Last July, I became the Deputy Grand Knight of my parish’s Knights of Columbus council. This allowed me to attend our annual leadership training event. At this event, I came across this poster.
I was so moved by the message and the image. It really resonated with the weekend and my growth in prayer over the last couple years. The phrase goes “a picture is worth a thousand words,” and while I won’t force the article to be that long, I want to talk about several aspects of the poster.
First, Satan is real. The devil is a reality, and he wants to ensnare the faithful. In the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, we note the Satan is “prowling about the world seeking the ruin of souls.” He is a real jerk! I am perplexed by those who do not think that Satan is a person and, with the other demons, works to drag us to Hell with them. Tradition states that angels are created beings like us but are pure intellect. Upon their creation the angels were given a choice to love and serve God or reject him. The ones that chose to reject are fallen angels or demons with The Devil being a common title for chief among them. The hatred for all that is good provides the motivation to search the world for those hanging their head.
This transitions me to the second point in the Devil claiming victory. Someone hanging their head is an extremely common display of body language to show someone is experiencing negative emotions. Grief, disappointment, and embarrassment are all potential reasons each of us may avoid eye contact with others while we look at our hands, feet, or lap. Someone sitting in a chair in a hospital office after receiving a tough diagnosis. Worse yet, someone collapsed to their knees after being told a loved one has tragically passed away. The Devil loves to see this emotional distress and seizes on the opportunity to turn us away from him.
I think the picture being the image of a soldier is also important to this negative emotion as well. A knight would have fought in a very brutal fashion compared to the warfare of today in some important ways. The physicality of carrying the armor and the physical strength to overwhelm the adversary would have led to a weariness that might manifest in similar visuals. Modern society also demonizes that period in history as backwards, grimy, and defective. The Dark Ages were just that, a negative period in human existence that is best left behind (utter nonsense but a common view). The Devil sees this outer appearance and believes he is about to consume another soul. The head held low is an act of surrender and Satan is going to claim his prize.
But this is the same mistake The Devil made in the beginning. Tradition also suggests that Satan rejected God principally out of pride. Satan wanted to be like God. Satan also was too proud that God chose to redeem man by becoming one of us and living a mortal human existence despite being the eternal Creator of the Universe. Satan had too much pride to accept this and accept us fleshly beings as being joined with The Divine. Because of this pride, I’ll speculate that The Devil has maybe never hung his head. He may be too proud to do so. He possesses no humility, so he can never lower his head in surrender. But that is exactly where he fails. The knight is surrendering, but it is a surrender to God.
Bowing your head in prayer can be the recognition of defeat. We could have sinned against God, failed to live up to our calling, and lost a bloody spiritual battle. However, lowering the head before God is to surrender to God. It is an act of humility as we show our weakness to God and ask him to forgive our failings. We do not deserve to behold God and look at him face-to-face, so we rightly avert our eyes.
Then we say, “Amen!” And a transformation occurs. Maybe we just asked for forgiveness. Maybe we were just contemplating His goodness compared to our inadequacies. But, our humble bow is put right by affirming God’s place and our place. When this happens The Devil’s perceived victory vanishes. He loses his power. He has failed to see that surrender can be the necessary act of achieving victory over sin. A surrendering to God allows God to build us up with strength and virtue. The Devil does not understand this.
The final part I want to mention goes beyond what the poster shows but is the next step after our Amen. We are able to raise our head and go forth with the newly acquired strength of God. The knight will stand up, pick up his sword and begin the battle anew. Sin has not been destroyed. The war will be waged until The Second Coming and our heads will fall again and again, but there is nothing preventing us from continuing this cycle. Catholics believe that God gives all people at all times at least the grace to pray. All He asks of us is to bow our heads in humility and surrender to Him. He promises as long as we do this we will always be given the strength to rise again.