# Bishop Barron – The Truth About the Devil and How Christians Should Respond

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 8 Oct 2026, 11 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/73269752/bishop_barron_on_the_devil.mp3



## Transcript

[0:11] Speaker 1: Well, in the sixth chapter of Marx Gospel, we find
[0:15] Speaker 1: the account of Jesus sending his disciples out on mission.
[0:18] Speaker 1: They're going to preach, they're going to heal, but the
[0:21] Speaker 1: first thing he tells them is you have authority over
[0:24] Speaker 1: unclean spirits. When they return from mission, the first thing
[0:28] Speaker 1: they tell him is, we cast out many demons in
[0:31] Speaker 1: your name. Now, when I was coming of age, I
[0:34] Speaker 1: mean even in the seminary, that kind of language was
[0:36] Speaker 1: seen as oh kind of primitive superstition, talking about devil's demons,
[0:41] Speaker 1: or maybe we tried to put a sort of literary
[0:44] Speaker 1: spin on it. It was a symbol for evil. It
[0:48] Speaker 1: was a personification of evil in the personal or institutional sense.
[0:53] Speaker 1: Here's the thing that approach just doesn't do justice to
[0:56] Speaker 1: the Bible. The Bible knows all about personal sin, very
[0:59] Speaker 1: clear about that. It also knows about institutional disorder and
[1:03] Speaker 1: dysfunction very clearly. But it knows about a third level,
[1:08] Speaker 1: a third dimension, a type of evil that is underneath
[1:12] Speaker 1: if you want, that undergirds the other two is more
[1:15] Speaker 1: pervasive and dangerous. This level of truly spiritual evil. I'm
[1:21] Speaker 1: talking about fallen angels. Now, you know Kaflins get up
[1:25] Speaker 1: every single week and we confess our belief in God,
[1:27] Speaker 1: who made the visible world and the invisible world. It
[1:32] Speaker 1: means a realm of spirits reality is at a higher
[1:36] Speaker 1: pitch of existence. What's a devil but a fallen or
[1:40] Speaker 1: morally compromised angel. They're good and bad human beings. They're
[1:44] Speaker 1: good and bad angels. But see, here's the thing. Think
[1:48] Speaker 1: of a wicked person, you know, who's also very smart,
[1:54] Speaker 1: very talented, and well connected. That's a truly dangerous figure,
[1:59] Speaker 1: right when you combine and wickedness with lots of other powers.
[2:04] Speaker 1: So a devil, an angel of being in a very
[2:07] Speaker 1: high pitch of intelligence and so on, who has gone
[2:10] Speaker 1: bad is a dangerous figure. Indeed, Now do devils influence
[2:17] Speaker 1: the world, sometimes in very direct and frightening ways. Yeah,
[2:21] Speaker 1: talk to anyone involved in exorcism. I've talked a few
[2:25] Speaker 1: over the years, and some extraordinary stories ensue. But that's
[2:29] Speaker 1: not the typical way that the dark realm intervenes. Usually
[2:35] Speaker 1: it does so in a much more indirect way by suggestion,
[2:39] Speaker 1: by temptation, something I featured in the Cathalism series. I
[2:46] Speaker 1: think the most frightening religious painting in the world at
[2:48] Speaker 1: the Orvieto Cathedral by the great of early Renaissance master
[2:53] Speaker 1: Lucas Siderelli, much admired by Michael Angelo, by the way.
[2:56] Speaker 1: But you see these frescoes there, and the most striking
[2:59] Speaker 1: one is a depiction of the Antichrist. It shows this
[3:03] Speaker 1: figure the Antichrist and he's listening as the devil whispers
[3:07] Speaker 1: in his ear, so kind of a classic symbol of
[3:09] Speaker 1: this temptation. But what's really interesting is the devil puts
[3:13] Speaker 1: his hand kind of in the vesture of the Antichrist
[3:17] Speaker 1: in such a way that it looks for all the
[3:19] Speaker 1: world like the Antichrist's own arm. And it's a very
[3:23] Speaker 1: clever way of suggesting how the dark powers influence us indirectly,
[3:29] Speaker 1: clandestinely by insinuation, in such a way that heck, it
[3:33] Speaker 1: looks like our activity, and in many ways it is.
[3:35] Speaker 1: But yet it's the dark powers having invaded. Now, what
[3:41] Speaker 1: are the signs of the demonic? What are the ways
[3:46] Speaker 1: the demonic appears? Well, look at the names the Bible gives.
[3:51] Speaker 1: The devil's called in the Greek hau diaboloss our word devil,
[3:56] Speaker 1: diablo in Spanish, the diabre in French. All from that
[4:00] Speaker 1: Toyfel and German too Abalain means to cast apart, to
[4:07] Speaker 1: throw apart, to scatter. The great sign of the demonic
[4:12] Speaker 1: is scattering. God is a great gathering force. When every
[4:17] Speaker 1: thing's come together, when a community forms, that's a sign
[4:21] Speaker 1: of the Holy Spirit, the scattering power. That's the sign
[4:25] Speaker 1: of the darker powers. When families get scattered, when business organizations,
[4:31] Speaker 1: when communities, when cultures get divided, that's the dark power.
[4:36] Speaker 1: The other great name in the Bible is Hasatanas. It's
[4:40] Speaker 1: the Greek that's based on the Hebrew word that means
[4:43] Speaker 1: the accuser, the accuser. Here's a little experiment. Try this today.
[4:50] Speaker 1: Examine your conscience and find out how many times in
[4:52] Speaker 1: the course of the day you accuse someone of something.
[4:56] Speaker 1: I bet you'd be kind of surprised. We do it
[4:58] Speaker 1: a lot. It's one of our favorite indoor pastimes. Point
[5:01] Speaker 1: the finger, blame, gossip, destroy someone's character, you know. The
[5:08] Speaker 1: sign of the demonic is accusation. The Holy Spirit lifts
[5:12] Speaker 1: up and confirms, you know, and affirm someone in his
[5:17] Speaker 1: or her personhood. The demonic is the accusing power. Here's
[5:22] Speaker 1: a related title I find fascinating. The Bible calls the devil,
[5:26] Speaker 1: the father of lies. God is truth. See in truthfulness
[5:31] Speaker 1: about ourselves, about our relationships, about our family, about whatever
[5:34] Speaker 1: it is. Truthfulness is always the path of light. It's
[5:38] Speaker 1: the path that leads to smooth functioning truthfulness. The sign
[5:43] Speaker 1: of a demonic is Deceitfulness is untruth. Think now of
[5:48] Speaker 1: the way and untruth about you has perhaps wounded you
[5:53] Speaker 1: in a very deep way. Someone said something about you
[5:56] Speaker 1: that wasn't true, It was a lie, but yet it
[5:58] Speaker 1: wounded you in such a way that wound is still
[6:01] Speaker 1: festering after many decades. Think of the times you've wounded
[6:07] Speaker 1: somebody with an untruth, you know, and again, the wrecking
[6:10] Speaker 1: of someone's reputation, wrecking of someone's character by means of
[6:14] Speaker 1: a lie. That's a sign of the dark Power. Here's
[6:18] Speaker 1: the last one. It is the most frightening name. It's
[6:21] Speaker 1: in the first thought of John the author refers to
[6:24] Speaker 1: the devil as the murderer from the beginning. God is life, right,
[6:30] Speaker 1: God is life. Whatever enhances life is of the Holy Spirit.
[6:34] Speaker 1: That's why John Paul talked about the culture of death.
[6:37] Speaker 1: You know, the sign of the Dark Power is always
[6:40] Speaker 1: an increase in death. It's a negation of life. You know,
[6:45] Speaker 1: look at the twentieth century, which is the bloodiest done record.
[6:49] Speaker 1: There's no question about that. The number of people killed,
[6:52] Speaker 1: you know, for ideological purposes in warfare in the twentieth
[6:55] Speaker 1: century was the worst ever. Can you explain that entirely
[7:01] Speaker 1: through psychological or political categories? I mean, it just seems
[7:05] Speaker 1: almost comically inadequate to the reality to say that, you know, Hitler, Stalin, Mile, etc.
[7:10] Speaker 1: Are simply explicable politically or psychologically. I don't know. There's
[7:15] Speaker 1: something about the pervasiveness of violence and the destruction of
[7:20] Speaker 1: life in the twentieth century that has all the marks
[7:23] Speaker 1: of the murderer from the beginning. You know. Okay, now,
[7:27] Speaker 1: so far that's the bad news. If you want, here's
[7:30] Speaker 1: the good news. The good news is, and it's central
[7:32] Speaker 1: to Christianity, is that Christ has conquered these powers. He's
[7:39] Speaker 1: conquered individual sin. True, he's conquered collective institutional sin. But
[7:44] Speaker 1: the Bible clearly witnesses to the fact that Jesus has
[7:47] Speaker 1: conquered these powers. There's a great passage read it in
[7:51] Speaker 1: the second chapter of Colossians. Paul uses an image borrow
[7:55] Speaker 1: from his own time, when a Roman general won a victory,
[8:00] Speaker 1: he'd bring the leaders of the captive nation back and
[8:04] Speaker 1: he'd paryed them in chains through the street to humiliate them. Right,
[8:09] Speaker 1: Paul says, Christ through his Cross has done just that
[8:13] Speaker 1: with the dark powers. He's chained them up and has
[8:16] Speaker 1: now made a public display of them. He says, you know,
[8:19] Speaker 1: we read that language. Now he think what's he talking about.
[8:22] Speaker 1: That's exactly what he's talking about is what he would
[8:24] Speaker 1: have known as a Roman citizen, a citizen of that
[8:27] Speaker 1: world is Oh, yeah, they're humiliating these conquered people. That's
[8:31] Speaker 1: what Christ did through the power of the Cross, which
[8:35] Speaker 1: means we don't have to be behold into these powers. See,
[8:38] Speaker 1: that's near the heart of the Christian thing. They've been
[8:43] Speaker 1: defeated and we now can claim victory over them. What
[8:47] Speaker 1: are the weapons that we have if you want to
[8:49] Speaker 1: stay with that kind of military analogy, the Mass, the Eucharist, confession,
[8:56] Speaker 1: the sacraments, the saints, in other words, the whole stuff
[9:01] Speaker 1: of the Church, you might construe as the weapons that
[9:04] Speaker 1: we can use in the battle against the dark powers.
[9:07] Speaker 1: Here's one of the sad things as Catholics now in
[9:10] Speaker 1: drove stay away from all those weapons. They shouldn't be
[9:15] Speaker 1: too surprised that the dark powers can begin to have
[9:17] Speaker 1: an influence over them. Or switch the analogy now to
[9:21] Speaker 1: a medical one, especially with confession of mind. Suppose you
[9:24] Speaker 1: have a bad cut on your hand, a deep cut
[9:28] Speaker 1: which you never attend to. You don't treat it, you
[9:31] Speaker 1: don't bandage it anyway, no disinfect in the plan, and
[9:35] Speaker 1: it's just as open wound. But what's gonna happen is bacteria, germs,
[9:39] Speaker 1: and so one will get in and the hand will
[9:41] Speaker 1: become infected. If you ignore that, in time, your whole
[9:44] Speaker 1: body will become infected. Right, think of sin. I don't
[9:49] Speaker 1: mean trivial sin here, but I mean like that repeated
[9:51] Speaker 1: habitual sin that we can all fall into as a
[9:55] Speaker 1: kind of an open wound in your spirit untreated. What
[10:00] Speaker 1: can happen is the germs and bacteria if you want
[10:04] Speaker 1: in the spiritual order. The dark powers can use that
[10:07] Speaker 1: as a way of getting in a way of influencing you. Well, see,
[10:11] Speaker 1: what does the Church give us the means to treat
[10:13] Speaker 1: these wounds. It's called confession. It's called the confession of
[10:16] Speaker 1: our sins, the reception of absolution, which treats that wound.
[10:20] Speaker 1: You know, we have the weapons, we have the medical
[10:26] Speaker 1: means if you want to deal with these powers which
[10:29] Speaker 1: have been defeated by Christ. But we have to claim
[10:33] Speaker 1: that victory, we have to claim that healing. And I
[10:36] Speaker 1: think that's right near the heart of the Christian thing
[10:40] Speaker 1: to this day. As Jesus sent them out two thousand
[10:43] Speaker 1: years ago to do battle, he still sends a church
[10:46] Speaker 1: out for the same purpose today

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