Fr. Ripperger Further Explains How God Uses Demons
(View segment from 3:33 to 6:12)
Can we become holier as a result of the activity of demons in our lives?
- Yes!
- Because of demons’ temptations, we must struggle harder to love God and others, which makes us holier.
What does your struggle with a particular temptation (impatience, impurity, gossip, etc.) tell you about God's particular plan for your life?
- Your temptations in a particular area reveal what God wants you to conquer in your life.
- When you grow strong in virtue (patience, purity, charity, etc.), that overcomes your temptation (impatience, impurity, gossip, etc.). Growth in virtue becomes like a vehicle that drives you to Heaven, to eternal happiness.
- So, thank God and willingly embrace the ‘cross’, the difficulty of overcoming your temptations, so that cross can raise you up to God!
Is the 'risk' of being tempted to sin worth the reward of growing in virtue, growing in love?
- God thinks so!
- God allowed Adam and Eve to be tempted and to fall into sin.
- God allows all of us to be tempted too, so we become strong lovers fashioned more completely into His image of self-sacrificing love, displayed most perfectly on the cross.
What did Fr. Ripperger mean when he said that demons drag us one way or the other?
- He meant that dealing with the temptations of demons either causes us to grow in selfless love, which leads us to heaven, or we fall to temptation and grow in selfishness, which leads us to hell.
- Think of the rabbits. They could stay in their comfortable burrows, allow themselves to be bitten by a snake, enjoy the relaxing effect of the venom as it immobilizes their body, and then… be eaten by the snake!
- Or, the rabbit can run from the snake, warn the other rabbits, leave the comfort of the burrow, and enjoy the freedom and thrill of having overcome the deadly threat of the snake.
- If we think of those people who overcome the lies and temptations of the demons as ‘saved rabbits’, then instead of being eaten by snakes (demons), they are consumed by the beauty of the beatific vision (heaven, the eternal joy of beholding God).
- God wants all of us to be saved!