The cold-blooded, devouring sin has snuck up from behind. The fangs, if we look closely, are dripping with venom. Also, in this allegory of spiritual battle reflected in the lesser world, it can be seen that the devouring spirit that motivates the snake has its greedy mouth so far open that its eyes can no longer tell if its target is still in front of its mouth. Since the snake’s head is at the end of its arc, and has no power to change its trajectory, one can only hope that the bird’s guardian angel, seeing what’s going on from our angle, suddenly prompts it to “Move!” Even more fervently, we can hope that our own guardian angel will protect us from being swallowed by such an attack by having us step out of the way, hopefully, hopping up, toward Heaven and safety. We may even hope that the snake, after having lost its prey, lands, stretched out, an easy target for a higher power, like an avenging hawk. It’s easy for us to picture in our minds the claws of that hawk dropping toward the snake’s endless neck even now, about to grasp it in those powerful claws we hope are about to constrict around the snake, a nano-second before it lands on the unsuspecting bird.
We can be sure that we, like the bird, are being endlessly stalked by at least seven kinds of destroyers, Pride, Envy, Greed, Gluttony, Anger, Lust, and Sloth. Each in the horde of demons in those seven tribes is looking for a chance to pounce, trying to devour us, feeding upon our souls as the snake feeds on more visible flesh.
How many such devouring demons are there? The Irish used to say that, before St. Patrick, there was a demon for every blade of grass in Ireland. After St. Patrick, it was believed that there was an angel for every blade of grass, and not a single snake crawling among those blades.
