Angels walk among us, the Bible tells us. And so do demons. Yet they often take unexpected forms and shapes. They may come to us as strangers, as sudden insights, or as great trials. As James Reho describes in this Summer 2015 issue of Parabola, some devils are not to be exorcised (instructions for exorcism are included in this issue) but must be endured until they yield insights that can come no other way. “If there had been any power in you, it would have sufficed had one of you come, but since the Lord hath made you weak, you attempt to terrify me by numbers,” said Saint Anthony to the devils that tormented him. “Angels are agents and co-workers with us human beings,” write priest Matthew Fox and biologist Rupert Sheldrake. They spark our intuition and inspire us—“they get us to move.” They shed light on us from a cosmic perspective, but not if we scrub them out of existence as we tend to do in our secularized, scientific culture.
Yet there are internal devils—and interpersonal devils that spring up in spiritual communities. “People of different kinds seek the same light,” Roger Lipsey writes in “Make Peace Before the Sun Goes Down,” a subtle yet gripping account of the long and often harsh encounter between Thomas Merton and his abbot, Dom James. “If you are going to be a saint, the brothers must make you one,” wrote St. John of the Cross. Lipsey shows that even when harshest, the relationship between “Father Louis” and Dom James deepened the lives of both men. On Merton’s side, the abbot’s restrictions generated immense suffering but plunged the monk into the reflections that became gifts to the world.
May this issue be a gift for you.
—Tracy Cochran
