Lenten Warfare
All Orthodox spiritual literature uses terms like “struggle”
and “warfare” to describe the effort that Christians are
expected to make during the fasting seasons of the church year. The
Desert Saints even speak of “killing” the passions, and
“dying” to “this world,” none of which sounds
very appealing to modern believers. We embrace our faith because it
brings us comfort, inspiration and joy, not in order, in some self-inflicted
way to make us miserable! Declaring “war” on ourselves,
doesn’t entice or excite most of us, even during Great Lent.
“Spiritual” or “Invisible” warfare, however
is an absolutely necessary component of our Faith. And we discover
the need for it every Lent, when/if we try to “improve”
ourselves. We firmly resolve to pray more regularly, to keep the dietary
rules more rigorously, to participate in services more attentively,
and at the start of the Fast, we do. But as the fast drags on for
six more weeks, our resolve slackens, our prayer life cools, our observance
of the food guidelines slips, and our attention span at services shortens.
Everything we set out to do at the start fails. And we come to confession
sometime during Holy Week, admitting that we tried to move forward
but our determination and our efforts collapsed.
And the ultimate purpose of prayer, fasting and church attendance
is to become a kinder, more patient, more generous, more thoughtful
and loving human being. Instead, we became more self-centered, impatient
grumpier and/or prideful as Lent progressed.
That was a Great Lent! Why? Because if we were relying on our own
strength, our own will-power, ourselves, we had placed our trust in
weakness. The Evil One, the Holy Fathers teach us, is powerful and
has many tricks and temptations in his arsenal. Whom did we think
we were fighting? Who was the “Enemy” in this struggle?
Our own thoughts and feelings, our own temptations and passions arise
not from within our own imagination, but from outside ourselves. Our
senses trigger ideas, the ideas become concepts and plans and the
plans become actions, but the sensory input from outside our selves
puts this sequence into motion.
For example, we’ve said our prayers and refrained from meat
and even went to Communion last night, and now, in the middle of the
next morning a co-worker says something really rude or insulting to
us. We flare up. We get angry. How could they say such things about
me! What’s wrong with them! And we fire an offensive comment
right back at them. We have a verbal war going and it took three seconds
to set it off. The bomb has already exploded and we hardly noticed
we were under attack and responding in-kind. It all happened so fast!
Now, one can say that this is perfectly normal and expectable behavior,
because when someone insults you, there is a “natural”
tendency to counter-attack. Yes, it’s natural, in a sinful and
fallen world. But when Christ was insulted, and not just verbally
but physically, spat upon, beaten, stripped, hauled into court and
accused, found innocent and then executed anyway, He said nothing.
And if we are His disciples, that’s the standard we have set
for ourselves.
How can we ever attain that level of self-control and forgiveness,
of compassion and love for the “enemy” as He displayed?
We can, as the saints have proven, but only very gradually. We must
start by “denying ourselves,” and then “taking up
our cross.” And this self-denial cannot begin at moments of
obvious attack, as in the example above. In the heat of such a battle,
few of us could refrain from making the defensive or offensive comment.
Our words would pop out virtually without any consideration, reflection,
or even much time devoted to them. Our lashing back would be almost
“automatic” unless we had become accustomed to controlling
our tongues. Tongues don’t really speak on their own: they still
take orders from the brain and the central nervous system. But the
brain, while capable of reflection and self-control, is not used to
exercising its power over the tongue in “the heat of battle.”
In fact, when we are angry, the thinking, reflecting creative part
of the brain literally shuts down.
The New Testament calls this self-correcting, self-reflecting, self-critical
ability we have as human beings the “Nous.” It is poorly
translated into English as “ideal,” but this fails to
convey the dynamic nature of the Nous, and leaves English speakers
with a faulty notion of what the spiritual warfare is. We must keep
the Nous active, so that we can avoid sin, avoid tempation by making
it stronger, giving it control of our actions. And in order to be
incontrol of our actions, it must first control our ideas, impulses
and plans. But we have given it very little opportunity to develop.
We have exercised it very seldom. We have no practice or experience
critiquing our own behavior. Our Nous is weak.
And therefore we consider it natural to surrender to every thought
and idea, every temptation and passion that sweeps through our senses.
We are not in control of our own behavior, our own tongues because
we so seldom even try to restrain them. So the “spiritual warfare”
cannot be won without the same kind of effort we would expect of recruits
in an army. They must discipline themselves, arise early, run ten
miles, do 1000 push ups, climb barriers, crawl under obstacles, jump
out of airplanes, spend hours on the firing range: all in preparation
for the battles to come.
Lent is spiritual boot camp. It is the time of the year when the Church
challenges us all to get into better spiritual condition, to exercise
our Nous, our inherent ability to stop, reflect, critique and control
our minds BEFORE we ponder, consider, accept or act upon our thoughts,
the temptations that come to us from our senses, from outside ourselves,
and become like a fortress, from whose walls we can see the attack
coming and fend it off. Rather than lowering the draw-bridge and letting
the enemy seize control of our minds and hearts, we must defend the
castle and learn to reject the bullets and bombs fired toward it.
This begins with simple exercises, just as a new soldier begins basic
training. You feel thirty: don’t drink. You feel hungry: don’t
eat. You glance an attractive person: don’t look. You feel happy:
don’t smile. You feel sad: smile anyway. Unless we can voluntarily
begin to control our responses from the “world” outside
ourselves, in such simple and petty situations, we will never be able
to control our reactions in more complex settings. Giving our Nous
control of our behavior requires struggle against the externally induced
thougths and feelings that otherwise batter our lives and like sticks
or logs in a river or stream, just float wherever the current pushes
them. This is the “sea of life, surging with the storm of temptations,”
which the Church recalls at memorial services (the sixth oirmos of
the Canon).
In order to win the struggle, the battle which the Enemy ceasely wages
to cause us to sin, to do evil to turn from God and violate His Will
and purpose for us in our lives, we must therefore persecute our selves
deny our whims, our ideas, our fleeting thoughts and bring them under
the control of the Nous. No one can do this by their own strength
and willpower. Relying on ourselves assures defeat. So the strength,
power and grace to succeed comes only from God. This is why the Scriptures
and the Holy Fathers insist that the most essential “weapon”
we have is prayer, particularly the constantly invocation of the Jesus
Christ, as Son of God, to have mercy on us, and not allow us to fall
into temptation, to be taken captive by the Enemy and, as so often
happens, do his will rather than God’s. We fall so easily into
his hands, and we allow ourselves so complacently to become tools
of his will, that we consider it normal, “natural.” But
this is only because we are weak, foolish, untrained and inexperienced
recruits in the Army of God. We are POWs without even noticing it,
doing what the Enemy wants us to do, saying what the Enemy wants us
to say and not even noticing or repenting.
The “bugle call” of Great Lent is sounding. We are not
used to getting up so early. We are accustomed to prayer. We have
not developed the habit of denying ourselves, of defending ourselves
from the “arrows that fly by day” but, perhaps this year,
this Lent, we will at least begin to “deny ourselves”
and “take up our cross” and follow Christ, not just during
the Fast, but for the rest of our lives and into Eternity.
