Spiritual combat
The Catholic Truth Society (CTS) has recently
published a booklet called Spiritual Combat according to St. Benedict.
Raphael’s painting of St. Michael overcoming the devil appears on the cover.
All CUT members are asked to be prayer crusaders, and all are familiar with the
image of St. Michael, sword or spear in hand, triumphing over a fallen and
sprawling Satan. Each of us has our own chosen Saint or Blessed who fights
alongside us, with reference in particular to satanic influence over the media
and the entertainment industry. This booklet, written by a French Benedictine
monk, explains how such spiritual combat must be undertaken.
Father Bernard identifies three “breaches” in the
integrity of the soul, through which Satan can attempt an entrance in order to
disrupt and weaken the spiritual life of each human person. The “breaches” he
also calls “wounds”, areas of weakness and vulnerability. All three breaches
(unless closely watched and strongly defended) allow Satan to seize on and
distort desires which are in themselves natural and indeed essential to human
nature and human living.
The first breach relates to the need for
well-being, for pleasure and security in such things as food, shelter, comfort
and sexual relationships. In his encounter with our Lord in the desert, Satan
tried to exploit this breach when he tempted our Lord to create bread for
himself after his forty days’ fast.
The second breach relates to the natural human
desire to be recognised, loved and approved, - in early life by parents, later
by wider family, friends, work colleagues, neighbours and those with whom we
share a culture. Thus we form and develop relationships of love and positive
regard whereby we support and are supported by others. Satan seeks to twist
this into a desire to be admired and held in high esteem for our own dubious
profit and benefit. Satan suggested to Jesus that he throw himself down from
the highest pinnacle of the temple in order to gain the acclaim of crowds of
people who would see the angels coming to save him from harm.
There is a human need to create, to plan and to
organise. This is at the root of all human endeavour, from making a shopping
list to designing a cathedral. The breach which Satan here seeks to exploit is
the need for control, for power, for domination. He showed Jesus the whole
world, spread out around and below a high mountain: “All this can be yours” he
said, but Jesus again rejected the
temptation.
Spiritual combat consists in discerning the perversions
that Satan is attempting to work in us, and indeed has already worked to some
extent, and in redirecting our desires to God and to the unselfish love of the
people around us.
In the second half of the booklet, Father Bernard
examines factors which make spiritual combat more difficult for us. The
influence of the culture in which we live, and of negative incidents in
individual lives, can weaken the soul’s ability to discern what Satan is doing
in the soul. Father Bernard goes on to consider the nature of Satan, the
Adversary, the Divider, himself. He “deceives, worries, divides, separates from
God and others...” and “divides the heart against itself”. Within many areas of
life, Satan does little, since he need only “complacently watch the agents acting
on his behalf”, among whom, as prayer crusaders know, are those dominating the
mainstream media, the entertainment industry, and huge swathes of the internet.
Among monks, however (the author himself having been a monk and indeed Abbot of
his community for twenty years), these “agents” can make little headway, so
Satan sends “a hundred devils” to tempt the monks in far more subtle ways.
Since prayer crusaders often live lives withdrawn from the more obvious
occasions of sin and are readily on their guard against the temptations of
mainstream culture, they may perhaps be compared to monks and need to be
prepared to search for satanic influence hidden in unsuspected areas of their
lives. Essentially, spiritual combat is conducted in each individual heart, where
lie “the roots of doubt, despair, indifference, violence or hatred”. Satan can
only enter from outside, and may reach deeply into the individual, but it is
possible (often with another’s help) to discern which breach he entered by. The
Holy Spirit, by contrast, operates in the depths of the heart where “his
peaceful action pacifies, purifies, enlightens and builds up”.
Spiritual combat is carried out by means of prayer,
the sacraments (especially the sacrament of penance), works of charity, and
contemplation.
Father Bernard quotes several times from Saint
Augustine, and also from Venerable Madeleine Delbrel.
By Prayer Crusader St Thersea of Avila
