Almost all of us have participated in sports at one time or another. If we have participated in a sport such as football, or volleyball, or martial arts, or some sport in which there is physical contact, then we know that during practice we get bumped around and end up with bruises and sore. We can begin to feel rather proud of the achievements during those practices, to the point that we can begin to look down upon those who do not participate in the sport. They do not understand and are not willing to take on the hardships necessary to excel in our sport. In fact, if we are first-string, we can even become proud of the fact that we are better at the sport than some of our own teammates.
But then comes the first game. And we quickly find out that there is a vast difference between practice and reality. Particularly, if we are playing American football or rugby or hockey, we quickly find out that our teammates were holding back in practice. When someone from another team hits us, they hit us ever so much harder than anything we experienced in practice. We suddenly realize that, even in practice, our coach was making sure that no permanent injury was suffered by us. Our teammates were taking care not to hit us overly hard so as to neither draw the wrath of the coach nor draw a return hard hit from us or from another teammate. In other words, practice was a controlled environment, not the reality that we experience during the game.
It is the same way with spiritual warfare. Fasting and prayer are our practice, our discipline that helps us to learn self-control and self-denial in order to be able to engage in spiritual warfare. Prayer is also our communication with our God, our life-line to the power of the Holy Spirit that we will need in spiritual warfare. (Prayer is also our way of thanking God, being in love with God, and ever so much more, but this is not a post on prayer. 🙂 ) When the time comes for spiritual warfare, we need to be prepared, having practiced the disciplines that the Church has taught us in order to prepare us. But, the disciplines, in and of themselves are not full spiritual warfare.
In the disciplines, like in sports practice, we fight ourselves. Every martial artist knows that one must learn to control one’s body in order to make it perform at black belt level. That training, and the control of one’s body is hard and difficult. But, a black belt does not guarantee that one will do well in a real battle. It only guarantees that one could do well in real battle if one applies all the training one has received. Nor does the training mean that the martial artist will emerge unwounded from the battle. After all, the opponent will also be a martial artist. So it is with fasting and prayer. We fight ourselves in fasting and prayer, in order to control our evil desires, in order to control our sin, in order to learn to listen carefully to the Holy Spirit and to receive his power so that we might have the power to live the godly life. We fight ourselves in order to learn how to receive the power of God so that we might grow more and more into his likeness. But, that is not yet spiritual warfare. There is more to come.
===MORE TO COME===
The picture at once reminded me of Timothy, the bishop’s dog, at the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd in Lima.
How true. I am struggling to begin disciplining myself.