Nulles Diabolus, Nulles Redemptor

Gospel Reflection for July 23, 2023 -Matthew 13:24-43

And he put before them another parable; Here is an image, he said, of the kingdom of heaven. There was a man who sowed his field with clean seed;

but while all the world was asleep, an enemy of his came and scattered tares among the wheat, and was gone.

So, when the blade had sprung up and come into ear, the tares, too, came to light;

and the farmer’s men went to him and said, Sir, was it not clean seed thou didst sow in thy field? How comes it, then, that there are tares in it?

He said, An enemy has done it. And his men asked him, Wouldst thou then have us go and gather them up?

But he said, No; or perhaps while you are gathering the tares you will root up the wheat with them.

Leave them to grow side by side till harvest, and when harvest-time comes I will give the word to the reapers, Gather up the tares first, and tie them in bundles to be burned, and store the wheat in my barn.

Then he put before them another parable. The kingdom of heaven, he said, is like a grain of mustard seed, that a man has taken and sowed in his ground;

of all seeds, none is so little, but when it grows up it is greater than any garden herb; it grows into a tree, so that all the birds come and settle in its branches.

And he told them still another parable, The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, that a woman has taken and buried away in three measures of meal, enough to leaven the whole batch.

All this Jesus said to the multitude in parables, and would say it in parables only,

so fulfilling the words which were spoken by the prophet, I will speak my mind in parables, I will give utterance to things which have been kept secret from the beginning of the world.

Then he sent the multitude away, and went back into the house. There his disciples came to him, and said, Explain to us the parable of the tares in the field.

He answered, It is the Son of Man that sows the good seed.

The field is the world, and the sons of the kingdom are the good seed; the sons of the wicked one are the tares.

The enemy that sowed them is the devil, and the end of the world is the harvest; it is reaped by the angels.

The tares were gathered together and burned in the fire, and so it will be when the world is brought to an end;

the Son of Man will give charge to his angels, and they will gather up all that gives offence in his kingdom, all those who do wickedly in it,

and will cast them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping, and gnashing of teeth.

Then, at last, the just will shine out, clear as the sun, in their Father’s kingdom. Listen, you that have ears to hear with. (Matthew 13:24-43 Knox Translation)

“Nulles diabolus, nulles redemptor. No devil, no Redeemer. Without the devil, it’s very hard to explain why Jesus needed to come into the world to suffer and die for us.” (Jesse Romero, The Devil in the City of Angels)

In this Gospel reading, Our Lord continues his ministry of teaching through parables and, like last Sunday, He also explains one of them, namely the parable of the wheat and the tares. In doing so, He reveals one of the greatest problems in the world and in the Church today: disbelief in the existence of Satan. For Christians throughout history, and especially prior to the so-called “Enlightenment,” the devil and his demonic influence were palpably real, daily sources of temptation which they watched out for and sought to defend themselves against. Even Protestants and other Christians who lacked the fullness of the Faith still recognized the existence of Satan and his pernicious influence in the world. They avoided occult magics, pagan rituals and what are today called New Age practices, such as yoga, tarot cards, Ouija boards and reiki, all of which exorcists continue to warn us against.

However, after the Scientific Revolution, the devil and his diabolism suddenly seemed for many to be mere relics of a superstitious age, one which attributed mental illness to possession and disease to sorcerous curses. Only the material and that which is subject to scientific scrutiny, they said, is truly real – everything else is only imaginary. Ever since, not only the devil and the occult but the soul, the afterlife, objective good and evil and God Himself have been excised under this same materialistic scalpel as outdated and superfluous. Over time, they even came to be seen as harmful to society, leading to bigotry and violence.

All of these attitudes remain prevalent today – and, even more insidiously, have even infected the Church. Fewer Christians than ever believe Satan is real, and even many priests see him as only a mythological personification of evil rather than a corrupted angelic person whose intelligence and power far surpass our own. For this reason, demonic influence and possessions have increased, as many exorcists attest, and people succumb to the devil’s temptations willingly, thinking they are breaking free from the chains of old-fashioned superstitions and the prejudices of tradition.

From barking and twerking rioters in the streets to celebrities and self-proclaimed Catholic politicians proudly championing the murder of unborn children in the media to priests and bishops in the Church seeking to adulterate the Gospel and give official sanction to intrinsically disordered and perverted sexual practices, Satan’s evil is spreading far and wide, with little apparent check. All the while, the easiest means to defeat him given to us by God, namely the sacraments, doctrines and devotions of the Church, are not made available, are obscured by abusive practices or are simply dismissed by the faithful as unnecessary.

With all of these converging factors, should we be surprised to see the world and the Church in the state they are in today? Without the devil, do we really need a Redeemer, of whom St. John wrote, “The man who lives sinfully takes his character from the devil; the devil was a sinner from the first. If the Son of God was revealed to us, it was so that he might undo what the devil had done”? (1 Jn 3:8)

The devil is brilliant, despite his almost total lack of goodness. He has tried many different strategies throughout history to enslave in sin those inside the Church and outside, including occultism, heresy, hedonism, idolatry of money or government, factionalism and scientism. However, in our own time, he has perhaps discovered the best strategy yet: to destroy the Church from within. Through ambiguity and the framing of evil as good and good as evil, he has gradually gutted the membership of the Church, while those who remain are either mired in confusion and frustration or else living and believing as though they were not Catholic.

He is applying the same strategy in the secular world, leading to the persecution of the Church not through mere blunt power, as with the 20^th century regimes, but through self-righteousness and sophistry. Today, those who advocate for abortion, sodomy, pedophilia, socialism, atheism, etc. often truly believe they are the most moral, just people in the world, fighting against what they see as grave evils; breaking through this demonic veil with the truth and love of Christ is the greatest challenge Christians face today, even from members of their own family or the Church.

Christians must be the wheat, the leaven, the mustard seeds in the world, that which seems humble and overshadowed by the noise and darkness of sin yet acts as a constant reminder to the world, convicting it of sin and leading it to the hope of Christ, without whom all goodness is empty and all evil is mere taste. Christ does not call us to uproot the tares; rather, we must learn discernment, to uncover the coils of the devil choking out the wheat and to prune it away, so that when Christ returns, as many may be saved as desire to be. This work can only come through bold, clear teaching, correction of error and charity towards all as persons made in the image of God – without exception. May we never forget who our true Enemy is:

It is not against flesh and blood that we enter the lists; we have to do with princedoms and powers, with those who have mastery of the world in these dark days, with malign influences in an order higher than ours. (Eph 6:12)