The Church’s Battle Against Satan . . . As Expressed In The Sacred Liturgy

By JAMES MONTI

Time and again during His public ministry, our Lord speaks of His mission as a battle against Satan. As St. John declares, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). That this battle will continue until the end of the world is made manifest in the Book of Revelation.
Across the centuries, from the days of the early Church Fathers onward, the reality and scope of this battle with Satan has been vividly expressed not only in the Church’s teachings and the homilies of her pastors but also in the words and actions of the sacred liturgy.
From the 1960s onward, there have been those within the Church who have sought to deny the very existence of Satan, explaining away the existence of evil as merely an impersonal “negative energy” in the universe. What has not helped matters is that many of the centuries-old references in the sacred liturgy to the Church’s battle against Satan were dropped out of the liturgical rites when the post-Vatican II liturgical books were promulgated.
Significantly, it is a prominent advocate of the postconciliar “Liturgical Reform,” Dom Cyprian Vagaggini, OSB, who implicitly laments this change in the fourth edition of his massive tome, Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy (1976), addressing it in a chapter entitled, “The Two Cities: The Liturgy and the Struggle against Satan.” Reflecting upon the numerous references to the battle with Satan found in the traditional liturgy as well as those that have been retained in the newer liturgical books can serve to sharpen our own battle-stance in resisting the devil as St. Peter exhorts us to do (1 Peter 5:8-9).
In reading through the text of the traditional Baptism rite in the preconciliar Ritual Romanum, one immediately notices a veritable battery of exorcism formulas. This is so not only in the considerably longer adult baptismal rite, but also in the much shorter Baptism rite for infants. At the outset of the latter, the priest blows thrice upon the face of the infant, ordering any demon present to depart and make way for the coming of the Holy Spirit into the child. Shortly afterward, he prays that the child may be freed from “the snares of Satan” (Collectio Rituum: Ritual Approved by the National Conference of Bishops of the United States of America, New York, Benziger Bros., 1964, p. 4).
Toward the middle of the infant baptismal rite, the priest recites the principal formulas of exorcism, beginning with an invocation of the Holy Trinity against any demon present. During this portion of the rite, the priest repeatedly uses his right hand as a virtual weapon against the devil, making with it the Sign of the Cross over the child thrice and then signing the baby’s forehead with his thumb.
After the priest has led the child into the church, protected by the end of his stole, and the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer have been recited, he confronts whatever demons are present yet again with a threefold making of the Sign of the Cross accompanying a further invocation of the Holy Trinity against the unclean spirits. The touching of the infant’s ears and nostrils that immediately follows ends with a command ordering the demon to leave once and for all, “for the judgment of God has come” (Collectio Rituum, p. 11).
It is at this point that the priest calls upon the godparents, speaking on the child’s behalf, to renounce Satan and all his works. This definitive repudiation of Satan draws to a conclusion all the references to the unclean spirits in the baptismal rite; the rest of the ceremony is filled with the light and joy of the Baptism itself.
Just moments into the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass, the Church’s battle against evil is referenced in the recitation of Psalm 43 (Vulgate Psalm 42): “Vindicate me. O God, and defend my cause / against an ungodly people; / from deceitful and unjust men deliver me!” (Psalm 43:1).
The carrying of the cross at the head of the entrance procession in both the Novus Ordo and the Traditional Latin Mass was seen by the medieval liturgist William Durandus (+1296) as an action that puts demons to flight, for it is the sign of Christ’s victory over them. Sicard of Cremona (+1215) considers the priest’s recitation of the Confiteor, which in the Traditional Latin Mass precedes the acolytes’ recitation of the Confiteor, as an act of renouncing Satan, thwarting the devil by this humble act of the priest accusing himself of his own sins.
Noting how in the battle with Amelec Israel gained victory through the extension of Moses’ hands as Joshua fought, and how Christ by the extension of His hands upon the cross triumphed, Pope Innocent III (+1216) observes that the Church vanquishes Satan and his demons by the weapon of prayer, imaged by the priest’s extension of his hands to recite the Collect. At the reading of the Gospel all make the triple signing of the forehead, lips and heart with the Sign of the Cross to bar the devil from interfering as they listen to the Word of God (William Durandus).
The entire Roman Canon, because of its supremely sacred character as a veritable “Holy of Holies” within the Mass, during which the Consecration was accomplished, was widely seen as possessing a unique power against Satan, particularly the doxology Per ipsum with which it concludes.
One of the most widely known means for the expulsion of Satan is the use of holy water. This connection begins with the very rite for blessing holy water. In the exorcism of the water and salt for the aspersion rite, the priest is directed to face westward because he is symbolically turning toward Satan to drive him away by the exorcism. According to William Durandus, blessed salt averts the snares of the devil, and blessed water is endowed with the power to expel demons from the hearts and homes of the faithful.
Incense has also been seen in the sacred liturgy as employed to drive away demons; the incensation of the body in the funeral liturgy as well as the Offertory incensation of the oblata (unconsecrated bread and wine) at Mass, with a crosswise swinging of the thurible, have been understood in this manner.
From an early date, Palm Sunday has been seen as a celebration of Christ’s victory over the devil. One of the prayers for the blessing of the palms in the 1570 Missale Romanum expressly speaks of the palms as symbols of Christ’s victory over the devil:
“Accordingly palm branches anticipate His triumphs over the prince of death, whereas the olive sprouts proclaim in a way His spiritual unction to have come. For already at that time, that blessed multitude of men perceived to be prefigured in human things how our Redeemer, suffering greatly for the life of the whole world, was going to do battle with the prince of death, and in dying to triumph the sooner. And submitting Himself thus, He appointed such things, which in regard to Him proclaimed both the triumphs of His victory and the abundance of His mercy…” (see Manlio Sodi and Achille Maria Triacca, editors, Missale Romanum: Editio Princeps (1570), facsimile edition, MLCT 2, Vatican City, copyright Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1998, p. 211, new pagination).
The hymn sung for the liturgy of Good Friday, Pange lingua gloriosi lauream certaminis, likewise sung during Passiontide, is a particularly poetic expression of Christ’s victory on the cross as a triumph over Satan, a triumph explicitly mentioned in its first four verses.
The predominant place accorded the martyrs in the sanctoral cycle of the liturgical year is also a manifestation of the Church’s perception of her journey across time as a perennial struggle against Satan. For each martyr’s death repeats in a way the devil’s humiliating defeat on Calvary. The hatred of the faith that Satan craves to plant in the hearts of men, to incite them to murder the saints of God, ultimately brings ruin upon his wicked cause each and every time a martyr chooses to suffer torture and death rather than deny Christ.
The Divine Office implicitly expresses the Church’s ongoing battle with Satan largely through its core content, the Psalms. Dom Vagaggini observes that each and every psalm which speaks of enemies can and should be seen as referring to the worst of enemies, the devil and his minions. In both the traditional Breviary and in the post-conciliar Liturgy of the Hours, the reading for the night office of Compline on Tuesdays employs one of the most striking images of the soul’s encounter with Satan: “Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking some one to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith. . . .” (1 Peter 5:8-9).
Dom Vagaggini goes so far as to assert that the Church’s ancient tradition of blessing all sorts of objects, not only those destined for sacred purposes but also every sort of domestic or work-related object, from eggs to printing presses, is motivated in large part by the Church’s determination to drive out Satan’s dominion over material things, the sort of dominion implied by Our Lord when He speaks of the enmity between His disciples and “the world.”

At War With The Prince Of Darkness

The traditional rites for the sacrament of extreme unction and for the final commendation of the dying likewise manifest to a heightened degree the Church’s battle against the devil. In the prayer with which the priest arriving at the home of the invalid begins his visit, he implores, “Let no evil spirit gain entrance here.” When the priest raises his hand over the invalid for the anointing, he prays after making the Sign of the Cross thrice, “May any power that the devil has over you be utterly destroyed, as I place my hands on you…” (Collectio Rituum, pp. 173, 177).
In his study of the liturgical references to the Church’s battle against the devil, Dom Vagaggini concludes, “…it must be affirmed that the reality of the continual and cosmic struggle against Satan is an essential aspect of revelation and hence of the liturgy too; and that, if this viewpoint is lost, neither revelation nor liturgy is comprehensible” (Theological Dimensions of the Liturgy: A General Treatise on the Theology of the Liturgy, Collegeville, MN, Liturgical Press, 1976, p. 450).
Indeed, the events of our own time must be seen in this light, that the Church is truly at war against the Prince of Darkness, yet ever with the assurance that in the end, the light of Christ shall triumph.