Hello, my name is Father Gregory Pine and I'm a Dominican friar of the province of

St Joseph. I teach at the Dominican House of Studies and I work for the

Tomistic Institute and this is Pines with Aquinas. In this episode I'd like to

talk a little bit about demons.

So we recently hosted a retreat, a Tomistic Institute retreat at the House of Studies

for students at the Catholic University of America about Angels and Demons.

And it fell to me to describe the influence of the Demons.

And in kind of researching for it and then presenting the themes, it struck me that this is helpful for our own spiritual maturation and growth.

Not in the sense that it represents the most important part of our life of faith, certainly

not, but that it represents a part of our life of faith and if we don't address it there's a kind of risk that we ignore it or

Fear it or otherwise fall prey to it so let's think a little bit about how the demons are at work in our world and how they might be at work in our life.

Here we go.

Okay, so I want to address a kind of temptation at the outset. I think that sometimes

people fear that they're missing out on the substance of their spiritual lives

because they're missing an integral part. It's like there's some

secret that they haven't learned or there's some key that they haven't picked up.

So they might say to themselves, you know I'm praying, I'm making good use of the

sacraments, I'm engaging in Christian friendship, I've introduced some penance into my life I'm studying the faith but like

there right I'm just not not really firing on all cylinders because I'm not

feeling it and I'm not experiencing it as delightful and dot dot you know you can think

about the way in which people describe their spiritual lives. So people go looking

for this secret or they go looking for this key and I think sometimes people happen upon the demonic or the world

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