https://spiritdaily.org/blog/spiritual-warfare/mailbag-the-influence-of-the-enemy-in-our-home by D. J. Maria Binghamton, New York “Many years ago when my children were young, I’d decided that I wanted to grow spiritually and started doing spiritual reading and accompanying prayers. This continued until one night while reading a book that I’d enjoyed, the author discussed the topic of the devil. Until that point in time, I hadn’t believed in a devil, thought the author was ‘insane,’ stopped my spiritual reading, and challenged God on the issue. A short time later, some teachers invited me to a healing Mass in the area and I went. The church was so crowded that I had to stand in the back. During his homily, the priest talked about a literal encounter he’d had with the devil. Being so far away from the speaker, I didn’t hear the whole story. Hardly believing what I did hear, however, I decided to buy one of the books he’d written which were in the back of the church where I was standing. I remember not wanting to spend the money, but was curious about his story, especially since I’d never heard of anyone saying that they’d literally encountered the devil before. And for a priest to discuss it at Mass, showed his sincerity. Not only did I buy the book, I also gave a donation for a bottle of the blessed oil that the priest used for the anointing following the Mass. Later, I’m almost certain it was that same night, if not, it was very shortly following, I was awakened by Fred, my young boy, who ran to my bed and called me in great fear while shaking all over! He told me that something ‘came into’ him and he could feel it in his body, in his back in particular, and he was having scary dreams! He was too much afraid to go back to his bed and was most upset at what he could feel inside. Unable to console him, I asked Fred to come downstairs where I decided to pray over him. As we passed his bedroom, Fred frighteningly told me about some scary faces that he’d seen in his window. I told him that he imagined them because he was afraid. Inasmuch as he insisted that he saw scary faces, I insisted that he imagined them. Downstairs, I lit a candle and placing my hands on him, prayed continuously. As he calmed down I asked if he could still feel what was inside. Replying positively, I continued to pray. Repeatedly, my prayers seemed to have little effect, and he was too fearful to go back to bed. I was concerned that he wasn’t getting his proper sleep, when I remembered that I had a bottle of healing oil from the Mass I went to. Also remembering that the priest in the book I’d read would make the Sign of the Cross to chase away the devil. I used the oil, made the Sign of the Cross on Fred’s forehead, and continued praying… Before I was finished my prayer, Fred jumped up and started running in the dark toward the stairway. I can still hear myself calling to him: ‘Wait a minute. Where are you going?’ As a boy of about five or six years old, Fred was naturally afraid of the dark and ordinarily would not have run through a darkened room to go anywhere. Forgetting his fears, Fred responded: ‘It’s gone!’ and continued to run to his bed. I called back: ‘Wait a minute. When did it leave?’ He replied: ‘When you put that stuff on me.’ With that he excitedly found his way to his bed. The following morning, I asked Fred if he knew what that was ‘inside’ him the previous night. Taking me by surprise, he immediately said that it was the devil. Knowing that I’d never taught my children about the devil, I figured he must have gotten that information at school… I then asked Fred what kinds of dreams he’d had the night before. He told me that he’d had many fleeting dreams and in one of them, he was eating corn and the corn caught on fire. I don’t remember what else he told me now, but I do remember that his dreams included symbolism of the devil, such as fire. He still insisted that he had seen scary faces in the window which I dismissed and attributed to his fears.
Years later, when Fred was about thirteen, he palled around with a neighbor about his age. They had similar interests and were always together. Being the outdoor type, they spent much the summertime outside and unseen. Inside and alone one day, I felt drawn to Fred and Robert’s bedroom. I didn’t know why, but I had a strong feeling that I should check under the bunk beds on the side where Fred kept his things. Doing so, I pulled out some unfamiliar cards that I figured Fred got from his friend. The cards had strange and demonic symbols on them that gave me a cold, uncomfortable feeling. Knowing that the Holy Spirit led me to the cards for a reason, I realized I had to confront Fred about them. But how does a mother tell her teenage boy that she was in his room, took out some things that he had gotten from his friend, things that were obviously important to him, and were under his bed? And worse, how does she tell him that she thinks they may be demonic in some way and he shouldn’t play with them with his best friend? I put the cards on the kitchen counter and figured that if God led me to the cards, He would also show me what to do about them. I prayed and asked God what I should do and what I should say to Fred. As I was walking toward the counter where the cards were I heard a voice in my mind say: ‘Tell him about the incidents that happened when he was a little boy.’ I asked myself what happened when he was little. I just couldn’t remember and didn’t understand what I’d heard in my mind. Then it started coming back to me! I had completely forgotten! We’d never spoken of those incidents since they’d happened, so it was interesting and strange recalling them. As I slowly recalled them, it seemed that they had happened, not only for God’s purposes back then, but specifically for this time as well. When Fred came in from his outdoor adventures he walked over to the counter where his cards were. I told him that I’d found them in his room and was concerned about the symbols on them. Without saying a word, he picked up the cards and looked closely at them. I listened as he proceeded to tell me how he and his friend played with them. I then said: ‘Do you remember the incidents you’d had of the devil when you were a little boy?’ Suddenly his mood changed, and with the deep voice of an angry young man, he shouted: ‘Yeah, Mom, and you didn’t believe me that there were faces in the window!’ ‘Faces in the window?’ I repeated to myself. I didn’t remember that part! But then it came back to me. Oh yes, he did say there were faces in the window long ago! My jaw dropped! ‘You mean there were?’ And Fred shouted back as if he’d been holding in anger all those years because I didn’t believe him: ‘Yeah, Mom, there were, and you didn’t believe me!’ In his anger he walked out of the room. I was totally shocked and hurt that my little boy, many years ago, saw something very frightening and real to him, and his mother didn’t believe him! And not only that, but he seemed to have held his hurt in for a number of years! We’d discussed those faces at a later time and he told me that they were very ugly, changing, and unmistakably real! That time I believed him! We both decided to do research on the symbols on the magic cards and found that they were indeed demonic; and Fred willingly gave up playing with them. We both confronted his friend who also agreed not to play with them. But God wasn’t finished, and neither was the devil. As an older teenage boy, Fred would purchased his own music and in the summers, he would stay up late at night in his room listening to it. As I was visiting him in his room one day, he started to tell me of his experiences of the previous night: As he lay on his bed listening to his music, the door of his room suddenly slammed shut. Fred then saw the ugly face of a devil on the wall opposite him, until it moved to the wall right beside him changing sizes as it did! He then put his hand in front of the image and it jumped onto his hand and remained there even when he moved his hand in various positions, until it disappeared. The image then reappeared on the Crucifix hanging on a wall opposite Fred’s bed, covering the image of Jesus. I asked Fred why he didn’t come and tell me when these things had happened and he said that he was so scared that he couldn’t move! I told him there must be some reason why that had happened; and we searched his room, but to no avail. It then occurred to me to inquire about the type of music he was listening to at the time. Fred showed me a CD where, on the cover, there were easily recognizable demonic symbols. Surprised that he would make such a purchase, especially after the previously described experiences in his life, I questioned why. Fred replied that although he didn’t like the symbols, either, he liked the group that did the recording. It was the titles on the CD that were most troubling. One song, for example, was entitled, ‘Falling Angels.’ After pointing this out, we both agreed that the CD must be destroyed, so we broke it up and threw it out! Not only did the Lord show me that the devil exists, He also showed me that children as young as five or six, should be taught about the devil, as they can handle and understand this information. This understanding as children, can have a positive influence on their lifelong decisions, helping to keep them on the right path while deepening their Catholic faith. Furthermore, the Lord showed us how the devil uses youthful games and music to influence the young. I believe that the Lord allowed these incidents to occur in our Christian home to bring about a much greater good. Fred turned away from listening to music as a pastime altogether, and continued practicing his faith into adulthood. Following these incidences, there was never any question that the Holy Spirit was working in our lives and that there are also truly evil forces that oppose Him, that He allows — for now… for His own purposes.”
It must be truly terrible for people who do not believe in the Devil to end up staring him in the face, either in this life or the World to come. How to fight something you don't believe exists?
I just started reading a book by GK Chesterton last night called , 'The Everlasting Man', I love Chesterton, he had a warm and friendly, a homely heart and a very good sense of humour. Plus he was a genius, a great Catholic convert and a writer of the ages. I came across this article about him tonight: https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2021/06/chesterton-meets-devil-joseph-pearce.html Chesterton Meets the Devil By Joseph Pearce|June 11th, 2021|Categories: G.K. Chesterton, Joseph Pearce, Senior Contributors G.K. Chesterton is so full of wisdom and wonder, and sanity and sanctity, that it comes as a surprise to learn of his darker side. Yet there were two particularly dark and bitter periods in his life that should not be overlooked. The first was the unholy and unhealthy darkness that descended during a period of mawkishness in his teenage years, the second was a similar descent into darkness and bitterness following the death of his brother Cecil. With respect to the latter, Chesterton was so angry following his brother’s death on active service in France in 1918, that he succumbed to a degree of uncharitable anger that was utterly uncharacteristic. This is epitomized in the bitterness and resentment of “Elegy in a Country Churchyard”, the very title of which is a satirical sneer at the elegiac spirit of Thomas Gray’s famous poem of the same name: The men that worked for England They have their graves at home: And bees and birds of England About the cross can roam. But they that fought for England, Following a falling star, Alas, alas for England They have their graves afar. And they that rule in England, In stately conclave met, Alas, alas for England, They have no graves as yet. The other dark period was much earlier, in the early 1890s, during the time that the young Chesterton was a student at the Slade School of Art in London. The chapter in my biography of Chesterton which deals with this period is entitled “Soul in a Ferment”, an allusion to a phrase of John Keats from the Preface to Endymion, in which Keats speaks of the “mawkishness” that characterizes the mind during the gloom that follows the twilight of childhood and the gloaming that precedes true manhood. “I deal here,” wrote Chesterton in his Autobiography, “with the darkest and most difficult part of my task; the period of youth which is full of doubts and morbidities and temptations; and which, though in my case mainly subjective, has left in my mind for ever a certitude upon the objective solidity of Sin.” In Orthodoxy, a book he wrote in 1908, he confessed that he was “a pagan at the age of twelve, and a complete agnostic by the age of sixteen.” By the time he was nineteen, in 1893, he had regressed still further: I am not proud of believing in the Devil. To put it more correctly, I am not proud of knowing the Devil. I made his acquaintance by my own fault; and followed it up along lines which, had they been followed further, might have led to devil-worship or the devil knows what…. What I may call my period of madness coincided with a period of drifting and doing nothing; in which I could not settle down to any regular work. I dabbled in a number of things … among these dabblings in this dubious time, I dabbled in Spiritualism. The devil finding work for idle hands, Chesterton and his brother Cecil experimented with the planchette, or what Americans call the Ouija board. Such dabbling with diabolism left a permanent mark on his psyche. “We were playing with fire,” he wrote, “or even with hell-fire”: I saw quite enough of the thing to be able to testify, with complete certainty, that something happens which is not in the ordinary sense natural, or produced by the normal and conscious human will. Whether it be produced by some subconscious but still human force, or by some powers, good, bad or indifferent, which are external to humanity, I would not myself attempt to decide. The only thing I will say with complete confidence, about that mystic and invisble power, is that it tells lies. The lies may be larks or they may be lures to the imperilled soul or they may be a thousand other things; but whatever they are, they are not truths about the other world; or for that matter about this world. Adding to this lurid morbidity were the nihilistic philosophies which were fashionable in the decadent atmosphere of the fin de siècle. By 1894, Chesterton wrote that he had thought his way back to thought itself. “It is a very dreadful thing to do; for it may lead to thinking that there is nothing but thought.” Such was the degree to which he had descended into the fathomless thought of Thought itself that even the materialism of the atheists seemed to require a leap of faith: “While dull atheists came and explained to me that there was nothing but matter, I listened with a sort of calm horror of detachment, suspecting that there was nothing but mind.” There is something in the very being of being human which recoils in horror and disgust from the negation of being itself. It is the something that healthier and holier philosophers have called the divine image in which we’re made. In Chesterton’s case, the recoil took the form of ontological optimism: When I had been for some time in these, the darkest depths of the contemporary pessimism, I had a strong inward impulse to revolt; to dislodge this incubus or throw off this nightmare. But as I was still thinking the thing out by myself, with little help from philosophy and no real help from religion, I invented a rudimentary and makeshift mystical theory of my own. It was substantially this; that even mere existence, reduced to its most primary limits, was extraordinary enough to be exciting. Anything was magnificent as compared with nothing. Even if the very daylight were a dream, it was a day-dream; it was not a nightmare. It was from this firm foundation of gratitude for being itself that Chesterton would find his way to the Christian orthodoxy that would be the hallmark of his life and work. In 1908, the year in which he wrote Orthodoxy, he also wrote The Man Who was Thursday, a novel, subtitled “a nightmare”, which conveys the spirit of darkness that had descended on the youthful author fifteen years earlier. The novel is the witness of one who had met the devil and had delved in the devil’s darkness but who had emerged into the light through the power of the Light Himself. Having known the devil, Chesterton would fight the devil’s lies with the light of truth, exercising reason to exorcise demons and fighting heresy with dynamic orthodoxy. The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now. The featured image is “The Polish folklore legend Pan Twardowski and the devil” (1895), by Michał Elwiro Andriolli. This image is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Unfortunately for me but soley due to my own doing .i encountered something similar in my younger years. To my great shame I struggled with lust as a young man and to my even greater shame I was watching impure movies.one night in my bedroom I had a movie hidden away.i awoke During the night to find something beside my bed trying to get at me.By the grace of God I cannot remember exactly what it looked like it has been blotted out but what I do rember is the fear and horror it instilled in me it took my breath so I couldn't even scream I croaked.I believe it was trying to get to me but was being prevented by my angel guardian.
