Thursday, February 15, 2018

Sharpening our combat skills


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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