Sunday, June 04, 2006
WORDS FROM ST. TERESA OF AVILA
The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D., and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D., vol. I, 2d ed., as quoted by Fr. Gabriel Amorth in An Exorcist Tells His Story:
How frightened these devils make us because we want to be frightened through other attachments to honors, property, and delights! It is then that they do us great harm, when they are joined with us who loving and desiring what we ought to abhor are in contradiction with ourselves. For we make them fight against us with our own very weapons, handing over to them what we need for our own defense. This is a great pity. But if we abhor all for God and we embrace the cross and try truly to serve God, the devil will flee these truths like the plague. He is a friend of lies, and is the lie itself. He will make no pact with anyone who walks in truth. When he sees the intellect darkened, he subtly helps to blind the eyes. For if he sees people already blind by the fact that they place their trust in vain things (and so vain that these worldly things become like children's games), he concludes that they are then children, treats them as such, and dares to fight with them not once but many times. (p. 65)
