How to overcome evil during Lent?

What is the point of fighting evil? He always comes back …

An earthquake here; Elsewhere, the distress of migrants, war; Too widespread, murder, lie, corruption, cruelty. Suffering is everywhere.

And then there is the misfortune that touches me personally: dependence, illness, difficult relationships with a loved one, mourning, loneliness.

Fortunately, the human heart is also capable of great things: seeing good, looking for it, acting by weighing the pros and cons. Nicolas Baumard, researcher at the CNRS, supports, based on neuroscience, that humans are endowed with an innate moral sense, a real “organ of the spirit”, which he develops throughout life (1).

It is not easy to act according to his conscience. Before Christ begins to preach, the Latin poet Ovid wrote: “I want something, and my soul pushes me to another; I see the good and I approve of it but I go to the worst. »Saint Paul will say roughly the same (cf. RM 7, 19). “”

Resisting evil is spiritual work. “”

Resisting evil is spiritual work. Moreover, it was first of all the religions and the wisdoms that allowed humanity to name evil and to oppose it. Most have a principle, called “golden rule”.

Jesus formulates it as follows: “What you want others to do for you, do it also for them” (Lk 6, 31). Ah! Imagine this applied rule for a moment. We are not there … But Christians affirm, against appearances, that evil, however terrifying it is, is already defeated.

Lent is this privileged moment when they recognize the extraordinary work of Jesus: it raises them from sin and gives them hope. So they get back to his school by choosing conversion, prayer, acts of charity, fasting. To gain freedom from evil.

So, the devil, there is, yes or no?

Who was not marked by the cry of P.Jacques Hamel, murdered by two young fanatics claiming to be Daesh in July 2016? “Go and Satan!” Go a satan! He threw his attackers before dying in the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray (Seine-Maritime).

For a while, the figure of Satan disappeared from catechisms and preaching. However, it is present in various forms in advertising, cinema, video games, labd … but also, discreetly, in theotheur, ordinary prayer of Christians. In the final Lademand, “deliver us from evil”, Lemot translates by “evil” precisely means “the bad”, a way of personifying Cemal. “”

Satan is a person, and even very cunning “

Pope Francis himself, commenting on this prayer, warns: “Evil is not something intangible that dissipates like Lebrouillard of Milan. Satan is a person, and even very cunning, ”he judges (2).

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, Lediable is an angel, a perfect spiritual being, who refused the gift of God. Etlemonde, created good, found it crazy. A recent conference of the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium) underlined in this sense that “Latheology cannot do without the devil to say the mystery of faith and account for the abysses of modern history” (3).

Whether we think of thefurer of Nazism, Stalinist or Maoist communism, the genocides of the 20th century. DeSign Satan makes it possible to remove the shoulders of humanity a little of an overwhelming responsibility. This devil is nonetheless anonymous, elusive, and to be honest, smoky! It is good, true and love that are consistent.

The cross, suffering, a must?

Each reader of this article knows joys and suffering. What link with spirituality?

A dolorist spirituality, formerly, has dangerously handled the idea of ​​suffering from the redemptive Christ. Cardinal Yves Congar (1904-1995), with other great voices, said: “It is not lasouffrance of Jesus who saves, it is the love with which he experienced this suffering; It’s quite something else. »»

The Dominican Jean-Marie Gueullette makes the appeal of Christ to be carried to carry in a renewed manner to walk after him (cf.lc14,27): “You are not asked to welcome suffering and disasters as a gift from God; You are offered to give you to him and welcome his presence, even in these moments ”(4).

But what is the meaning of the cross of Christ? From one end to the other of the Gospels, Lechrist faces the evil. He seems to lose the fight, since he dies crucified. However, Lesévangiles showed him full of power, at the start of his ministry. To an “impure spirit” (MC1,25), then to fury (MC4,39), ILLANCE: “Farm! » – Yes, it is the words of the word in Greek: to pass a muzzle to an animal. “”

Everyone can hope to be raised with leressusity. “”

So why this scandalous weakness on Lacroix? It takes time in the spiritual lava, and many returns back, diving in depth in thereality of his life, to welcome the revelation of Lacroix: Lapidance of God is that of his love, and the passion of Jesus is the highest expression of the goodness of God. Because every human being, at the end of his misery, can be joined by the crucified. Everyone can hope to be raised with leressusity.

For lechristianism, an instrument of torture has thus become the symbol of Laplus great hope. Now, everything, in the lives of a believer, the joys like the sorrows, can become a reason to welcome the presence of Christ. It is also, for Christians, the end of the story. Pope Benoîtxvi thus said his hope by presenting his wishes to the Curia, in 2005: “To violence, to evil, is opposed in history, like the power specific to God, divine mercy. The lamb is stronger than the dragon. »By Christophe Chaland Illustrations Sébastien Thibault

Resist temptation, easy to say!

The scene happened in a community of Christian life (CVX), a group of laity of Jesuit spirituality. Once a month, they share their spiritual life. “We exchanged on the new translation of Our Large -” do not let us go into temptation ” -, then we said to each other our temptations,” reports one of the participants. We will not know more …

Examining what is happening in itself, putting words on it is a first step in spiritual life. This practice joins “the opening of the heart” of the Orthodox monks to their spiritual father: Lemoine says the thoughts that inhabit his days and nights.

The dialogue confident with a priest, on the occasion of the sacrament of reconciliation, also has this virtue. Because, in the test, it is dangerous to be alone. Gabriel Mouesca (5), 56 years old, activist of the Basque cause in the 1980s, spent seventeen years in detention. He knows what he owes to other presences: “I have done fourteen penitentiary establishments. I have always met men and women with light: teachers, medical staff, chaplains, ”he recalls. “”

The Gospel of the Day was my source of energy to fight! “”

But how did this man, inhabited by a deep ideal of justice, held in the terrible prison universe? “I have never poured into Lahaine,” he says. Because I always knew that I was loved by my family and my friends, and I continued to love. “And then, in this place of all temptations, Gabriel relied on his faith:” Every morning, I read the Gospel of the day. It was my source of energy to fight against what I was going to meet during the day: lying, power relations, symbolic or physical violence. »»

Gabriel came out stronger from the event. Today he is an actor in the peace process in the Basque Country. Sunday, February 18, the short account of the temptation of Jesus to the desert according to Marc (MC1,12-13) will sound in churches, as an announcement of Easter Sunday: evil, death, are defeated. The philosopher Paul Ricœur (19132005) said: “As radical as evil is, he is not as deep as goodness. »»

Lent: our selection of 5 pounds to resist evil

1. A natural history of good and evil, Ed. Odile Jacob, 2010, 320p. ; € 24.25.
2. When you pray, say our father, interviews with Marco Pozza, Ed. Bayard, 2018, 144p. ; € 14.90.
3. Following the devil? The challenges of an emblematic figure of evil, collective, ed. Academia, 2017, 190p. ; € 19.
4. Let God be God in you, Ed. DUCERF, 2002, 128p.; 15 €.
5. The stiff neck, Ed. Zortziko, 2014, 228p.; € 18.