Spiritual Warfare:  Help in Maneuvering thru It

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. ²⁵ For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. ²⁶ For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? ~Matthew 16:24-26

Dearest Spiritual Ohana,

In living our lives as Orthodox Christians in the world, today, as has been throughout the ages, there are continuous challenges, trials, tribulations and difficulties we inevitably face.  There is no really easy way of life as a Christian.  In fact, it is very difficult and extremely challenging!  The Lord, Himself, reassures us so in the Gospel passage quoted above.  The continued struggles we go through in living our lives as Christians is adequately named “Spiritual Warfare.”

As we know, being a Christian is not made up of completing “check lists” such as:  doing our good deed for the week by showing up to church on Sunday,  by merely keeping the prescribed fasts and having a prayer rule, and even being baptized in the Church.  It seems that we are often tempted to choose the “easy way” by dedicating our lives to these checklists and thinking we are good Christians by doing these deeds alone.

Accepting Jesus and saying that “I have been saved” is too easy!  It doesn’t require constant work or struggle.  As Christians, it is more correct to say that “I am always in the process of being saved.”  By saying this, instead, we acknowledge that being a Christian is a constant endeavor all the way to our last breath.  This is what we call in Orthodoxy “Theosis” or “divinization,” a continuously endless striving to become God-like.  Theosis requires the continued “synergy” of the unbreakable chain of work between God, us, and our fellow human beings.  The break in any link of this three-way chain is incomplete and ceases to be a process working towards our salvation.

One of the continuously repeated petitions that the clergy pray is, “with all the Saints, let us commend ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ our God.”  This, in short, is “synergy,” the cooperative work that takes place for our salvation.

The multitude of Saints, who are our examples who “fought the good fight” and are our never-ceasing intercessors (they pray for us constantly), have left us with so many pearls of wisdom to help us maneuver in our daily spiritual lives and especially through the spiritual warfare, we face.  I would like to share, with you, a few of these pearls they left us with:

“Do not claim to have acquired virtue unless you have suffered affliction, for without affliction virtue has not been tested.” +St. Mark the Ascetic

“In order that you may move your will more easily to this one desire, in everything—to please God and to work for His glory alone—remind yourself’ often, that He has granted you many favors in the past and has shown you His love. He has created you out of nothing in His own likeness and image, and has made all other creatures your servants; He has delivered you from your slavery to the devil, sending down not one of the angels but His Only-begotten Son to redeem you, not at the price of corruptible gold and silver, but by His priceless blood and His most painful and degrading death. Having done all this He protects you, every hour and every moment, from your enemies; He fights your battles by His divine grace; in His immaculate Mysteries He prepares the Body and Blood of His beloved Son for your food and protection. All this is a sign of God’s great favor and love for you; a favor so great that it is inconceivable how the great Lord of hosts could grant such favors to our nothingness and worthlessness.” +St. Theophan the Recluse & St. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain

“All of us sin constantly. We slip and fall. In reality, we fall into a trap set by the demons.

The Holy Fathers and the Saints always tell us, ‘It is important to get up immediately after a fall and to keep on walking toward God’. Even if we fall a hundred times a day, it does not matter; we must get up and go on walking toward God without looking back.

What has happened has happened – it is in the past. Just keep on going, all the while asking for help from God.” +Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

With Love in Christ,

+Fr. Alexander