Spiritual Warfare

There is a fighting spirit welling up within the Church and within our country. The desire to fight in and of itself is not bad, but actually a gift of the Holy Spirit. But it seems too often that we direct this fighting in all the wrong directions.

To fight implies that we recognize we have an enemy. Unfortunately, we are too quick to identify our brother or sister as an enemy. But they are not.

The problem is our enemy has so successfully convinced us that he does not exist. Our enemy is the devil and his army of demons. And since they are a spiritual army they need to be fought through spiritual warfare.

Today, St. Paul gives us instructions for how to go about this warfare.

Gird your loins with truth. The devil's primary weapon is lies. Before we do something wrong he tells us it is no big deal and after we do it he tells us we are condemned. He discourages us from showing our best parts to the world, but encourages us to show our worst. Most fundamentally, he constantly tries to turn us against God and our neighbor. The cornerstone of any good relationship is trust, so he is constantly sowing the seeds of suspicion.

But there are practical ways we can guard against this. Lies are the language of Lucifer and anytime we lie we join forces with him, even temporarily. We may be tempted to say, “but it is only a small lie!” And from where do we think this temptation comes??

The degree to which we are honest affects our ability to see truth and the degree to which we are dishonest prevents us from seeing clearly. Christ says he who can be trusted with small things will be trusted with large things. Similarly, he who tells small lies will be unable to see big truths.?

The breastplate of righteousness, teaches us how to guard our hearts. Too often Christians turn righteousness into self-righteousness but it couldn’t be more opposite. Christian righteousness is not about fancying ourselves Holy but recognizing that the Lord alone is Holy. Therefore, it is about right worship, worshiping the Lord with sincerity, worshiping the Lord as He is, which necessarily requires humility and divine assistance for such humility.?

This is captured beautifully during the Eucharistic prayer at Mass. The Priest tells us to give our thanks to the Lord and we respond that it is right and just. He then says, “it is truly right and just, our duty and salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Father most holy, through your beloved Son, Jesus Christ." And it is after this recognition that we are now properly disposed to enter into the Presence of the Lord.

If we do not protect our hearts with this righteousness, with this proper attitude of gratitude to the True God, we will be led by the devil to give our hearts to false gods. The True God will lift us up, but false gods drag us down.

Our feet shot in the Gospel of peace is simply that we walk through our lives without anxiety and fear because we have been convinced of the truth of the Gospel. It seems to me many are stuck in phases of anxiety and fear and they try to wrestle themselves out, but the key to unlocking our inner peace is in Christ, not us. We can not see the Good News of the Gospel until we understand the Bad News of our slavery to sin without Christ’s saving power. That means the Gospel can never be the object of mere intellectual contemplation, it must enter into one’s heart, both convict and comfort one, and constantly be bringing about an inner-transformation.

Faith is a shield which protects us from the many lies the devil tells us. For spiritual warfare it is essential to rebuke the lies that the devil does not exist, that real enemies are external, and that the interior life is impractical or a waste of time. But most important is any variation of the lie he tells us that God is not trustworthy and that we will be better off depending on ourselves or other men rather than putting our lives completely in His hands.

Lastly, our helmet, our head, is protected by the Word of God. When Christ Himself is tempted by the devil, He responds by citing Scripture. We will not be prepared for our temptations if we do not know how to respond to the lies of the devil with the truth of God.?

There is a beautiful song by the Hillbilly Thomists called “Weight of Eternal Glory” that shows how keeping the promises of the Lord (Scripture) close is crucial for being led by the Lord.

And he ends of course with an exhortation to pray because all of this is impossible without the grace of God. If we try to will our way to defeat the devil, we will be embarrassingly defeated. He is much stronger and smarter than us. But if we submit our wills to Christ, we can take part in His defeat of the devil.

In one of his last phrases, St Paul describes himself as “an ambassador in chains” to proclaim the Gospel. In this beautiful phrase he echoes the prophet Jeremiah, who says, “If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.”

Fire is such a beautiful image for faith and so appropriate for spiritual warfare. Fire is on the move, never still. We walk by faith, sometimes we run. Fire does not move in any direction either, it moves upward. When we have faith, our souls are constantly being lifted to the Lord.

Images of fire and hell, though sometimes helpful, always seemed a little off to me. I resonated most with Dante’s image of an icey Devil, stuck and unable to move. He tries to flutter his wings to fly away from the pits of hell but they are frozen and he goes nowhere.

But faith is not only like a fire, it is a wildfire. It is unquenchable. The devil tries to throw water on the fire to put it out, but for the man who is protected as St. Paul describes today, Christ does not turn the water into wine, but gasoline. He uses the devil’s attacks to strengthen our faith.?

The devil’s attacks have no power, so long as we have faith. Be not afraid!

“I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled!”