I will be able to write as wonderfully as John Zmirak.
I like his point about having contempt for the devil. We don’t quite know what to do with contempt. We feel it, but we are told (very rightly) that it is a grave sin to direct it at our neighbor. Yet there it is anyway.
Zmirak points us to the ancient truth that “we wrestle not with flesh and blood but with powers and principalities”. It is, it seems to me, perfectly fitting to recognize the devils in their spite and malice as fitting objects for our contempt. They are damned. They have made their choice and they ain’t repenting. They are the Enemy and sentimental notions about how our prayers and pity for them might one day even save them are just that: sentimental, not based in reality.
Every human you meet in this life is still on probation and there exists the possibility of their salvation, however remote. Contempt directed at them is just an extra push toward hell and we should not be pushing any person toward hell. But the devils are already damned by their own choice. Laughing contempt for them is a fitting response and is a sort of courage. For in the order of nature, they are vastly our superiors in power and intellect. That is, they are cosmic bullies and it is only fitting that the weaker mock the stronger when the stronger tries to bully him. “The devil, the proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked.” – St. Thomas More.
