In his words before praying the Sunday Angelus, Pope Francis reflected on the chains that oppress man and pointed out that, when these appear, the worst thing you can do is dialogue with the devil because you always lose; instead, he encouraged invoke Jesus who came to free us from those oppressions.
The Pontiff explained that the Gospel of January 28 “presents Jesus freeing a person possessed by an ‘evil spirit’, which destroyed him and made him scream incessantly.”
The Holy Father told the 20,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Square that the goal of the devil is to possess people to chain their souls. He noted that some of these chains are addictions; the dominant fashions that push man “to impossible perfectionism, consumerism and hedonism”, that commercialize him and distort his relationships.
“And there are also the temptations and conditioning that undermine self-esteem, serenity and the ability to choose and love life; There is fear, which makes us look to the future with pessimism, and intolerance, which always blames others; and there is the idolatry of power, which generates conflicts and resorts to weapons that kill or uses economic injustice and the manipulation of thought,” he added.
Given this, Pope Francis has assured that “Jesus came to free us from all these chains. And today, to the challenge of the devil who shouts: ‘What do you want […]? Have you come to ruin us?’, he responds: ‘Shut up, get out of him!’”
The Pontiff recalled that Christ “has the power to expel the devil” and to free men from the power of evil. However, he explained that Jesus “expels the devil, but does not dialogue with him.”
“Jesus never dialogues with the devil, and when he was tempted in the desert, his answers were the words of the Bible, never a dialogue. Brothers and sisters, there is no dialogue with the devil! Be attentive: there is no dialogue with the devil, because if you engage in dialogue with him, he wins, always. Stay tuned,” he warned.
“So what can we do when we feel tempted and oppressed? Negotiate with the devil! No, you don’t negotiate with him. We must invoke Jesus: invoke him there, where we feel that the chains of evil and fear tighten more intensely,” he added.
The Holy Father noted that “the Lord, with the strength of his Spirit, wants to repeat to the evil one today too: ‘Go away, leave that heart in peace, do not divide the world, the families, our communities; Let them live in peace, so that the fruits of my Spirit, not yours, may flourish there. So that love, joy, meekness may reign among them, and instead of violence and cries of hatred, there may be freedom and peace.’”
Finally, Pope Francis invited us to ask ourselves: “Do I really want to free myself from those chains that imprison my heart? And also, do I know how to say ‘no’ to evil temptations, before they take over my soul? Finally, do I call on Jesus, allow him to act in me, to heal me from the inside.