Satanic spin

Shakespeare said, “O wonderful, when devils tell the truth!” (Richard III, Act I, Scene 3)

Why then does our Lord in today’s Gospel keep devils from shouting out that He is the Messiah? After all, it is the truth!

Actually, in the mouths of the devils (and in the minds of many in that time and place) it would be the right word with the wrong meaning.

The problem was that conventional wisdom believed that the Messiah would be a military and political savior, contrary to what God’s plan was. Publicly acclaiming Jesus as the Messiah then had the potential of derailing God’s plan by reinforcing the common misconception about the Messiah and closing people’s minds to the truth.

The devils were attempting preemptive Satanic “spin.”

There is a lot of “spin” in the world today: truths and half-truths presented to lead people down a particular path (often the wrong path).

We must be careful. We must pray for the gift of discernment and hold on to the deposit of faith we have received: that we may grow and live in the truth of Christ and avoid the near occasion of spin.