Paul VI "Smoke of Satan" Homily: Unpublished English Full Text

This, the most famous homily of Pope Saint Paul VI, apparently has no official English translation by the Vatican, to this day! It was duly published in the original Italian and in the official Spanish translation (below) by the Vatican newspaper L'osservatore Romano in the weekly edition of 30 of June - 1 of July 1972, and those texts are also not accessible online! What is more, the Vatican website today does not provide this homily in any language! Nor does it appear in the official documents of the Vatican Acta Apostolica Sedes (AAS). This homily is listed in the vatican.va chronological list of Paul VI's homilies, but what is give is a cheap summary of this masterful discourse! Indeed, as asserted by Pope Saint Paul VI, the Enemy has many earthly agents who sow confusion, and censor the truth to try to remain unexposed. Below is my translation. --Plinthos

Homily "Be Strong in the Faith" – Saint Paul VI

Mass of June 29, 1972, commemorating the ninth anniversary of his coronation as Pope on June 30, 1963, after being elected on June 21, 1963.
L’Osservatore Romano, June 30 – July 1, 1972.
(Spanish edition, July 9, 1972, pp. 1–2)

We must thank you and all those who, absent from Rome, are present in spirit, for your attendance at this rite which aims to have a twofold intention. The first—and it is sufficient—is to honor Saints Peter and Paul, especially since we are in the basilica where we find ourselves, over the tomb and relics of the Apostle Peter; to honor these princes of the apostles and to honor Christ in them, and to feel led by them to Christ, for we owe them this great inheritance of faith. And, moreover, the other intention is that we cannot be insensitive to commemorating the ninth anniversary of our election—as successor of Peter—to the Roman Pontificate and, we say it trembling, to the position of visible representative on Earth, vicar of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

We thank you from the heart, also, because this presence assures us of what is most alive and ardent in our desires: your adherence, your fidelity, your communion, your unity in prayer and in faith, and in the constitution of this mysterious visible and earthly society called the Church, and for feeling ourselves here particularly as Church, united in Jesus Christ as in one body; also because we trust that this presence signifies help, prayer, indulgence for the one speaking to you and also prayer for Us, for our office, for the mission that the Lord entrusted to Us for the good of the Church and the world. And this prayer will truly serve Us as a great support to humbly and strongly fulfill our difficult task.

We feel authorized to yield the floor to Saint Peter himself and to beg him to say one of his words among the many beautiful ones he left us in the two canonical epistles that we preserve in the body of Sacred Scripture, and we choose those that speak of you. Saint Peter speaks of the community, the nascent Church, in the first letter—strange, yet expressive—that he sent from Rome to the churches of the East, to the churches of Asia Minor, as informed exegetes say, and which, according to his custom, he wrote not to make new doctrinal communications—as Saint Paul usually did—but to exhort. One feels the pastor who wants to incite, encourage, and give awareness of what the Christian people is and what it must do. In this first letter of Saint Peter, with profound clarity and sharpness, the entire range of new sentiments that must have life and burst forth with impetus from the Christian heart is touched upon. Among the many words that the letter contains, we present these to you for your meditation, with a brief commentary; Saint Peter says:

“You are a chosen generation, a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people: that you may declare his virtues, who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light: Who in time past were not a people: but are now the people of God. Who had not obtained mercy; but now have obtained mercy.” 1 Peter 2:9-10

Here is what We submit for a moment to your reflection.

Royal Priesthood

These are words that have been much studied in recent years, especially because they have been the axis of the doctrine of the Council in its main chapter, that is, in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, where precisely this picture of the people of God is described.

Yes; we tell you that in this moment proper to prayer, poor as we are, the Lord inspires us to understand things. We imagine having before Us, almost extended in panorama, the entire Holy Catholic Church, and we see it—with the characteristics that Saint Peter indicates—in a unity; gathered in this principle—Christ—for this end: to glorify him; for this benefit: to be saved; for this transfiguration, almost for this metamorphosis that is initiated in each of those who compose this community of a supernatural order, by the discovery of the vocation in each of the components of this great human mass, of this great sea of Humanity, in which each one is personally called as a member of the multitude, personally called—according to what the Apocalypse says about the last day—to receive a new name.

If I remember correctly, the Lord says in the text, that we are all called to exercise, to compose, a royal priesthood. Here there is a reminiscence of the Old Testament—that of Exodus—when God, speaking to Moses before giving him the Law, says: "I will make of this people a priestly and royal people." Saint Peter takes up this so great, so exalting word, and applies it to the new people of God, heir and continuer of the Israel of the Bible, to form a new Israel, the Israel of Christ. Saint Peter says: "It will be the priestly and royal people who will glorify the God of mercy, the God of salvation."

We know that this word has sometimes been misunderstood, as if the priesthood were one single order, that is, as if it were communicated to all those inserted into the Mystical Body of Christ, to all who are Christians. In a certain sense it is true, and we usually call it the common priesthood, but the Council tells us—and Tradition had already taught us—that there exists another degree, another state of priesthood: the ministerial priesthood, which has particular and exclusive faculties and prerogatives, precisely of the ministerial priesthood.

But let us pause on what concerns everyone: the royal priesthood. Here we should ask ourselves what priesthood means, but the explanations would never end, and therefore we limit ourselves and content ourselves with this: priest means capacity to render worship to God, to communicate with Him, to seek Him always in a new depth, in a new discovery, in a new love. This impulse of Humanity toward God, which has not been sufficiently reached nor sufficiently known, is the priesthood of one who is inserted into the only Priest who, after the advent of the New Testament, is Christ. It is that the Christian is endowed, by that very fact, with this quality, this prerogative of being able to speak to the Lord in true terms, as from son to father.

What Distinguishes the Christian

Audemus dicere: we can truly celebrate before the Lord a rite, a liturgy of common prayer, a sanctification of even profane life, which distinguishes the Christian from the non-Christian. This people is different, although it may be confused in the great tide of Humanity. It has its distinction, its unmistakable characteristic. Saint Paul defined himself as segregatus, separated, distinct from the rest of Humanity, precisely for being invested with prerogatives and functions that those who do not possess the supreme fortune and excellence of being members of Christ do not have.

Then we must consider that we, those called to be children of God, to participate in the Mystical Body of Christ, who are animated by the Holy Spirit and made temples of the presence of God, must carry out this colloquy, this dialogue, this conversation with God in religion, in liturgical worship, in private worship, and we must extend the sense of sacredness even to profane actions. "Whether you eat or drink," said Saint Paul, "do it for the glory of God." And he says it repeatedly in his letters, as if to reclaim for the Christian the capacity to infuse something new, to illuminate, to sacralize also temporal, external, ephemeral, profane things.

Desacralization

We are exhorted to give to the Christian people, called the Church, a truly sacred sense. And by affirming it thus, we feel that we must restrain the wave of profaneness, desacralization, secularization, which rises, which oppresses and which wants to confuse and overflow the religious sense in the secret of the heart—in exclusively secret private life, or also in the external manifestations of life—of all personal interiority, or even make it disappear. It is affirmed that there is no longer any reason to distinguish one man from another, that exists that can establish such a distinction. Even more: one must return to man his authenticity; one must return to man his true being, which is common to all others.

But the Church, and today Saint Peter, calling the Christian people to self-awareness, tell it that it is the chosen people, distinct, acquired by Christ, a people that must exercise a particular relationship with God, a priesthood with God. This sacralization of life today must not be erased, expelled from customs and from our life, as if it should no longer belong. We have lost religious habits, we have lost many other external manifestations of religious life. Regarding this, there is much to discuss and much to concede, but it is necessary to maintain the concept, and with the concept also some sign of the sacrality of the Christian people, that is, of those inserted into Christ, the High and Eternal Priest.

This will also tell us that we must feel a great religious fervor. Currently, there is a part of the studies of Humanity—the so-called sociology—that disregards this contact with God. On the contrary, the sociology of Saint Peter, the sociology of the Church, when studying men, highlights precisely this sacral aspect, of conversation with the Ineffable, with God, with the divine world, and this must be affirmed in the study of all human differentiations.

However heterogeneous the human race may appear, we must not forget this fundamental truth that the Lord confers on us when he gives us grace: we are all brothers in the same Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, Scythian or barbarian, man or woman. We are all one in Christ; we are all sanctified; we all participate to this degree in the supernatural elevation that Christ conferred on us, and Saint Peter reminds us of it; it is the sociology of the Church that we must not make disappear or forget.

Defections

Returning to look at that panorama to which we alluded—the great plane of human life, the entire Church—what do we see? If we are asked what the Church is today, can it be calmly confronted with the words that Peter left us as inheritance and meditation? Can we be at ease? Can we not see the Church in an ideology that obliges us to some reflection, to some attitude, to some effort and to some virtue that becomes characteristic of the Christian?

We think again in this moment—with immense charity—of all our brothers who abandon us, of many who are fugitives and forget, of many who perhaps never managed to have awareness of the Christian vocation although they have received baptism. We would very truly like to extend our hand to them and tell them that the heart is always open, that crossing the threshold is easy. We would very much like to make them participants in the great and ineffable fortune of our happiness, that of being in communication with God, which takes nothing away from us of the temporal vision and the positive realism of the external world. Perhaps it obliges us to renunciations, to sacrifices, but while it deprives us of something, it multiplies its gifts. It imposes renunciations on us, but it provides us abundantly with other riches. We are not poor, we are rich, because we have the wealth of the Lord.

Now, we would like to say to these brothers—from whom we feel the tear in the bowels of our priestly soul—how much we have them present, how much—now and always, and more and more—we love them, and how much we pray for them, and how much we strive with this effort that pursues and surrounds them to make up for the breach that they themselves make of our communion in Christ.

Doubt, Uncertainty, Unease

Then there is another category, and to it we all somewhat belong. And I would say that this category characterizes the Church of today. It would seem that through some crack the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God. There is doubt, uncertainty, problems, unease, dissatisfaction, confrontation. There is no longer trust in the Church; more trust is placed in the first profane prophet—who comes to speak to us from some newspaper or some social movement—to follow him and ask him if he has the formula for true life; and, on the contrary, we do not realize that we are already owners and masters of it.

Doubt has entered our consciences and it has entered through windows that should have been open to the light: science. But science is made to give us truths that do not distance us from God, but make us seek Him even more and celebrate Him with greater intensity. On the contrary, from science has come criticism, doubt regarding everything that exists and everything we know. Scientists are those who most pensively and painfully lower their foreheads and end up teaching: "I don't know, we don't know, we cannot know." It is true that science tells us the limits of our knowledge, but everything it provides us positively should be certainty, should be impetus, should be enrichment, should increase our capacity for prayer and hymn to the Lord; and, on the contrary, behold, teaching becomes an arena of confusion, of plurality that no longer agrees, of sometimes absurd contradictions.

Progress is exalted only to then be able to demolish it with the strangest and most radical revolutions, to deny everything that has been conquered, to return to being primitive after having so exalted the progresses of the modern world.

Also in us, those of the Church, this state of uncertainty reigns. It was believed that after the Council a day of sun would come for the history of the Church. On the contrary, a day of clouds has come, of storm, of darkness, of searching, of uncertainty, and one feels fatigue in giving the joy of faith. We preach ecumenism and we distance ourselves more and more from others.

The Devil’s Intervention

How has all this happened? We confide our thought to you: there has been a power, an adverse power. Let us say its name: the Devil. This mysterious being who is in Saint Peter's own letter—on which we are commenting—and to whom allusion is made so many times in the Gospel—on the lips of Christ—the mention of this enemy of man returns. We believe in something preternatural that has come into the world precisely to disturb, to suffocate the fruits of the Ecumenical Council and to prevent the Church from bursting forth in the hymn of jubilation for having full awareness of Herself once again.

Precisely for this reason, we would like to be able, now more than ever, of exercising the function that God entrusted to Peter to confirm the brothers in the faith. We would like to communicate this charism of certainty that the Lord gives to the one who represents him, even unworthily, on this earth. And to tell you that faith—when it is founded on the word of God, accepted and placed in conformity with our own human spirit—gives us a truly sure certainty. Whoever believes with simplicity, with humility; he knows he is on the good path; he feels that he has an interior testimony that confirms us in our difficult ideology and comforts us in the difficult conquest of truth.

The Lord manifests Himself as light and truth to the one who accepts Him in his word, and His word does not become an obstacle to truth and to the path toward being, but the rung by which we can ascend and truly be conquerors of the Lord, who comes to meet us and gives himself today through this methodology, this path of faith that is a foretaste and guarantee of the definitive vision.

Strong in the Faith

And then We see the third aspect, which we like so much to contemplate, the great extension of believing Humanity. We see a great number of humble, simple, pure, upright, strong souls, who believe, who are—according to what Saint Peter says at the end of his epistle—“fortes in fide” ("strong in faith"). 1 Peter 5:9 And we would like this strength of faith, this security, this peace, to triumph over the obstacles that life—our own experience and the phenomenology of things—place before us, and that we may always be strong in the faith.

Brothers, we do not say strange, difficult, or absurd things. We would only like you to experience an act of faith, in humility and sincerity; a psychological effort that tells us to ourselves that we try to perform a conscious action. Is it true? Is it not true? Do I accept? Do I not accept? Yes, Lord, I believe in your word; I believe in your Revelation; I believe in the one whom You have given me as witness and guarantee of this Your Revelation, to feel and taste, with the strength of faith, the anticipation of the blessedness of the life that has been promised to us with the faith.

"Smoke of Satan" Homily Full Text (English and Spanish)

Cf. Paul VI's November 15, 1972 Wednesday Audience on the last petition of the Pater Noster "Deliver Us From Evil" in which he continues to speak of the role of the devil in the world. Español.