Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Peace and good!
Today we're going to answer your question about whether Satan knows our thoughts.
An internaut asked us if priest Pawlukiewicz isn't wrong claiming that Satan doesn't know out thoughts.
And the point is that when Satan influences our senses giving us various images or pictures, he makes us think about them. So does he know our thoughts or not?
I think we should first make an important assumption. When we talk about Satan, about Angels, about good and evil, we talk about personified creatures.
Evil things can only be done by people. A dog or a cat cannot do anything evil in a moral sense. Only people can commit sins.
Ghosts can also do it, can't they? Ghosts and Angels are personified creatures. They are? Yes. But they do not have bodies. Well, you cannot argue with a dogmatist.
That's why the relations between Satan or Angels and a human being are personal relations.
And only a human being, among all the creatures living on earth, can be influenced but evil or Satan.
And, as for the issue of knowing human thoughts, God is the only one who knows them.
No other creature knows human's freedom or his actions. Angels don't know them either, only God does.
How can Satan influence our thoughts and decisions?
Can he use material objects? Can he?
Satan is a superintelligent and cunning expert on human nature and a great psychologist.
We know that when someone is a better expert in something, he can advise others or predict their actions.
Just like an adult can predict what a child is going to do in a given situation.
He can guess that in certain circumstances a child will do this or that.
And what is the goal of Satan and his actions? To turn a man away from God, to make him sin.
And Satan can even use material objects, some life situations or disasters we experience.
To give us some interpretations of what we experience, some sinful thoughts based on our ***, to make us sin.
Excluding the presence of God from all these situations and experiences.
To make a man sin against God by blasphemy, turning away from God, losing his faith.
As I look at what is happening around now, it is rationalising everything, neo-enlightment.
Trying to exclude the context of God's presence from social life is Satan's action against whole nations and societies, not only a single human being.
This is done to make us exclude divine providence from our lives.
Even if Satan can use, in a sense, the material reality, we cannot forget that
God rules the whole reality and everything that has been created.
Even if Satan tempts us, it as allowed and ruled by divine providence.
It's not that Satan suddenly destroys God's plan and God cannot control the world anymore.
How do we picture Satan's influence on our thoughts and conceptions?
As we've said, he presents various pictures, ideas to us.
He can use our ***, associations and send different ideas to us.
But can he influence our decisions? I think we can compare him to a door-to-door salesman who comes to our house and advertises some goods to us.
He talks about a product, we're considering what he's saying, thinking whether it's good or not. Should we buy it and invest into it or not? Will it be beneficial for us?
Different thoughts come to our head, Satan keeps on recommending the product, but in the end we make a decision he doesn't know.
So Satan knows exactly what temptation or distraction he offers to us.
He can expect what our answer will be, but he doesn't know it. The decision is always ours.
So, as priest Pawlukiewicz said, he doesn't know our thoughts in this sense.
I guess we've explained it in the most general way we could.
When considering this question, it was difficult for me to decide what exactly it means to think.
Is the picture I have in my mind already my thought, or is following it and using it when making decisions necessary to consider it a thought?
We know that a man is subject to temptation and temptation itself is not a sin. Is temptation already a thought? It seems that it is.
So Satan knows that we will be subject to temptation and we will be thinking about it, but he will never know if we will resist it or not.
But knowing our weaknesses and habits he can assume we will do this or that.
I heard from one exorcist that when talking about being addicted to certain sins, let's take alcohol or drug addiction as examples.
There exist specific demons which make us addicted to these sins. They specialise in these sins.
That's why we need to protect ourselves from sins. Such personal protection is communion with Jesus Christ, prayer to Guardian Angels, sacraments, the Eucharist, confession, the rosary.
This protection is very effective not only against a sin but also against some anti-divine thoughts. Anti-divine interpretation of the world and out life situation.
We have to finish now. We don't have much time left.
I would like to invite those of you who live in Poznan and nearby, to a mass for students.
The first one will take place on 10 Oct. 2010. Then every Sunday at 8.30 p.m. in our church at Garbary street. You're very welcome.
If you want to participate in the mass singing with the choir or serving at the altar, you're welcome to do it.
Yuo'll get there taking a tram no 5, 16, 13, or arrive by car.
Send questions to: bezsloganu@franciszkanie.net.
Special thanks to Andrzej Lewandowicz for the photo he's given to us. We don't have it here but it's beautiful:).
Peace and good!