The Noonday Devil

The ninety-first psalm speaks of “the scourge that wreaks havoc at high noon.” It also expresses confidence in God’s protection from that scourge, as well as other evils. Based on that psalm some spiritual writers speak of the “Noonday Devil.” The Noonday Devil stands for the trials and temptations that assail us after our youthful fervor has faded and before we reach the age of peace and resignation.

There are temptations peculiar to that in-between period — fear, guilt, lack of fervor, loss of conviction, discouragement. And that period may be very lengthy. The boundaries are not well defined. It is more a question of a mental or emotional state than of chronology. That peace and resignation of old age may well prove elusive and we may struggle to attain it for a long time.

Bernard Basset, in a little book entitled The Noonday Devil, speaks of various fears to which we may be subject: fear owing to past sins, fear that God will prove stricter than we think, fear that our standards are too low, fear that we will never get things exactly right, fear that we are unprepared for death.

Many of our fears are imaginary and can be safely discarded. We would do well to set aside all fears that are based on the past or on the future. Why? Because such fears are concerned either with facts that cannot be altered or with imaginings that may never see the light of day. We cannot change the past, however much we worry about it. We cannot foresee the future with certainty. The second-worst thing about such fears (fears based on the past and on the future) is that they are useless. The worst thing about them is that they can be damaging to our peace of mind and our spiritual well-being.

Among the things that are commonly experienced in one’s later years are feelings of guilt and regret over past failures. We become more conscious of our sinfulness. Sins from long ago surface anew in our memory. We may experience the anguish of feeling unable to pray and of our sins seeming to multiply and overwhelm us. This is very discouraging, even frightening, but it is not necessarily bad.

St. John of the Cross has said that one of the surest signs of interior growth, of progress in prayer, is a growing awareness of our own sinfulness. An example of this is the phenomenon of saints speaking of themselves as the world’s greatest sinners. How can that be? Are they serious? We need to understand they are not comparing themselves with others, but expressing their heightened sensitivity to the way God sees us, as sinful but at the same time loved and redeemed.

St. Gregory the Great offered a good analogy to illustrate this idea. He wrote: “The sun turns brown him whom it touches closely; so the Lord when he comes, darkens him whom he touches by his grace, for the closer we come to grace, the more we recognize that we are sinners.”

Everyone is subject to the aforementioned fears. There are other fears to which priests are subject. To put this a bit differently, the Noonday Devil has some distinctive ways of plaguing priests. They relate especially to celibacy, obedience, and faith.

It can be very troubling for priests when they discover that advancing age does not free them from temptations against chastity. A story to illustrate that point: A young priest, greatly troubled by temptation, sought the advice of an elderly priest. He asked, “When can I expect these temptations to cease or at least to become less severe?” The elderly priest replied, “I’d say about seventy-five.” A week later the elderly priest called and said, “Make that seventy-six!” The elderly priest would do well to also remind the young priest of that reassuring passage in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (10:13): “None of the trials which have come upon you is more than a human being can stand. You can trust that God will not let you be put to the test beyond your strength, but with any trial will also provide a way out by enabling you to put up with it.”

Obedience is the second virtue on which the Noonday Devil focuses attention when dealing with priests. In our contemporary culture, in which individual liberty is highly prized, obedience can present a serious challenge. The practice of obedience can become more difficult as one grows older. For the younger person, what is resented is typically the object of a directive or the refusal of a request. It is not so much that someone commands. That is accepted as natural. The real challenge, and consequently, the real opportunity for perfection of obedience, presents itself to a conscience that has already achieved a certain maturity. It is then that the fact of command, more or less independently of the object, is difficult to accept. It is when a person is equal to or above the competent authority (bishop and/or religious superior) in everything: intelligence, experience, work accomplished, everything — except the fact that the other is the lawfully constituted authority, that one must proceed in faith, faith to see what remains hidden from a human point of view, faith to recognize Christ in the person of the authority.

Appropriate as the conclusion of any prayer of petition, the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane is surely appropriate when one is challenged to submit to legitimate authority in obedience. “Let it be as you, not I, would have it” (Mk 14:36).

The third and most dangerous temptation presented by the Noonday Devil relates to faith. With the passing of the years a priest typically begins to realize more fully what faith involves. He learns that scholarship does not always serve to support faith. In fact, current biblical scholarship sometimes seems to undermine what he learned many years ago in his seminary course in Sacred Scripture.

He begins to see more clearly that his faith is not a once-in-a-lifetime thing. To believe does not mean there is something fixed and finished which is simply to be perceived and accepted. Faith is not a matter of intellectually assenting to a set of propositions. It is dynamic. It is never fully complete in this life. It must be constantly renewed and nurtured. It is like a trail. The best way to keep a trail open is to walk on it, because every time you walk on it you create it anew. The Noonday Devil knows very well that if faith is not constantly renewed and nurtured it will wither and weaken. Consequently, it is there that the Noonday Devil focuses his attention, i.e., on subverting any efforts to renew and nurture one’s faith.

Challenges to one’s faith can take many forms. There are relatively small challenges, challenges to accept in faith particular difficulties that come into one’s life from time to time. A much greater challenge arises when one reflects on the enormity of evil, of pain, and of suffering in the world, especially of the innocent and of children. How is that compatible with the existence of a loving and powerful God? The alternative to meeting that challenge is atheism or deism.

It is only in the light of faith that we can accept Jesus and his message. Inevitably, however, to turn on a light is to create shadows. Even with the light of faith there are things we do not see, do not understand. It is then that we would do well to emulate the prayer of the man who approached Jesus requesting that his son be cured. When Jesus told him all things are possible for those who have faith, he replied: “I have faith. Help my lack of faith!” (Mk 9:24–25)

Years ago, a commentator on the evening news, Eric Sevareid, made an observation which could be very helpful when one encounters the Noonday Devil. Sevareid stated: “What counts in the long haul of adult life is not brilliance, or charisma, or derring-do, but rather the quality the Romans called gravitas — patience, stamina, weight of judgment. The prime virtue is courage because it makes all other virtues possible.” For a priest, it would be good to add another virtue of still higher importance: the virtue of hope.