Letter from an expert devil to an apprentice tempter: Part 1

By His Infernal Highness Arcibaldo   |   4 September 2024

Extract from His Infernal Highness Arcibaldo: letters from an expert devil to an apprentice tempter by Fr Serafino Lanzetta (Calx Mariae Publishing, 2024).

Dear Polliodoro,

I’m quite proud of you. My colleagues in charge of your group tell me that you leave no room whatsoever for any troublesome thought that might disturb you or divert you from your duty of enlightening humanity and of indoctrinating those who call themselves believers. As you are well aware, our golden rule is to operate in silence, behind the scenes, without being seen. We prefer to go unnoticed. We convince mortals that everything depends on them, while in reality much depends on us. And if this deception doesn’t work, then we make them believe that it’s all our doing, that everything under heaven is the work of the spirits of chaos and incredulity that we are. What counts at the end of the day is that they simply forget the Enemy. In fact, if everything depends on us — the good along with the bad — then nothing depends either on them or on their Master any longer. This appears to me a splendid idea to get rid of that old-fashioned belief in the devil which keeps men on their guard. If we can induce many of them to be obsessed with seeing the devil here, there, and everywhere, there will certainly be at least one fine fellow who will react by saying, “To hell with the devil!” Perhaps more than one, perhaps even the majority? It is hard to say, for not everyone is so gullible. In any case, our Father of the sublimest depths will surely be grateful to us for any success we might have.

Yet the problem with this dialectic of “yes, no, maybe so” regarding the devil is that, precisely in this case, that pesky notion of the “devil” persists. We must aim at gradually eliminating all trace of thought which might keep alive in people’s minds the very notion of the devil, and then we will move on to the next step. The oblivion of all thought which conceives us as the enemies of man should be accompanied by the forgetfulness of the infernal abode or the eternal condition of us so-called enemies, for in truth we are benefactors of humanity. In other words, we must also attempt to liberate believers from the idea of hell that they have drawn up for themselves from their Gospel accounts. However, for some time now, this idea has been growing ever weaker and increasingly inconsistent, without our having done a blessed thing — mainly thanks to the efforts of our allies and advocates who have managed to slip into their theological, or rather diabo-logical, ranks. From charlatans of the sacred, they have suddenly changed, thanks to us, to masters of empty chatter — quite fond of listening to it.

We will certainly not begin by making them deny ex abrupto (“all of a sudden”) the existence of hell; that would be much too conspicuous a manoeuvre. Rather, we could aim at inciting them to present it as a condition of such utter misery and despair that it would be unbearable to consign anyone to it, except for the devil (or for that idea of the devil that they have as yet conserved), along with a few of his subordinates. We will begin to preach our word, injecting the following vaguely Catholic-sounding homily, palatable even to pious ears, into their minds:

“My brothers and sisters in Christ, let us listen to the voice of the Spirit speaking today through mine, for I have something momentous to share with you. Life is an incomparable mystery destined never to come to an end. We live too often as if life here on earth were to continue endlessly. On the contrary, this life of ours is destined to endure, not in the here and now, but in the eternity of God. Take a moment to think about this destiny awaiting us. Let us ponder a moment the future in store for us. God has created us to be eternal with Him. This is our ultimate end and the cause of our joy. Sin leads us away from God and therefore we ought to avoid committing it. And yet, how could such a good God, who created us out of pure love and for our never-ending bliss, allow us to turn away from Him forever? Banish any such idea! An eternity without God! How utterly inconceivable and unconscionable! How could we imagine such a thing ever happening? God’s mercy, which is as infinite as He is Himself, would never allow a creature of His, endowed with intelligence and freedom, enriched with the gift of grace, to be lost eternally, thus losing everything that he had freely received from his Lord. Let us trust in God’s mercy. Let us abandon ourselves wholly to His infinite goodness, so that we can feel certain that hell will be barred — for you, for me, for everyone — by the love of a God who could never find perfect repose until each and every one of His children had come home to Him, and would remain restless, knowing no peace, if He had the slightest fear that even one child of His might never be coming home.”

There you have it, Polliodoro, a model sermon that you should learn by heart and begin inculcating into the heads of your cassock-wearing patients. Insist on forgiving mercy. A mercy which liberates everyone from hell simply by moving it to a remote, inaccessible corner, or rather, which bars entry so that no one may enter. We might even let them believe in its existence, but merely as a sort of scarecrow. This way the dogma won’t be denied, but it will be rendered harmless. Hell will continue to exist for the benefit of a handful of poor devils — for us — but no longer for mortal men. This will be the best way to precipitate them into the bottomless pit in droves, without much of an effort on our part. And if some of your patients are a bit fussy about what you serve up, having no taste for insipid blather, then we might try seasoning the speech with some more refined condiments…

Part II of this diabo-logical correspondence will follow in next week’s Voice of the Family Digest.

His Infernal Highness Arcibaldo: letters from an expert devil to an apprentice tempter by Fr Serafino Lanzetta is available to buy from Calx Mariae Publishing.