Jesus proclaims that Satan “is a liar and the father of lies” and “when he lies, he speaks according to his own nature.” Our Lord adds that the devil “has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him” (John 8:44, emphasis added).
Does this mean that the devil is incapable of telling the truth?
No, because Scripture teaches us that the demons accurately identify Jesus as “the Son of God” (Matt. 8:28–29).
Rather, Satan and his demonic minions are irredeemably opposed to the truth. They hate the truth. More to the point, they hate him who is “the way, and the truth, and the life,” our Lord Jesus Christ (John 14:6), who definitively defeated them through his one paschal sacrifice (see CCC 635–636), a victory he extends through the Church’s offering it anew sacramentally in every celebration of the Mass.
Consequently, Satan and his demonic minions really hate the sacrifice of the Mass and Eucharistic adoration in general because they are daily reminders of Christ overcoming them and their infernal kingdom through the Cross.
Which means we can trust the devil to tell the truth when he expresses unvarnished hatred for something—and especially Someone. And that’s how the demonic desecration of the Holy Eucharist becomes a perverse witness to the Real Presence.
All creatures must recognize Christ the King (Phil. 2:10–11), and Eucharistic hatred is Satan’s way of recognizing the Lordship of Jesus. This truth should be proclaimed loudly at the National Eucharistic Congress, and in catechetical lessons for all ages, because people often pay more attention to the devil and his ways, rather than God and his way. And the Eucharist is definitely a surpassing matter on which we can learn the truth from the devil—and thus better positioned not to be deceived by him otherwise.
Indeed, there’s a reason the devil’s disciples call it a “Black Mass.” Satan’s followers never venture into a Protestant church to steal ordinary grape juice (or wine) and bread. They always look for the Eucharistic Real Thing, Jesus himself (see 1 Cor 11:23–32), which is why they seek out consecrated Hosts from Catholic churches.
While they blasphemously acknowledge the Almighty, the devil and his disciples oddly have more belief in the Eucharist than do many Christians. And those Christians sadly include a good number of Catholics who were poorly formed in the Faith or no longer believe in the reality of the Real Presence, including because of the slow, erosive effects of our modern culture.
To be sure, Satanists are sworn enemies of the Gospel, whereas Catholics and other Christians who don’t recognize the Real Presence are disciples of Jesus, to one extent or another. However, because “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow” (Phil 2:10), “the father of lies” can’t help himself in testifying to Jesus our Eucharistic Lord in a Black Mass; and so some people can ironically and providentially come to know Christ—or know him better—through the blasphemous actions of the devil and his demonic associates (see Rom 8:28; Jas 2:19).
Which is also why, as I argue in my book, the devil hates the Catholic Church: precisely because it is the one Church Jesus founded (Matt. 16:18–19), to which he calls all Christians to full communion, and which he promised to sustain until he returns.
And so even though some Christians—and secularists, in a different way—claim that the Catholic Church is of the devil, Satan knows otherwise, because the Church is Christ’s mystical bride, the new and fulfilled Israel through which the Lord advances his mission to save the world. Which is diametrically opposed to the devil’s mission of seeing all of humanity eternally lost.
Yes, Satan knows who his chief enemy on earth is, and so we can better understand why the offering of the Eucharist is “the source and summit of the whole Christian life” (CCC 1324). And also why the Catholic Church understands that her real enemies are in—but not of—this world.
As St. Paul soberly reminds us, “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12).
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