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.