“In many cases, what we attribute to an evil spirit as personal evil is due to our history, condition, mechanisms.”
“You are not a pawn on God’s chessboard” warns the Polish priest Paweł Sawiak, a well-known author of books on spirituality, at the beginning of his interview with the magazine Gość of Poland, landing some topics that he usually faces in his apostolate as a spiritual director .
To ease the beginning of the dialogue, Pawel is asked if any of the people he accompanies have asked him for help in discerning God’s will regarding where to go on vacation. In the same joking tone, the priest replies that knowing whether you should buy natural or sweetened yogurt in the store is not a question that belongs directly to the spiritual sphere…
Then, entering what brings them together, Pawel comments that it is common for people to have doubts about whether they should get married or go to a convent…
Sometimes, continues the priest, “when accompanying discernment, it happens that we find those who ‘bounce’ from one (religious) order to another. They were convinced that God was telling them, “You have to be a priest,” but the rector of the seminary decided otherwise. They kept searching, trying different convents, and finally, frustrated, they come to us. Confused, they protest: “But God tells me I must be a priest!” or else “his will for him is that I be a husband, but I search, I search, and no one wants me.”
As a spiritual director, I try to objectify that experience that tells man: ‘I know what God wants from me’. I seek to sensitize that person and I remind him: «It is not only God who speaks in your heart and in your conscience. Inspirations can come from three people (this usually surprises you!): yourself, God or an evil spirit. If you go out of the house and the cold wind blows and something tells you ‘put on a hat’, it is not God. It is your voice and your life experience.
Don’t you get the impression that many preachers focus on the third person prompts you mentioned? And I mean the third person of the Holy Trinity…
I see in people such a sick fascination with the Tempter and a spiritualization of reality. Twisting a saying of Saint Ignatius: these people look for the devil in everything. He cannot be forgotten, but he cannot be overestimated either! If it had the power to direct our choices, it would mean that the power of the Lord Jesus, the salvation that won us on the cross, the power of our baptism, do not matter much…
Perhaps they do not understand who is above in this battle…
If you listen to the wise exorcists, they are not disturbed by what the devil says during the exorcisms. It turns out that, out of a hundred treated cases, we can only say that there is real influence of the evil spirit only in some situations. This confirms that Jesus has won, that the Evil One has no power over us, that the last word does not belong to him. Many times we attribute to it what emerges from our history, the wounds, the weaknesses and the mechanisms in which we are involved. This was already said by a Jesuit General a few years ago. He stated that in many cases what we attribute to an evil spirit as personal evil is due to our history, condition, mechanisms. These words were misunderstood and it turned out that…
They accused: “the Jesuit General says that Satan does not exist”.
And he didn’t say something like that. He spoke of the responsibility in our lives, of the freedom that God has given us. Why do we blame Satan so easily? Because then we can wash our hands and say: “It was not our will, it was not our decision.” It’s simple: you blame someone (this is where the evil spirit is present), you don’t take responsibility and this frees us from making decisions.
Font: Gość
Father Pawel Sawiak: Blaming everything bad on Satan allows some to wash their hands