SOMEONE HATES YOU

Abba John the Short said, “Each time the tempter speaks, the whole world hangs by a thread.”

The devil speaks for one reason: to tempt us. He tempts us for one reason: to ensnare us. He ensnares us for one reason: he hates us. The hatred that old serpent has for you is personal. He hates you, hates who you are, hates why you are. His hatred is personally directed at each of us, and he uses whatever temptations and snares he can to hook us, reel us in, and filet us for his dinner.

The teachings of the fathers and mothers of the desert, passed on to us in a handful of terse phrases, are like scalpels in the hands of a skillful surgeon: they slice through whatever they must to lay bare the disease that festers within our souls. For this reason Christians have cherished their words for almost two thousand years.

Yesterday Abba Anthony’s words warned: until we grasp that we really don’t love God, we can’t really start to love Him. It’s His love we’re each personally created to share.

Abba John’s words today tell us the grim side of that truth: if God loves you personally, and created you personally, you are also personally hated. Satan wants to chop you up into bits like cheap catfish. He’s determined to do it whether you’re too smart or too jaded to believe in him or not. The devil doesn’t need—or even particularly want you—to “believe” in him. His interest in you now is only for the purpose of teaching you, like one of Pavlov’s dogs, to sin at his suggestion. He wants you to continue to weave a web of self-delusion that you’re entitled, deserving of special consideration, that when you sin it’s really not sin but sophistication.

“Each time the tempter speaks,” is like the first time. When the serpent hissed his words to Eve, when he wrapped his coils around Adam, it brought you and me to grief. The Church teaches us that the first man and woman set in motion a cycle that continues today. Left to our own devices, you and I make the same choice they did. What I want over everything. Me over goodness. Me over you. Me over God.

Every time you and I are tempted, regardless whether it’s to spurn the greatest commandment or the least, it’s us in the balance, being weighed, measured and tested. The next time I’m tempted to ignore someone’s suffering, to make light of their sorrow, to know that I’m better than she is, it’s the same old serpent hissing to me the same old thing he’s been hissing all along to each and every one of us. “For you, it’s okay. You’re better. You’re important. God ahead and take a bite; you’ll love it.”

But Abba warns us it’s even more insidious: “the whole world hangs by a thread.”
John Donne, the seventeenth-century poet and priest said it differently, but as truly: “no man is an island.”

We’re bound together, you and I, whether we like it or not. You and I share the sin of Adam and Eve, but I share something of your sin and you of mine. God has made us so that we can’t escape each other. We’re not meant to. “When one suffers,” St Paul said, “we all suffer. When one of us is exalted, we all rejoice.” God has bound us together in suffering and sin, because he means to raise us together in glory.

God has bound us together in the Greatest Mystery of all: the Mystery of Love.

At the core, the center of all that Is, Is God. At His heart, God is Love. Not a feeling or emotion, not even an action, but Love is the Father eternally giving Himself to the Son and the Son eternally giving Himself to the Father. The Love that binds Them and permeates Them is the Holy Ghost.

You and I have been made to enter and find ourselves in that Uncreated Love.

We’re bound together in this Mystery of Love. You were made for this. And the devil, who was too, hates you for it. Because he hates you, he wants to ensnare you. To ensnare you, he tempts you. When he does, remember Abba John’s words. Remember why you were made.

And pray for me, that I remember it, too.