Episode 100. Spiritual Warfare. This will be the last episode for Catholic Daily
Brief. Episode 100 is a good even number to end on, so I appreciate you listening. Spiritual
Warfare. An important topic, especially because we've in recent episode talked about the end of
the world and the tactics of the devil and how to die a happy death. This will be just kind of
reiteration a lot of those things, a summary as well of important things to keep in mind.
First, that spiritual warfare is always being waged. I mentioned that in the couple episodes
ago, I said that the devil and his angels do not tire, they do not grow old, they're not impatient,
and so they're trying to affect us and draw us away from God all day every day. You are dealing
with the influence of the evil one from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed every
single day. And so that's important to keep in mind that there's never a lull in the battle. But
of course keeping in mind all along that you are protected by God's grace. If you're in the state of
grace, you have your guardian angel to protect you, and God is infinitely more powerful than these
mirror creatures, which is what demons are. And in this context of spiritual warfare, it's interesting
to note that there's been a trend in the modern age to equate Christianity with kindness. You know,
that acting Christian quote unquote just means being nice to people, kind of smiling, you know,
which is misrepresentation of it and a dumbing down of it. And it also has the effect of making
us forget that we are soldiers, we're warriors in an ongoing spiritual battle. We're not living in
neutral territory. And so if we reduce the practice of our faith to simply, oh yeah, being nice to
people, letting people live their lives, and just being tolerant and forgiving, that's not the essence
of our faith. And the more we can keep in mind that we're supposed to be battling against the
forces of this world, the better off we are in the battle. The more we recognize that our defenses
need to be up, that we need to have moral courage, the more alert we are of all of the influences
that the world is pushing upon us under the guise of friendliness and tolerance and acceptance and
all that, the more we will be prepared for battle. So we are warriors, and we're not in neutral
territory, we're in hostile territory for the time being, the devil is the prince of this world.
And so there's no such thing as being neutral or standing still with regard to our spiritual life.
If you're not seeking to grow in holiness, if we're not seeking to progress more and more into the
camp of the Lord, then we're making ourselves vulnerable and we're actually drifting into the
opposite camp, the camp of the enemy. You can't stand still, there is no leveling off in the
spiritual life. You're either seeking to grow or you're falling backwards. Remember on my recent
episode of how the devil is working on you, how little things can be used to eventually over time
really turn you against God. It's important to again read C.S. Lewis's screwtape letters and be
attuned to that, to be aware of that. The worst possible situation we can be in is being slowly
turned away from God little by little over days or months or years and not realize it.
So it's up to us to be aware of these tactics so that we can recognize them and stomp them out
as soon as we can with the help of prayer and the sacraments. In this spiritual battle, it's
important to remember what our weapons are. The most important weapons we have are the sacraments.
The devil is powerless against the sacraments. He hates the Holy Eucharist, he hates us going to
mass, he hates us going to confession. He will try and sow as many doubts as possible and fears
to prevent us from going to confession. However, if we are in a life of sin and we're not confessing
our sins, he wants us to go to the Holy Eucharist. He likes sacrilegious reception of Holy Communion.
There's an interesting exchange between French philosopher Voltaire and a person writing to
him saying that he's a believer but he doesn't want to be a believer anymore. Voltaire tells him,
well, keep living in sin and keep going to communion because the more you do that,
the more you'll lose your faith in the real presence. So it's not enough to just keep our
Sunday obligation and go to mass once a week and receive communion. We need to receive worthily
and it's best to, if we haven't had the opportunity to go to confession, if we're in God's
grave sin, we still of course need to go to mass but we should refrain from receiving communion
because far from helping you, receiving communion in the state of sin harms you. And that's why
the devil is totally fine with many Catholics who never go to confession but keep up their Sunday
obligation. They're in a position of thinking they're growing closer to God but actually
harming their souls every time they receive communion. So that's why the devil hates confession
so much because it's the one thing that tears us from the power of the evil one and restores us
to grace and unites us to Christ and makes us worthy to receive his body and blood, soul and
divinity at mass. So one of the best things you can possibly do being a warrior in the spiritual
battle and being free from the clutches of the enemy is to go to confession regularly. The saints
would say do it often, probably every two weeks. Of course more frequently if you struggle with
serious sin, we have to always get to confession immediately if we become aware of any grave
sin that we've committed. But as a habit, going every couple weeks, going once a month is good to
keep us close to God, keep us mindful of the things that are harming our relationship with God,
and of course receiving an increase in grace every time we go, making our reception of the
Eucharist more fruitful. You can talk to your spiritual director about the frequency of going.
There's not really any possibility of going too frequently. If someone actually is struggling with
scrupulosity, then your spiritual director will tell them don't go as often because you're doubting
the power of the sacrament. But if you don't struggle with scrupulosity and you just love the
sacrament of reconciliation, you can go weekly. There's nothing wrong with that. Some priests
get annoyed about that, but that's not your problem. To go and humbly confess even very small sins
is something that's pleasing to the Lord and it's something that the saints do. So aside from the
sacraments, especially the Eucharist and confession, other weapons at our disposal are of course daily
prayer, meditation. I did an episode on that. What mental prayer is, so go back and listen to that
if you need some ideas to what that entails. But any kind of prayer that we, any simple elevation
of our mind and our heart to God throughout the day is very helpful in protecting us from the evil
one and bringing us into closer union with God. It can be guided prayer, it can be meditations
that you read, it can be a simple wordless meditation in the midst of your day. But to do it
regularly, to do it every day, to do it throughout the day and to be disciplined in that schedule of
prayer. Not as if it needs to be overly formal and rigid, but I mean to make sure that you carve out
time for prayer during the day and that you incorporate prayer into your various activities.
St. Paul says we should be praying at all times and we can do that even if we're not kneeling down
in a church saying particular prayers. Of course the rosary and the other devotions the church
gives us are very important. The rosary being the principle of all of the devotions that we should
pray daily, staying close to Mary who is our greatest intercessor of all the saints, who being the
mother of God and free of all sin and most beloved by God is the one that can protect us most among
all the saints. She's the one that crushes the head of the serpent. So the devil hates the rosary
very much, he hates Mary very much. And all the devotions the church gives us are worth looking
at. Some people have different spiritual temperaments, some people have different ways they like to
pray, certain ways that don't work for them. The church has a huge rich treasury of devotions
and prayers and most people aren't familiar with even a small percentage of them because you know
catechesis in recent decades hasn't been very good. But investigate the various devotions and
ways of prayer that the church gives us because almost certainly there is a form of prayer or a
devotion that will be very helpful for you individually. We should also pray for an increase
in the virtues of faith, hope and charity every day obviously. But in particular in these times
to pray for an increase in hope we can get really depressed and we can be tempted to despair because
of the way things are in the world. But that is a dangerous thing to give into. We always
ought to have hope because the battle is really won already. Christ has won the victory over death
and over sin and right now all we're doing is trying to cling to Christ as long as we live in
this world. And there can be no death blow dealt to us that is fatal that we can't recover from.
There's no sin we can fall into that we can't recover from because God's mercy is infinite.
So as long as we're breathing, as long as we're alive, we can always hope for eternal glory.
The devil wants us to think that there's nothing that can save us. He wants us to think that if
we've fallen into sin, it was won too many times or this one was too bad that God can't help you.
Well, the devil can't kill us. He can't kill our souls. Only we can do that. He can't remove hope
of God's mercy. Only we can fall into that false belief. So we always need to pray for an increase
in hope. We know we're in a battle. We know that the battle is already won by Christ. We know the
means and weapons at our disposal to share in that victory with Christ. And we know that there's
always the opportunity to begin anew if we've failed in any way. So when you put it that way,
the battle doesn't seem as frightening as it might otherwise seem. You know, we're surrounded by so
many ugly things, so many false things, so many evil things that we might get the impression
that we're losing or something. Well, there's no way to lose if we are with Christ. I guess I'll
just end with using a trite phrase that's bad advice, but it's actually good advice if understood
properly. And people say, live every day as if it were your last. And by that, they usually mean,
hey, live it up. You know, just abandon yourself to life and, you know, have all the pleasures that
you want and just do what you want to do. So you live life to the fullest. That's terrible advice.
You know, you ask a lot of people what they would do if they knew it was their last day in this world
and they usually say stupid stuff like, I'd go do this amazing vacation or this, you know, risky
thing or whatever. But the response should be, you know, if you knew it were your last day, that
is a great blessing. If you knew it were your last day on earth, what would you do? You'd pray intensely,
you'd avail yourself of the sacraments, you'd try and purify your heart and you'd try and kindle
longing and desire to see God and become very joyful that you're going to see God. So live every
day like that. That's a good way to follow that otherwise silly aphorism of live every day as if
it were your last. You really should. It's not even just a thought experiment. You really don't know
what day is going to be your last. So live as if you knew that at the end of this day, you were going
to meet God face to face.