CC#29--What Is The Spiritual War We Often Talk About?

Two cosmic powers, intelligent good and intelligent evil, personified in God and Lucifer, are locked in a life and death struggle for the allegiance of all human beings. That struggle becomes tangible, can be tracked and identified only in the multiple details of complex human situations. But by the same token, everything tangible, each and every human situation is colored by what is transhuman and eternal. So we ask in our title today what is the spiritual battle? Let's talk about it on this Catholic Corner.

Welcome to the Theory to Action Podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, David Kaiser.

Hello, I am David, and welcome back to the Theory to Action podcast and to this special segment we call the Catholic Corner, where we attempt to pull faith and the supernatural life from the corner of our lives, so to speak, back to the center, to help all of us live a life of virtue, a life of freedom, pursuing excellence and ultimately trying to live a flourishing life. And so we're going to turn to our opening quote that we let off with and that question we asked there and in the title of this episode what is the spiritual battle? What is this spiritual battle that we are always talking about on this podcast? Well, let's read our opening quote again to get the gist of it and how it answers the question directly. Two cosmic powers, intelligent good and intelligent evil, personified in God and Lucifer, are locked in a life and death struggle for the allegiance of all human beings. That struggle becomes tangible, can be tracked and identified only in the multiple details of complex human situations, but, by the same token, everything tangible, each and every human situation, is colored by what is transhuman and eternal. All right, so that is a fascinating paragraph. So pull that apart. We have powers operating on the spiritual plane, cosmic powers, both God and Lucifer, intelligent good and intelligent evil, and of all the mysteries in our world, the mystery of evil should not be a mystery at all, especially shouldn't be a mystery to us in the 21st century. We see evil personified all around us. We see hearts motivated by evil almost each and every day. If you have eyes to see and ears to hear, you will see and hear that evil each and every day. But we have two cosmic powers dueling God and Lucifer. Now, to be clear, to get our theology right, god is all powerful, omnipotent. Lucifer is not. Lucifer is a being, he is not God. God is more powerful, but God, in his eternal love for us human beings, has given us freedom. So let's go back to our quote. Two cosmic powers intelligent good and intelligent evil, personified, and God and Lucifer are locked in a life and death struggle for the allegiance of all human beings. Locked in a life and death struggle for all human beings. And that struggle becomes tangible. We see it play out among the zillions of human situations playing out all around the world and, most importantly, these human situations are colored by what is called transhuman and eternal Means. It's beyond humanity, not transsexual transhuman beyond humanity and eternal. This spiritual war is about human souls and this war is eternal and permanent. And that is the paradox, that is the spiritual battle that is playing out each and every day. It's playing out before our very eyes, on the streets, in big cities and in rural towns and the countryside and in the ghetto In the United States and Russia and Beijing and the Gaza Strip and a thousand other hell holes all around the world. Human beings interacting on the spiritual plane in an ultimate battle of good versus evil, god versus Lucifer. And if you're a Christian, how do you know this spiritual war really is taking place? We can't see it and hear it. If we're keeping with our Socratic method that we learned earlier, we should ask these questions, should we not? Nope, the questions are good. Good questions are even better. And one good question to ask is did Jesus Christ reference this spiritual battle at all? Well, in fact, he did. He referenced his main opponent in this spiritual battle by name. Actually, you might remember, upon the return of the 70 that Jesus had sent out two by two. In the Holy Gospel, according to St Luke, he says there in Luke 1017, the 70 returned with joy saying Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name. And he said to them I saw Satan fall like heaven. I'm sorry, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven, and then I'm sure you could have heard a pin drop after that answer fell upon the ears of the 70. The joy of their faces can just be imagined being wiped away very quickly after our Lord makes one of those usual statements, like he always does Whoa, what's he talking about? Christ would go on with the teaching in Luke 1019, telling them Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. And then he issues a word of caution in Luke 1020. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. Whoa again, don't rejoice. Just as if our Lord is saying there's no need to be happy about this subject. Caution and don't be happy, for these are very serious matters. This is just one small reference to the spiritual battle that our Lord references, but exorcism is the formal title of what the 70 were performing as they went two by two into the countryside. People often miss another short reference from our Lord. They often skip over this one. This time it happens earlier in the Holy Gospel according to Luke. In Luke 949, we hear our Lord issuing a gentle rebuke to his apostles, saying Are we read? John answered Master, we saw a man casting out demons in your name and we forbade him because he does not follow with us. But Jesus said to them Do not forbid him, for he that is not against you is for you. Gentle rebuke noted. Our Lord has spoken. And there's another reference to this spiritual battle. And there are many, many more that we could uncover. But it has been quite odd over the last 25 to 35 years to hear so many people nowadays discount this spiritual battle taking place all day and all around the world, as if they're saying there's nothing to see here. We don't believe it, to which many of us are thinking whoa, how can you not miss what is happening all around us each and every day? It's as if we are solar systems apart in viewing reality, in our worldview, that important concept we talked about earlier. This is an important part of seeing the world clearly and Developing, informing your worldview. That is the answer to this question. Is there a spiritual war taking place all around us? Absolutely there is Now in reference to our previous quote we started the podcast with. That comes to us from a great book, a book that I read early on in my faith journey, way back in 1996. Its title is the Jesuits by Malachi Martin, and because we have our first Jesuit Pope in Pope Francis, I want to read this book again to reacquaint myself with the original Jesuits and and most especially to its founder, ignatius de Loyola. We'll talk about Ignatius and his biography a little bit later on, not in this podcast, but later on in our, in our theme, in our series. Now, who or what are the Jesuits? Well, the formal title is they are the Society of Jesus. They are a religious order of clerics. They are headquartered in Rome, they were founded in 1540 by Ignatius de Loyola and six of his companions, and these six companions Composed what is called the original Jesuits. They were approved by Pope Paul III and they are now engaged in evangelization and apostolic ministry in some 112 nations. They are known worldwide for their education, their research and their cultural pursuits. They also conduct very good retreats, or they did, and this book does a wonderful job of explaining the original, the original Jesuit education. They have since fallen away from their mandate and that would take another 15 podcast essentially to explain that. And the book does a great job of explaining it. So if you're interested in going down that rabbit trail, you can certainly do that with this book. I would highly recommend it. It's a very good book. It helped me to understand why certain things were the way they were. But I was very curious as I began reading again this book and putting myself in Ignatius' shoes as he looked it out upon the world in 1540, and he probably was asking himself what is going on. You will remember and you will recall from your history books that in the middle of the sixteenth century Christendom all of Europe was in a total upheaval. The Protestant revolt had happened, happened with Martin Luther in 1517, with the nailing of the 95th Eesus in the Wittenberg Church in Germany. But Loyola wasn't too concerned about that. He was more concerned about the worldwide church. Yes, there was an upheaval in Europe, but he was asking for bigger answers to what is going on, certainly wasn't asking for sports scores either. He was asking the big spiritual battle question, the really deep question, with many implications, of what's really going on, what's going on beneath the surface that we in the church, the Catholic Church, have not began to understand at all. How can we put that into a very real sense? With that, let's pick up the book in chapter 7. In a very real sense. By the time Ignatius de Loyola began the detailed work of forming his Society of Jesus, he had already asked that same question what's going on? He had already seen and heard everything our imaginary reporter would have seen and heard. He understood both the fascination of his contemporaries with the powerful adventures, discoveries and new freedoms and the very mixed feelings that came with all of that. He's referencing all the different discoveries in the 16th century the advent of the printing press, bigger ships to travel far greater distances on the ocean. Going back to the book. But what interested him, however, was not a mere repertorial description of the new happenings and new reactions to them. His mind was not transfixed by science or new discoveries. He did not see a new theology of humanism leading to a new age of man on the horizon. Nor was he preoccupied with the never ending war between the Christian world and the Turkish Empire. Little stop here. If we put ourselves in Ignatius shoes, you will know from your history books that war was going on since the 7th century, when the Muslim Empire, the Muslim religion, expanded beyond its normal borders in Saudi Arabia and drifted out, taking land at a furious pace all around the Mediterranean. Back to the book. So he was not occupied with the never-ending war between the Christian war and the Turkish Empire. While most people were just preparing to measure themselves against the widening backdrop of newness, ignatius was already thinking in universalist terms and about the condition of man's entire cosmos. And here's where it gets good For him. Everything traced back to that single element common throughout the vast sea of change, that single element that in its essence never changed the cosmic war between God and Lucifer, just as it had been in every age before his. That war was still being waged everywhere and daily. It permeated every event, every element of turmoil, of expansion, and it concerned just one thing the eternal salvation of each and every human being. Through the sacrificial death and resurrection of Christ and by the founding of the Roman Catholic Church, god had made it possible for each man and woman to make godly choices in life and by those choices to attain heaven after death. In that cosmic and constant war, christ was the leader of God's campaign, and Christ's personal, visible representative among men was the Roman Pope, lucifer's aims in the war. The aim of Satan as the adversary, was to ensure that as many human beings as possible missed that eternal afterlife goal. Never more clear has there been an articulation of what the spiritual battle was that is taking place all around us than by the founder of the Jesuits, ignatius De Loyola. And to make it very clear, let's go back to the book, because there's some fantastic writing here. Unless you admit that this cosmic war was all that really mattered for Ignatius, it was far more important and real than the Christian Turk war, for example. You've had, no, you would have no chance to understand how Ignatius succeeded in his venture. He read not only his contemporary history, but he also knew what of the past and what had been playing for the future. In light of that paradigm, that war was what was really going on and what really mattered. And it was his understanding of that war that gave him his hearty independence from the prevailing and piecemeal reactions of his generation to the earth shaking changes in their world. In turn, it was that independence of mine that enabled him to fashion his Ignatius mold for his order and for its individual members. Not that his view of the warfare itself was innovative. His idea of the battle between God and Lucifer as the supreme reality in human life was the very old and authentically Christian teaching. According to each individual human being, it's the cherished objective of those two agents external to him, god and Lucifer. Fundamental to Ignatius' spirituality was the dogmatic belief that while alive in this world, no one can escape the constant attention of both God and Lucifer. Old as that belief was, however, it was being swamped in a single generation by the new fascination men and women found in the here and now, in an ever more exciting temporal life, in the rush to fit into that life, to adapt to it and to change with it, and above all, in the humanistic cry of the Renaissance that man is the measure of all things. For Ignatius, the very cry, that very cry pointed to his shift in the current campaign of the constant war. It was Lucifer's latest ploy, his modern version of I will not serve. For traditional Catholics and Christians, this describes the worldview of the spiritual war that has been playing out since the dawn of time, in fact so much that the Catholic Church has given us a prayer to start our day with this worldview in mind, and it starts with the affirmation I will serve, opposed to Lucifer's I will not serve. I will serve Christ as his soldier. And then this traditional morning offering prayer comes to us in many prayer books, but it says this oh my Jesus, through the immaculate heart of Mary, I offer you my prayers, my works, my joys and my sufferings of this day for all the intentions of your sacred heart and union with the holy sacrifice of the mass throughout the world and reparation for my sins, for the intentions of all my family, friends and relatives and in particular for the intentions of the Holy Father. Amen. That prayer has been echoed off the lips down through the centuries for many folks believing in this spiritual battle. Let's go back to the Jesuits in this book and the founder Ignatius Dei-loyal and how he viewed this war. The war Ignatius saw was the war against Lucifer, chief of the fallen angels who roamed through the human environment seeking to destroy whether by the homicide of war, by the destruction of religious culture or by the degradation of poverty and justice and suffering, the image of God and the grace of Christ in the souls of men and women everywhere. As Lucifer's war against Christ and his grace and salvation was universal, so the war against Lucifer and his followers had to be correspondingly universal. So Christ needs soldiers in that fight. So in today's Catholic Corner we have answered the question what is the spiritual war we talk about all the time? And we will close with a wonderful daily meditation for every Christian to consider Remember Christian soul that you have this day and every day of your life for God to glorify, for Jesus to imitate the angels and saints, to invoke a soul to save a body, to mortify sins, to expiate virtues, to acquire hell, to avoid heaven, to gain eternity, to prepare for time, to profit by neighbors, to edify the world, to despise devils, to combat passions, to subdue death, perhaps to suffer and judgment to undergo. What a wonderful meditation for every Christian to consider. So, as always, team Mojo, as we close, let's keep fighting the good fight in the spiritual battle. And a little a PS here to the whole country Please pray for the defeat of issue one in the state of Ohio this Tuesday. It would be a major victory if we were to defeat Ohio issue one, because it's a major battle in this spiritual war.

Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your Mojo on.