The twins of war and peace

BECAUSE of our earthly condition, marked by our call to

holiness in the middle of our wounded, if not sinful, condition, we

cannot help but have war and peace in this life. They may be

considered as fraternal twins, looking different from each other, but

bound intimately from conception to birth and to the whole lifetime.

  

            Truth is, in this life we have to make war to have peace.

And peace can only come about, at least in this life, as a consequence

of some war. Our life here on earth will always be a war of peace. We

should not be surprised by this phenomenon anymore. It should be a

given. Thus, Christ, who is considered the Prince of Peace, once said:

  

            “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it

were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and what

constraint I am under until it is completed! Do you think I came to

bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there

will be five in one family divided against each other, three against

two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son

and son against father…” (Lk 12,49-53)

  

            But the war we will be waging here on earth will be a

constructive war, not destructive. It is a war to win our way toward

heaven. It is a war to make ourselves “another Christ,” a new man,

stepping out of the old man that we all are due to sin. Any obstacle

along the way, including those who are very close to us but who

compete with God for our love, should be fought and rejected.

  

            We have to remember that we always have to contend with

powerful enemies in our spiritual life. The first one would be our own

selves, our own flesh that has been weakened by sin. There is such

thing as concupiscence, a certain attraction to evil that leads us to

have a lust of the eye, lust of the flesh and the pride of life.

   

            Its urges can be strong and can make us feel that they are

irresistible. We should not worry too much about them. As long as we

beg always for God’s grace and we do our part of prayer, self-denial,

recourse to the sacraments, and spiritual struggle, we can manage to

take the wind out of these urges’ sails.

  

            Then we have the world with many of its sinful, or at

least, potentially dangerous allurements. There already are powerful

structures of sin in the world, like pornography, religious

indifference, secularism or a new paganism, and quite developed

ideologies that are openly against God.

  

            We need to know how to be discerning in the things of this

world. More than that, we have to learn how to relate the things of

this world to God, because unless we do, there’s no other way but for

us to be swallowed up by their ungodly dynamic. We have to be clear

that with the things of this world, it is always a choice between

using them for God’s glory and man’s common good, and allowing them to

separate us from God and others.

  

            Then there’s the devil, a very powerful spiritual enemy

that can easily insinuate himself in our thoughts and desires. He is

indeed very clever. He does his wiles often without us realizing it.

But with God we can actually outsmart him. Let’s remember that while

Christ told us to be innocent as doves, we should also be clever like

serpents.

  

            We should be quick to reject those insinuations of the

devil in our thoughts and intentions. Once we could smell that our

thoughts and intentions are not inspired by God, we should give them

no further attention.