The Catholic Book Blogger
In St. Augustine’s time, there were still many pagans who tried to find enlightenment in strange, sometimes even hallucinogenic, rituals. If you see angels when you’re out of your mind, says St. Augustine, remember that Satan can look like an angel, but he still wants to hurt you.
As to those who perform these filthy cleansings by sacrilegious rites, and see in their initiated state (as Porphyry tells us further on, though we may question this vision) certain wonderfully lovely appearances of angels or gods, this is what the Apostle refers to when he speaks of Satan transforming himself into an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14).
For these are the delusive appearances of that spirit who longs to entangle wretched souls in the deceptive worship of many and false gods, and to turn them aside from the true worship of the true God, by whom alone they are cleansed and healed, and who (as they used to say about Proteus) turns himself into all shapes—all of them equally hurtful, whether he assaults us as an enemy, or takes on the disguise of a friend. –St. Augustine, City of God, 10.10
IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .
Do I understand that evil spirits make use of occult practices to manipulate human beings? Do I avoid those practices—fortune tellers, horoscopes, tarot readers, and so on— at all costs?
CLOSING PRAYER
Lord, deliver me from the evil one and his hosts; because yours is the kingdom, the power, the strength, the might, and the dominion in Heaven and on earth, now and always.
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