Precautions Against the Flesh.)

Now we turn again to Saint John of the Cross. In the autumn, I mentioned that he had written a short work on our theme for a new Carmelite convent. So he is writing to women who would presumably already be committed to a program of celibate chastity, regular and difficult fasting, and other typical deprivations associated with religious life. But I also believe that what he has to say will be very much of use to persons in the world.

In his first precaution against the flesh, John asserts that every one of my religious brothers and sisters was sent by God to fashion me, as a sculptor fashions a sculpture by blows. Unkind actions, words and gestures cause me pain, but if I see this as purposed by God, I can remain submissive under these treatments. He believes that we will not make headway against sensuality if we are not able to bear these difficulties with patience.

To translate this into the secular state, I think that we can say that, in any line of work that we have undertaken to serve God, our first presumption should be that the difficulties caused by others in that line of work can be borne for just this purpose. We can to learn to bear with irritation, annoyance, pain and the like. Granted, these areas of work do not come with the same guarantee that religious vows are meant to safeguard. Still, bearing the weakness of body and character of those whom God gives us in our walks of life will go a long way to purifying us of self-regard and a lazy selfishness.

John’s second precaution is that, if a work is in the service of God, we should not give it up when it ceases to bring us satisfaction or pleasure. The liturgy, keeping the accounts, cooking, whatever it is. We should learn to do these things apart from whatever pleasure we might expect from them.

This, again, will happen in any line of work. There will come a time when it no longer pleases. The world today urges us to move on rather than accepting the possible benefits of tedium and self-conquest. Again, I am not saying that there will never come a time when the problems associated with your work will not be a good reason to look for another job. But we can first use that boredom and nuisance for spiritual gain.

What derives from this is his last precaution, that we should no longer hope for pleasant feelings in lectio divina, in the liturgy, in any prayer or spiritual exercise that we undertake. Indeed, when they bring bitterness, we should embrace the difficulty, what Benedict would call the dura et aspera.

John’s suggestions seem timely in our world today. The world is geared toward maximizing choice, which usually means maximizing pleasure and comfort, avoiding anything we find inconvenient or annoying. We are frequently told that authenticity requires giving in to any and all desires and curiosities, regardless of whether the kind of instability this invites does real damage to our character. It is a sign of the loss of a larger Christian worldview, centered on the Cross and the hard work of redemption. This season is an opportunity to re-engage in recapturing the world for Christ beginning with our own hearts.

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter

Every human being that ever lived was created for eternity with the God of infinite love. This is part of the Good News that Christians need to share with the world. And that’s because without the Gospel, this infinite longing that we have is easily converted into infinite suffering. Why is this? Because we seek to satisfy this longing with finite things. These can bring us a certain amount of joy, temporary satisfaction and comfort, but soon we begin longing again. As finite creatures ourselves, we cannot obtain the infinite on our own. As Cistercian Father Michael Casey has put it, seeking transcendence sounds great until you realize that it leaves you perpetually out of your own depth.

There are several common secular solutions to this human dilemma, our desire for transcendence and our utter inability to achieve it. There is the tragic option, to recognize the longing as real, and our intimations of transcendence are real. This is the Stoic or philosophical solution. The Stoic purifies his mind and heart and may even rejoice at the beauty of truth. But he knows that eventually it all comes to an end and he must surrender himself to death. His is a life without hope.

To such persons, Jesus says, “I am the Way. Be baptized into my Body, and I will carry you to heaven, to the eternal dwelling with My Father. For there are indeed many dwelling places there, and there is one for you. You cannot reach it on your own, but I have been sent by the Father to be the bridge, the Mediator. No one can come to the Father except through Me, and here I am, and I offer myself to you in the Bread of eternal salvation.”

This is the Way of Hope.

There is a second solution, that of transhumanism, as we call it today. Transhumanists want to use human intelligence and creativity to crack the code of human morality, to rewrite our genetics to reverse aging, to live forever in this world with no need of God. There is something desperate about this approach, and oddly, something anti-human, since to be human simply is to be a finite creature. Nor will it truly address the desire for transcendence, for the transhumanist will only extend biological life, remaining very much a human being, and therefore mortal, prone to accidents and the like.

To these persons, Jesus says, “I am the Truth. Before my Incarnation, you desired to be like God, but because you did not know the truth about yourselves, you attempted to grasp at divinity by eating of the forbidden fruit. In my Body, see the Truth of humanity, that your nature is compatible with the divine. This Truth unlocks every other truth, explains the universe, even the invisible world of spirits. The Truth is that you are my most precious creature. If only you would trust in me, you would have more than you even know how to desire.”

This is Truth that is sought by Faith.

There is a third attempt to deal with the aspiration for transcendence. I will call this strategy the aesthetic. This one appealed to me when I was younger because I was a musician. Several times in performance, I had the sense of being lifted up into some different realm of experience. Time slowed down. Interestingly, after those performances, I discovered that my fellow musicians had a similar experience, expressed in similar ways. There was a sense that we lived for those experiences, an experience of tranquility amidst change, a sensation of harmony with not only the other musicians, but with the audience and with nature itself. It was a feeling of being unusually alive.

But inevitably, the music ended. We would pack up our instruments and go home, rejuvenated for a while. We could perform the same piece a few days later with no particular effect. The poet and the prophet see the beyond and report it to the rest of us. If only we had the strength and acuity to reach it!

To these Jesus says, “I am the Life. Receive Me and receive true life, a spring of water welling up to eternal life. You have seen traces of Me in all things beautiful in all things harmonious, but I have come to give you Myself, the Life that can never be taken away, that never grows weary or dull.”

This is the Life of Love.

Whatever causes us restlessness is a sign of our thirst for God. Let us then take to heart what Christ is teaching us today: to know Him as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Jesus, in rising from the dead and ascending to the Father has opened up a Way for us to cross over to our true homeland. Not only that, but in sending us the Holy Spirit, He has opened the eyes of our minds and hearts to see the Truth of all things, a Truth that had been obscured by human sin. And this Spirit is also the Giver of Life, Who desires to be the spark and inspiration of all that we do, that the True Transcendent Life of Christ may shine through our words and actions and bring many others to the rest that only God can give.

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