Handle the "Bad News" Like a Desert Father (or Mother)

 Controversy and negativity sell. 

A couple of weeks ago I was browsing an article by Catholic apologist David Armstrong. In it he states that, for once, he agrees with the editor of a certain "Catholic news" outlet, with whom he is known to be almost continually at odds.

What do they agree on?

We Catholics have become addicted to the "bad news" going on in the Church and in the world.

As evidence, the editor of this news outlet cited a social media statistic from his own platform: An uplifting article they'd published about Saint Marianne Cope got only 27 shares; but when he published a "snarky" (the publisher's word) post about Cardinal Wuerl's retirement income, the post was immediately shared 500 times.

Negativity's Damaging Effects

Today we’ve become increasingly anxious to read about, hear, or discover the latest scandal in the Church, rather than delve deeper into the great mystery of God’s love and mercy. 

It's become not just acceptable, but encouraged and expected among many Catholic intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals to decry “ambiguity,” “heresy,” or “heterodoxy” almost any time the Pope or an ill-favored bishop or priest opens his mouth.

But have we stopped to consider the damaging effect this attitude is having on our personal spiritual lives, as well as on our ability to witness to the truth of the Catholic Faith? 

At one point in time, feeling confused, dejected, anxious, and mistrustful of Christ's Church because of the barrage of negativity I was consuming from certain "Catholic news" sources, I had to stop and ask myself: "What good is this doing for my soul to be constantly immersed in the filth that’s going on in the Church?"

I was reminded of, and convicted by, the words of a priest I'd heard speak when I was a child: “If you bathe in a tub of manure, you might come out smelling kinda funny.”

Today that “manure” is covered over with a veneer of Catholicism that purports to be “fighting for the Faith,” “defending the Faith,” “proclaiming the truth.” Well here's the harsh truth of it: Often what gets published is little more than detraction, slander, and gossip. Reading it does your soul no good.

It took some time, but I finally realized (thanks in large part to my insightful wife) that, thanks to my continual immersion the smelly mire of today's controversies, my heart and mind had become confused. I was anxious and had grown angry and mistrustful. I'd become hesitant to submit myself to the rule of humility through obedience to the authorities God has placed over me in the Church.

And I know I'm not alone in this.

A friend of mine, still in the early stages of his the faith-journey, admitted his own confusion. He confessed that he isn’t sure where to turn when it comes to seeking the truth. He wants the truth. He longs for the truth. And yet he’s been so steeped in the “bad news” that the Good News has been obscured for him. 

I have no doubt that’s true of most people out there today.

How the Desert Fathers Dealt with
the "Bad News" of Their Day

In his biography of Saint Antony of Egypt, Saint Athanasius had this to say about Saint Antony's dealings with heretics:

He never took count at all of the other heresies, and even exhorted every man to withdraw himself from them. He used to say, “Neither in the discussion of them nor in their results is there any advantage.” (Paradise of the Holy Fathers, pg. 63)

Read that last line again...

"Neither in the discussion of them nor in their results is there any advantage."

Not only are we wasting our time by reading or listening to the garbage spewed in much of the so-called "Catholic news" world today, but we're even harming ourselves spiritually. 

It really does us no good to “know” about the latest scandal in the Church, or what some heterodox person is saying about some topic or other. Our time would be better spent immersing ourselves in the Scriptures, the Catechism, and the lives and writings of the saints. 

It's amazing the peace and clarity that comes when we cut the noise out of our lives. Three months ago, inspired by what I'd been reading in the Desert Fathers, I cut out all my consumption of the Catholic news media and focused my attention instead on prayer, the Scriptures, and the Desert Fathers. If you're feeling anxious, angry, and/or confused about the state of the Church today, I encourage you to do the same. 

Church teaching is remarkably clear, for those of us who take the time to read and study the Scriptures and the Catechism. It’s there for you to discover. Why waste your time with those who contradict or at least distort the clear teachings of the Church? And why waste your time with those who aren’t proclaiming the truth in love, but are instead sowing the seeds of confusion, anger, and discord? 

Be on your guard.

Here’s where the wisdom of the Desert Fathers really comes into play for us lay people. There’s no reason for us to get entangled in the mess of today’s structural Church. That's Christ's mess to deal with. So let Him deal with it.

You want to know what the actually Church teaches about the hot-button issues of today? 

It’s simple. 

Read the Bible. Read the Catechism. Read the lives of the saints and their writings.

But most importantly, don’t just read for information. Read for formation. Don’t read to satisfy your curiosity. Read in order to convert/transform your life. Read in order to imitate, or rather to emulate.

Sure we may not be able to imitate everything in the lives of the saints, but we can allow their lives to inform how we live ours. We can look to their example and their teaching, and we can then use that to inform how we respond to situations in our own lives and inform how we live out our own calling by God.

If you're feeling overwhelmed and confused by the "bad news" today, then turn your attention instead to the Good News. That's what Christ came to proclaim to us, after all.

How the Devils Use Bad News and Prophecies

How many times they [the devils] inform me beforehand concerning the flood of the Nile... and how many times did I say to them, "And, as for you, what have you?" I used to say to them, "I have no need to learn these things from you." - Saint Athanasius the Great (Paradise of the Holy Fathers, Vol. 1, pg. 41-42)

I find great comfort in these words from Saint Athanasius.

So often lately I've watched people worry about signs and prophecies that we're living in the end times. I can't count the number of times I've heard someone refer to the "illumination of consciences," or referred to the COVID vaccine or some other development as "the mark of the beast," or the third "secret" of Fatima, or prophecies about there begin two popes at once... The list goes on and on.

But what's the purpose of being so caught up in all these prophecies?

Does it really serve the good of my soul or your soul to know these things, or is it just disturbing our spiritual peace?

The truth is... 

end-time prophecies don't matter.

We all know the world is going to end eventually.

Either the actual end of the world comes, or at least my own personal end will come. It does none of us any good to run around like scared little rabbits worrying about when that end will be.

So let's move on with life, live like Christians, pray, fast, do works of charity and mercy.

I have a favorite line in Safro (Morning Prayer) of the Maronite Divine Office: "May our minds be focused on your love."

This was the great concern of Saint Antony the Great and the other Desert Fathers: To keep their minds and hearts so focused and intent on God's love and their hope in him that there was no room for the devils to stir up fear and anxiety and distract them from "the one thing necessary.

Shortly after the above quote, Saint Antony says:

If, however, the evil ones find us in the love of Christ, and meditating continually on the hope of that which is to come, and thinking thoughts concerning the commandments of our Lord, and believing that the kingdom and dominion are His, and that the evil one has neither opportunity nor power to resist the might of the Cross, if, I say, the evil one shall find any believing man in this state of mind when he draws near to him, at that very moment he will remove himself from him to a distance. - Paradise, Vol. 1, pg. 44-45)

It's so simple...

Live in the love of Christ. Meditate on the Commandments and on your hope of salvation in Christ. Surrender yourself totally into God's all-powerful hands. His is the victory. What is there to fear?

Sure there's a lot of bad stuff going on in the world. That's nothing new. And if we new just a little Church history, we'd quickly see that even the bad stuff going on in the Church is nothing new. Jesus Himself told us to expect such things to happen.

Personally, I think the Desert Fathers would warn us that the devil is using end-times and doomsday prophecies to distract us from the love of God and neighbor, and to take our focus off of living in God's love.

It's like when Peter attempted to walk on water. So long as his eyes were fix on Jesus, he was able to walk atop the waves. But as soon as he started worrying over the wind and the waves, those very powers started dragging him down.

Are you allowing the "wind and waves" of doomsday prophecies, scandals, and bad news to distract you from Christ's love and drag you down? Are you giving power over to the world to take your mind off the love of Christ?

I know I sure do from time to time.

But honestly ask yourself: Who has more power? The world? The devils? Or God, the Creator of all; the Omnipotent (All Powerful One)?

Perhaps a good solution to the anxiety caused by all the bad news and doomsday prophecies is to take our eyes off of it, and refocus on our minds on the love of Christ. One thing I've done lately that has proven very helpful is to cease my consumption of even Catholic news media, and severely limit what podcasts I listen to.

If you're feeling anxious about the state of the Church and/or the world, and if you're worried about the end times, try staying away from the news and instead praying through the Good News!

4 Insights on the Demonic from Saint Athanasius

I’ve never understood certain sectors of Christianity and their fascination (dare I say "obsession") with the demonic. They insist that priests need to preach “fire and brimstone,” that we need “more homilies on sin and hell,” and that people need to be reminded of the power of the devil so that they learn to fear him. 

To me that’s always come across as a sick fascination and a morbid insistence. 

Personally, I think that many people are already living some form of their own personal hell. They don't need constant reminders of hell's reality, but simply a poignant reminder that opens their eyes to the hell already manifest in their own lives, and the devious nature of hells minions.

A lot of folks in this particular sector of Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, have a very wrong understanding of the nature of the devils and their so-called "power." Sadly I think this wrong understanding is rather widespread. 

So how should we understand the devils and their role in our spiritual warfare?

In his wonderful Life of Saint Anthony, as contained in the Syriac collection Paradise of the Holy Fathers, Saint Athanasius has some remarkable insights on the nature of the devils and their so-called "power" that I think are very relevant for our own times. (cf. pgs. 32-41 of PHF for reference)

In this post I won't quote from the Life of Saint Anthony just yet. But I will be alluding to it. I'll pull out specific quotes and dig into them deeper in future posts.

First: Why the devils hate you?

Saint Athanasius starts this section of his biography of Saint Anthony by explaining why the devils hate man, and why they are always seeking to trip us up. 

The devils, he reminds us, were once angels of light — because God doesn’t create anything evil. These angels rebelled against God’s will, and were thus cast from heaven. 

When cast from heaven, they came to mingle among men in the created world in order to trip us up. Why? The simple answer Saint Athanasius gives is envy.

Look at that again. The devils hate us and seek to trip us up (turn us from God) because they envy us!

The devils are envious of mankind because we are destined for the very heavenly glory that they themselves lost. We are destined for that very place they were cast out of, and they don’t want to see us sitting on the thrones of glory they themselves rejected.

Second: Are the devils powerful?

Saint Athanasius (and later the other Desert Fathers) is insistent that the devils are powerless: They can do nothing on their own. 

If they’re given any power over us to tempt us (or better put, to test us [because love must undergo tests in order to be proven true]), that power is given over to them by God, and is restrained by God so that they're unable to harm us in the depths of our hearts. They're also restrained by the duration of the test — i.e. God doesn't allow them to tempt/test us indefinitely. 

The devils can make a lot of noise and stir up a lot of confusion in order to cause fear in us, but ultimately they can’t harm us unless we allow them to. This is a major point that Saint Athanasius repeats over and over to drive it home: It’s us who give the devils power over us. 

How do we do that? 

Saint Athanasius doesn’t go into that, but look at the way the temptation in the Garden of Eden took place. Adam and Eve listened to (i.e. internalized) the voice of the devil and failed to turn to the Lord and call upon His Name for help.

So, if we want to avoid putting ourselves in the devil's power, we simply need to keep our eyes "focused on God's love" (something we pray weekly in the Maronite Liturgy of the Hours).

Third: How to drive devils away.

The means for driving the devils away are very simple (simplicity [which is being child-like in our relationship with God, not “simplistic” as in ignorant] is a central theme for the Desert Fathers). 

Pray

Turn to God and call upon His Name for help… unlike Adam and Eve who failed to do this. As Christians seeking to grow closer to the Lord, we should be committed to regular daily prayer.

Fast

"Fasting is a weapon for fighters" we pray in Morning Prayer during Lent in the Maronite tradition. 

Prayer and fasting are the keys Saint Athanasius gives us for driving the devils away. In this he's simply repeating Christ's own words that some devil's can only be driven out by prayer and fasting (cf. certain translations of Matthew 17:21).

 Over the centuries the Church has expanded this a bit. In addition to prayer and fasting, the Church teaches that we should also receive the Eucharist frequently, and go to Confession regularly. 

In teaching this, the Church is simply making more explicit the insights already present in the Desert Fathers. For the Desert Fathers, the key purpose of the spiritual life is “repentance” — which they understood to be a turning away from sin and toward God. As Saint Isaac (the Syrian) of Nineveh famously said:

"This life has been given to you for repentance. Do not squander it on vain pursuits."

Sacramental Confession as the primary manifestation of our personal repentance, is one of the main things the Fathers point out as being central to the spiritual life. 

As you read through the stories of the Desert Fathers, it'll quickly become clear that they took participation in the Eucharist (often referred to as the "Offering" or the "Mysteries") and other Church services for granted — alluding to both in their various stories and sayings. 

What's the point? We don’t have to do anything extraordinary to fight off the devils. We simply stay close to the Lord through prayer, fasting, receiving the Eucharist, going to Confession, and striving to grow in “righteousness” or virtue.

Fourth: How the devils try to deceive us.

Saint Athanasius goes over several ways that the devils try to trip us up. 

One is by creating delusions through false prophecies. Saint Athanasius has a remarkable demonstration of why we can’t take these false prophecies as anything wondrous even when they prove true. 

Another way they try to trip us up is by sowing the seeds of discontent with our vocation — stirring up what I call the “if only’s” in our minds: "If only I’d married so-and-so instead." "If only I’d become a monk instead of getting married." "If only I’d gotten married instead of become a priest." The devils often make the claim that we could’ve lived righteousness just as much, or even more, in some other vocation than the one we’ve committed ourselves to. 

A third way they try to trip us up is by stirring despair in us by reminding us of our past sins and trying to get us to focus on those sins instead of on God’s love. This is the subtle pride that whispers to us, “God could never forgive you for xyz.”

But always keep in mind, Saint Athanasius is constantly at pains to remind us that the devil is powerless. 

In closing this post out I'll share something I once heard a priest say. "The devil is a chained dog. He can’t hurt you in any way unless you get close enough for him to harm you. Otherwise, all he can do is bark and make a bunch of noise.