A Lesson in Vigilance from Children at Play: Beware of Demons

A picture of youngsters playing reminds me how easily we may fail to notice evil in our midst. 

Children at play

There’s a lithograph in my house: Little Boys are made of from 1989 by Jodi Jensen.

It’s a whimsical illustration of anthropomorphized boy woodland critters (e.g. fox, rabbit, bear) playing outdoors. They’re doing traditional boyhood things like climbing trees.

In a corner of the picture there are two critters stacking a tower of blocks; a mouse is on a raccoon’s shoulders placing a block on top.

I love the picture! It’s one of those pictures you can get lost in, noticing all of the fun characters and details.

Keep your eye out

But just recently I noticed something I hadn’t noticed before.

Opposite the block tower is another raccoon critter. He has a slingshot pulled with a rock and he’s looking through a telescope. I’ve always seen him before.

But I only just recently realized that the sling-shooter is aiming deliberately at the other boys’ block tower! How naughty! He’s even using his telescope like a budding evil genius!

How did I not identify the mischievous plotting right before my eyes? Benign as it was.

How often do we not see the evil around us and even targeting us? That’s not benign like a kiddo with a slingshot.

I’d like to imagine that after the block tower toppled the three critters banded together and built another block tower. Or played a pretend pirate game with the telescope.

You know, the good stuff.

But maybe that was the critter builders’ first taste of the sour lemon of life. After all, even though the critter builders were happily "minding their own business,” the bad boy was still aiming directly at them.

Remembering our reality

“We must realize that demons are pure intellectual beings, not rational beings like us. They possess a superior knowledge of our weaknesses and dispositions which they use to tempt us.” —Father Antonio Moreno, O.P.

The critter intent on toppling the block tower had both a slingshot and a telescope. Kinda like the demons.

The critters building the block tower had neither. And they didn’t see him. Kinda like us.

Sadly, we’re not just kids on a playground.

We may fail to see evil, but that does not make the evil unreal.

Likewise, we may forget that we’re children of God, but that does not make it untrue!

With the same visible joy and exemplary teamwork of the critter builders, may we all work together as children of God to lift each other toward Heaven.

Reference

Jensen, Jodi. Little Boys are made of. 1989. Offset lithograph print after original watercolor.

Moreno, Antonio. "Demons According to St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross." Spirituality Today 43, no. 3 (Fall 1991): 258–270. Preserved in the Catholic Culture Library. https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=8280.