Sharpening our combat skills

Fr. Roy Cimagala

THE season of Lent is meant for sharpening our skills in spiritual warfare. This should be foremost in our mind as we go through the highly recommended acts of penance and mortification during these days of Lent.

We cannot deny that our life here on earth is an endless struggle between good and evil, between obeying God’s will and following our own will, etc. Our freedom is such that we can choose to be God-like, as God our Creator wants us to be and has endowed us with all the means, or we can prefer to be by ourselves, whichever way our will tilts.

This 40-day period that leads to the commemoration of Christ’s supreme act of loving us by saving us through his passion, death and resurrection is the best occasion to learn and improve in our skills in dealing with our weaknesses, temptations and sins.

As we pass through another year of trying to be faithful to God, we must have gained more insights, lessons and experiences regarding our weaknesses and failures. We should consider them in God’s presence and see what we can do to tackle them more effectively.

One thing for certain is that all this need for spiritual struggle is first of all a matter of growing in our love for God and for others. Our spiritual health, strength and invincibility will depend mainly on this requirement. Everything else that we need to do to protect ourselves from all forms of evil should begin with a vibrating love for God and for others. Without this, we make ourselves easy prey to the enemies of our soul.

And this love for God and others can be nourished every time we pray or we make acts of faith, hope and charity, or when we carry out the duties of our state in life, our profession and other positions we have in society, with gusto.

We need to see to it that at any given time, we are at least conscious that all we are doing is really out of love for God and for others. We should not take this point for granted. When this motivation for our thoughts, words and deed is not clear and strong, then we are giving an opening for our enemies—our own flesh, the alienated world and the devil himself—to take advantage of us.

Perhaps, one concrete way to handle this requirement well is to pause from time to time during the day to recover our proper spiritual and supernatural bearing, seeing to it that it is real love that motivates and drives us into action.

Having said that, we should do the consequences and implications of such love. We have to discipline our wounded flesh that is so inclined to concupiscence. This concupiscence can be in the form of the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. We have to realize that this will be a lifelong struggle. We should banish the myth that there can be a time or a state where we can be exempted from all these.

Then we have to learn how to deal with the world and the devil himself. With the world, we have to be most prudent by learning to distinguish between what is inherently good in it and what is already corrupted by sin and therefore can be dangerous. We have to make the appropriate plans and strategies for this.

With the devil, Pope Francis recently advised us not to argue with him, since he is much more clever than us. We just have to avoid him, cutting any dialogue with him as soon as possible. Truth is we hardly have any good resistance to his apparently convincing sophistries.

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A Healthy Spirit of Abandonment. With all the things that we have to contend with in this life, we certainly need to have a healthy sense of trust in God’s loving and wise providence, abandoning ourselves in his will and ways that often are mysterious to us and can appear to be contrary to what we would like to have.

A healthy spirit of abandonment in God’s hands is necessary even as we exhaust all possible human means to achieve our goals or simply to tackle all the challenges, trials and predicaments of our life. We should never forget this truth of our faith.

Let us quote some words of Christ that form the basis for this belief: “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?

“So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” (Mt 6,26-34)

We need to engrave these words in our heart so that whatever difficulty we encounter in our life, we would know how to react. Very often, we tend to face things simply on our own, relying only on our own powers that no matter how impressive can only do so much.

We always have to go to God through Christ in the Holy Spirit. This is not an exercise of surrender and futility, but rather of conquest and victory. With God, everything always works for the good. (cfr. Rom 8,28)

St. Paul precisely recommended this move. “Do not be anxious about anything,” he said, “but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 6,6-7)

Let’s take note that St. Paul said that the peace of God transcends all understanding. That means that God’s peace may impact on us in a way that can seem to be the opposite of what we want.

And so, we just have to see to it that we always activate our faith in reacting to our difficulties in life, because left to our own devices, there is no way we can be calm and be at peace. And the sufferings that are unavoidable in this life will mean nothing to us.

We just have to learn and develop a healthy sense of abandonment in the mysterious will and ways of God. What can help in this regard is to cultivate also a sporting attitude to life. We win some, we lose some, but in the end God takes care of everything as long as we always go to him!

E-mail: roycimagala@gmail.com