"Be Sober and Watch": Recognizing the Voice of the Evil One

There is truly an ocean of Catholic spiritual literature out there on the subject of learning to recognize the voice of God. As essential as this is, I have found it to be equally important to learn to recognize the voice of the devil.

While I have of course always been aware of the reality of demonic attacks, for much of my spiritual life I treated them as kind of abstraction, a point of theology rather than a lived spiritual experience. In real life, I seldom bothered with the effort to discern the difference between, say, my own bad thoughts and a demonic attack. This is, to some degree, understandable; avoiding sin is more important than being able to exactly pinpoint where your temptations are coming from, and the voice of the evil one is often woven so inextricably into our circumstances and internal movements, camouflagued like a tiger lurking in the field grass, that he can be difficult to tease out. Discernment in this matter is not easy, and many who attempt it are prone to exaggerating the point—like Kathy Bates in The Waterboy, they think everything is the devil. We see others who seem too obsessed with identifying demonic influence and wish to keep a wide berth from them. 

Nevertheless, this discernment was something practiced and recommended by all who have persevered in holiness, beginning with Our Lord Himself. Our Lord understood when He was dealing with human weakness and when there was something more afoot; He knew when to patiently explain His teaching to His confused followers and when to say, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" He knew when to reason with an errant soul and when to say, "You are of your father the devil." The saints, too, give numerous examples of this discernment. Whether we are reading spiritual masters like Teresa of Avila and Ignatius Loyola, humble priests like John Vianney or Padre Pio, or grand theologians like Aquinas and Bonaventure, we ever find sober and insightful analysis on recognizing how and when the devil attacks us.

It would be tedious here to review the entire corpus of spiritual writings on recognizing the attacks of the devil, but if we were to summarize the advice of the saints on discerning when we are under spiritual attack, it seems to boil down to four essential characteristics:  

1. Unusual

By the unusuality of demonic attacks, I mean they are not reasonable conclusions derived from our everyday train of thought. Rather, they are radical, bizarre, extreme, unusual, and outlandish. For example, suppose you discover a strange mark on your skin. A regular, rational thought process is, "Sometimes these marks can denote carcinoma. I'd better get it checked out just to be on the safe side." A reasonable course of action! A demon, meanwhile, will try to draw this to wild extremes not warranted by the circumtance. He will have you already certain it's cancerous, freaking out about its metastisization, and even worrying about your imminent demise and how your children will fare growing up with a with a dead parent. Thus, in a moment you have gone from seeing a little spot to tearfully imagining your children swathed in black at your funeral. Of course, none of this is the logical thing to conclude from finding a single spot on your skin. But the demon plays on fear and the tendency of the human mind to extrapolate consequences in order to get you preoccupied with extreme, unlikely, or unusual outcomes not at all justified by circumstance.

2. Persistent

The attack is persistent; it is not a momentary flutter of imagination. And even if it is successfully fended off, the enemy simply regroups and tries the same attack again later. In the life of St. Ignatius, the saint tells us that he went through months of prolonged spiritual attack at the outset of his vocation, during which time the devil assaulted him with all manner of thoughts bent towards turning him back from his resolution—everything from despair over being able to keep the disciplines he had resolved upon to fear that his sins were too many for God to pardon. St. Anthony, too, faced persistent demonic attacks after his retreat to the desert, consisting of temptations of various forms prodding him to abandon the religious life. Teresa of Avila recounted multiple demonic attacks throughout her life lasting several months at a time.

The lives of the saints are full of such tales exemplifying the persistence of demonic attacks. Though each case is different, there are striking similarities across the accounts: (1) though the particular nature of the attacks vary (e.g., lust, despair, pride, fear), the end goal is always discouragement; by these attacks, the evil one hopes to discourage the soul from persisting in its pious resolutions (2) the attacks persist over an extended duration, generally weeks but sometimes months, constituting a substantial cross for the soul who endures them. They are not the sort of trifling dark thoughts that sometimes enter our head but which we easily brush aside (3) Finally, the saints do not defeat the temptation except through arduous prayer and and equal degree of persistence, trusting in God's mercy. 

3. Intense

Demonic attacks are also known for their intensity. All temptations are troubling; all dark thoughts and evil inclinations throw us off a bit. But demonic attacks are often characterized by a special intensity that sets them apart. Often these attacks will piggy-back upon our natural insecurities. For example, suppose we already have a natural fear of being embarassed in public that sometimes causes us to stand down and remain silent when we should speak up. The evil one will play upon this fear, heaping fuel onto the fire to raise its heat, driving this natural fear to a preternatural level of intensity. We say grace builds upon nature; the same is true with demonic activity, which is a dark inversion of the order of grace. The Holy Spirit uses grace to build upon our natural strengths and virtues; the evil one aims his barbs at our natural weaknesses, attempting to turn a crack into a breach, a momentary hesitation into a full rout. These attacks often have a sense of being overwhelming, powerful, and difficult to stand up against.

Disturbing

We are used to dealing with a bit of anxiety in our day to day life. Under normal circumstances, we learn to integrate this anxiety into our mental processes and function around it. For example, suppose we know our car needs a repair and we know it is going to be expensive. It is natural to experience of a modicum of stress about it, but we realize the cost is unavoidable (if unpleasant) and resolve to just bite the bullet and dish out the money. The anxiety is there on the periphery of our thoughts, but it does not deprive us of our peace nor ruin our day. 

Demonic attacks, on the other hand, are often characterized by their disturbing nature, by which I mean they disturb our peace. They do not exist merely on the periphery; they worm they way into our innermost thoughts, becoming intrusive. They keep us from enjoying the day, throw us off focus, and upset our mental or emotional equilibrium. They have a paralyzing quality about them, robbing us of our ability to stay grounded. Their purpose is to prevent us from enjoying the spiritual rest God promises to His children (cf. Heb. 4:9-11).

It is important to note that while these four characteristics are all interrelated (e.g., a consequence of an especially intense attack is that it is disturbing), it's not strictly necessary for all four points to be present simultaneously. Sometimes the devil uses only one of these strategies, or any combination. This isn't precise theology; this is a generalization of some red flags that may indicate the devil is messing with you. 

Something I have noticed that the saints have in common in their dealings with the demons is they do not address the attacks on the devil's own terms. That is, if the devil tries to tell them, "X is Y," they do not get bogged down arguing with him about why X is not actually Y. The devil is much smarter than you are, and a master of deception. Trading words with him is a losing proposition, sure to lead only to greater confusion. The saints do not engage him; they overcome him. For example, Athanasius's Life of St. Anthony records that Anthony "mocked" the devil through his constant prayers (Chap. 5). To the devil's boasting of how many souls he had led astray, St. Anthony did not attempt to argue; rather, he said, "You are very despicable...for you are black-hearted and weak as a child" (Chap. 6). St. Padre Pio, when assaulted by the evil one, would similarly ridicule him and call him a liar. St. John Vianney said that the devil is very cunning but is not strong; he recommended simply making the sign of the cross to drive him off. In the Little Flowers of St Francis, when Brother Ruffino asks Francis how to respond to a demonic attack, the saint says Ruffino should threaten to shit down the devil's throat (Chap. 29). St. Teresa of Avila used to laugh at the devil and simply throw Holy Water about, which she said was a most efficacious remedy to demonic temptations.

The point is, the saints do not argue with the devil. Like Gandalf, who says to Wormtongue, "Be silent. Keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. I did not pass through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a witless worm," the saints recognized that talking with the devil was not the way to respond to his temptations. Most of us, however, are not going to physically see or hear the devil addressing us, but the principle remains the same: if you think you are facing demonic temptation, don't try to reason with it on its own terms. In the example given above about a skin spot appearing, "talking with the devil" might be doing things like manically Googling info on all sorts of hypothetical medical conditions, or making contingency plans for situations that don't even exist—in other words, things that feed into fear instead of restoring your peace. In that situation it is better to say, "God is in control. I will not worry myself sick over something about which I have so little information. I will go to the doctor and see what he says, and until then I will think no more of it. What will be will be. Jesus, grant me peace."

Not long ago, I was being troubled by a very distrubing intrusive thought. It would come on me unexpectedly, often when I was trying to work, or sometimes at Mass. It was intense and caused me considerable worry. I spent a lot of time trying to wrestle with this thought: my mind explored all its various facets, turning it over in my head like a Rubix cube. I was trying to "solve" the thought, but in the course of doing so, I was only yielding greater space to it in my head. And the more I thought on it, the more troubled I became. One day at Mass, I was trying to focus when this thought kept intruding upon my peace. All at once, as if by flash of supernatural intuition, I realized that this thought had all the hallmarks of a demonic attack, as listed above. I said to myself, "Wait a second, this is the devil speaking to me." Then, with an air of resolve, I simply said, "Begone, Satan. I don't have to listen to you." And just like that the instrusive thought evaporated, as lightly as the night's mist burns away at the rise of the sun. As of yet, it has not returned. 

I am always a bit leery talking about this subject, not only because it is difficult to discuss with precision, but also because people can be very unhinged in how they approach these matters. Nothing I have written here is systematic, and even the greatest saints and exorcists are only privy to occasional glimpses of the spiritual world, which can give but a very incomplete picture—and even what we do know is often very circumstantial and contextual. Still, we would do well to have more awareness of the devil's wiles. In the Benedictine Compline, the lesson read every single night is 1 Pet. 5:8-9, which says, "Be sober and watch, because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour, whom resist ye, strong in faith." We must "watch" for the devil, but also do this in a manner that is "sober." Successfully identifying when we might be under spiritual attack empowers us to respond accordingly, increases the likelihood that we fend off such attacks before they become disruptive, and builds our spiritual resilience. If it all seems like a bit much, a good place to start (as recommended by St. Ignatius) is to simply ask God to help you distinguish the movements of the bad spirits from the work of the Holy Spirit and then be attentive to what your obervation reveals to you. 

May the Lord bring you grace, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit in 2026.