From an interview with Archbishop Charles Chaput:
In your book, Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World, you quote Dostoyevsky's observation about the spiritual power of beauty: "Beauty is the battlefield where God and Satan contend for the hearts of men." What does the author mean?
Chaput: Beauty is subversive in the best sense. It catches the heart by surprise. It sneaks past all our skepticism and fatigue and lifts us out of ourselves.  At its best, it awakens our taste for goodness and truth and ennobles what it means to be human. That's why the devil hates beauty, deforms and poisons it, and why Dostoyevsky was exactly right.

You warn against our tendency to "cut Lucifer out of the ecology of salvation." What's at stake?
Chaput: If we don't believe in the reality of the devil, the cross ultimately has no meaning and the Gospel is just a collection of pious advice. Jesus Christ wasn't crucified because He was an irritating life coach. He died because our eternity, which meant breaking the power of Satan, depended on His sacrifice.

What Lenten practices or reflections do you suggest to help us recognize that we indeed are "Strangers in a Strange Land"?
Chaput: It is very simple. Read, study and pray over the beatitudes every day. Those are the real "rules for radicals." They are the keys to a revolution of love.
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Romans 5:8 God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.                                              That is amazing!

I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.  Jn 15:15                          That is amazing!

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. Jn 15:16               That is amazing!

1 John 3:1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.               That is amazing!

John 3:16  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.            That is amazing!

The Creator gave His prized possession--His Son--to mere creatures to ransom us from death.                                                       That is amazing!

Shouldn't our response be AMAZING?