From a spiritual conference by Father John Hardon:

Let me first quote from St. Ignatius, “The chief of all the enemy summons innumerable demons and scatters them. Some to one city and some to another throughout the whole world, so that no province, no place, no state of life, no individual is overlooked. He goes around to lay snares for men to seek to chain them. First they are to tempt them to covet riches, as Satan himself is accustomed to do in most cases, that they more easily obtain the empty honors of this world and then come to overweening pride. The first step then, will be riches, the second; honor, the third; pride, from these three steps the one leads to all other vices.”

Now some explanation, the devil’s strategy is to get people to become attached to earthly things. He urges them to, well, acquire say material wealth, which is the cheapest kind of riches, or acquire education. Ah, dear Lord, how clever the devil is. Or acquire mastery in the use of their emotions, or cultivate gifts in the social order, or, would you believe it, the devil will even tempt people to acquire spiritual riches. Forty-seven years in the priesthood, as I keep telling people, have taught me an awful lot. Twenty-five years of teaching the most highly intellectual people that the Church can gather, members of the Society of Jesus, oh how hungry men can be for knowledge. But whatever the possession, whether as cheap a thing as money, or special things say as, secular knowledge or even spiritual wisdom, the beginning is to become wealthy and thus to attain to recognition, praise, honor. How well I know, I’ve lived with too many people, too many highly gifted individuals, who have fallen like cheap tinder because they’ve allowed themselves to be beguiled by the evil spirit.

Attachment to the things of this world gradually makes a person, not only satisfied with what he or she possesses, but hungry for acceptance, recognition, praise, and honor. And once, as Ignatius says, once a person becomes a victim of empty honors, then pride follows as a matter of course. I’ve struggled with too many multi-millionaires not to know how weak these wealthy people can be if they allow their attachment to the things of this world to bewitch them, and as a consequence makes them an easy prey by making them proud. Because once a person falls into pride, there is no limit to that person’s malice. Proud people are the agents of the devil. He uses them to seduce others. In fact, he uses them to work with him, and under his demonic power he organizes proud people into what some of the Fathers of the Church, as I have said, call a distinct power, call it the mystical body of satan. By whatever name, it is mastered by the father of lies. And God allows the demons to exercise superhuman power over those who allow themselves to be victimized.

(Don’t forget to read Part 2: The Standard of Christ: Humility)

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