Spiritual warfare: 4

"For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart." (Heb. 4: 12)

Do we see Holy Scripture as a "sword"? More often we treat it as a blanket.

The remark is by David Hicks, speaking about the way the Church Father read the Bible. But the author of Hebrews continues: "And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account." Thus the Sword of the Spirit is not an "it" but a "him", it is the Lord himself. The sword we must pick up is not merely the words of the Bible, which are marks on paper, but something "living and active". The Sword is able to pierce to the very heart, to the spirit within the soul, to the "marrow" in the bones.

The quotation comes from the end of a passage where the author is talking about the Sabbath rest of God, the seventh day, the day when God and his people cease from their labours. But what is the connection with spiritual warfare? The Sword is the warrior's weapon. It brings an end to the fight, in victory. It does so by bringing our energy and will to a point. It does so through enabling the ultimate discernment. Cutting away everything worldly, including the soul and the joints and the hypocrisy under which we hide our true intentions, it leaves us "naked and exposed" before God. But this is the only way to enter his rest, to be with him in his glory.

Prayers for a New Chivalry. 

This is the last of a series of extracts from my notes for a future book. For more on spiritual warfare right away, read the CTS booklet by Vivian Boland OP, which in turn recommends the classic Spiritual Combat by Lorenzo Scupoli. See also the Angelic Warfare Confraternity of the Dominican Order, and the Knights of Our Lady for a contemporary manifestation of spiritual chivalry.

Spiritual warfare: 3

A warrior is never too busy to pray. God creates time for those who pray. And the substance of prayer is attention.

"The Fathers define prayer as a spiritual weapon. Unless we are armed with it we cannot engage in warfare, but are carried off as prisoners to the enemy's country. Nor can we acquire pure prayer unless we cleave to God with an upright heart. For it is God who gives prayer to him who prays, and who teaches man spiritual knowledge." (Philokalia, 2, p. 15)

"God never refuses the first grace which gives us the courage to overcome ourselves. If the soul corresponds with that grace, she finds herself immediately in the light. The heart is strengthened and she goes from victory to victory." (St Therese of Lisieux)

"I bind to myself this day
The power of Heaven,
The brightness of the Sun,
The whiteness of Snow,
The splendour of Fire,
The speed of Lightning,
The swiftness of Wind,
The depth of the Sea,
The stability of the Earth,
The firmness of Rock."
         (St Patrick's Breastplate)

"Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication." (Eph. 6: 10-18, ESV)

NEXT: The Sword of the Spirit.

Spiritual warfare: 2

This is a guide to the arts of spiritual warfare, to the training and conduct of the Warrior.

From the outset, the reader should know that this war is different from every war of man against man. We have no human enemy. The most evil human being you can imagine, however cruel and dangerous, is merely a victim. There are no warriors for evil, merely men and women who fail to be warriors for good.

Our Enemy attacks us by exploiting human weakness and sin, both in others and in ourselves. He sends against us not human enemies but demons from hell: the battle is lost whenever we judge a fellow human being to belong to the Enemy. Against such tactics, only two weapons will suffice: the shield of Detachment and the sword of Love. the only arms we can safely bear are those the Enemy cannot grasp.

"To redeem the created world, the saint makes war on all its fabric with the naked weapons of truth and love. That war begins in the deepest and most hidden recesses of the soul and of his desires, and will end in the coming of a new earth and a new heaven, when all the powers of this world will be brought low and what is now despised will be exalted" (Jaques Maritain, cited in Communio, Fall 1993, p. 555).

The following prayer is from the Carmina Gadelica.

Thou Michael the victorious,
I make my circuit under thy shield,
Thou Michael of the white steed,
And of the bright brilliant blades,
Conqueror of the dragon,
Be thou at my back,
Thou ranger of the heavens,
Thou warrior of the King of all,
O Michael the victorious,
My pride and my guide,
O Michael the victorious,
The Glory of mine eye.

Illustration: St Michael, Japanese style, by Daniel Mitsui (from danielmitsui.com).

Spiritual warfare: 1

The books of Carlos Castaneda were among the first to popularize the concept of the "Warrior Way" in the 1960s. Many modern readers and cinema-goers have also been fascinated by the spirituality of the Japanese Samurai, and the martial arts generally (bushido). George Lucas tried to capture this in his notion of "the Force" in Star Wars. Christianity has its own teachings on spiritual combat, developed most explicitly perhaps in the library of Eastern Christian writings assembled under the title Philokalia ("love of beauty").

The chivalric romances, especially the Grail legends that inspired Francis of Assisi, largely concern the preparation and conduct of the true Knight of the Spirit in the tradition of Western Christendom. Hans Urs von Balthasar dedicated his book Tragedy Under Grace to the "secular institutes" which he regarded as the modern manifestation of Christian knighthood.

Some years ago I prepared a book proposal that never got anywhere. It was for A Little Book of Spiritual Warfare. It was designed for the pocket of the spiritual warrior, and intended to be of practical use as a tool of recollection, for one of the greatest enemies on the Path of the Warrior is distraction or forgetfulness. After a brief introduction to the concept of the book and the history of spiritual combat, each page would have contained a quotation or recollection to recall the Warrior to his or her mission, or to encapsulate one of the lessons to be learnt on the Way.

Spiritual combat takes place in the midst of everyday life. It is a war to defend our interior freedom and personal integrity. We are each fighting for our immortal soul, for the True Self that we have the potential to become, and for the protection of the souls of others. From another point of view, the "war" is a Quest, and the "enemies" we face are the obstacles, challenges, and trials that lie on the path, especially the Monster or Shadow that guards the Self. After sections on the Warrior's arms and training, and on the tactics of the Enemy, the book would focus on the Mission or Quest, concluding with guidance on how to remain faithful to this teaching in everyday life.

The book was not completed, but some notes and fragments may be worth putting on record, and I intend to do this in later posts. It may be regarded as supplementary to the material on Christian spirituality in All Things Made New.

Illustration: Toshiro Mifune as Yojimbo in the movie of that name by Akira Kurosawa.

Sea-horse

While in Italy recently, in the town of Ascoli Piceno I saw this lovely "sea-horse" fountain in a public square. The Roman father-god of horses is, surprisingly perhaps, Neptune, who was at first a land-god but later (after his conquest of Amphitrite of the golden spindle, mistress of the ocean) the god of the sea. He is associated with horses because of their fluid movements and great strength. In general horses can be taken to represent the energies of the human organism, but also – with wings in the case of Pegasus, or fishes' tails in the case of the hippocampi – they are the forces that bear us between worlds or states of being, or the three worlds of sea, land, and sky, which we may perhaps take as roughly the waking state surrounded by the powers of the unconscious (the sea) and the superconscious (the sky).

As for the middle region, the centaur (for example, in the figure of Sagittarius) with the torso of a horse and the shoulders and head of a man represents the human being as a unity of body and soul. The fact that Sagittarius is an archer emphasizes the creature's mobility in the middle region, over land in other words, and also contains the idea of aiming at a target, which for the human person (body-soul unity, in Christian terms) can be none other than Beatitude – the "mark" for which we were fashioned, and from which we fall short by sin. In a Christian reading of the symbol, the arrow, which is itself made of wood, flies to the wood of the Cross.

When the horse is ridden by a man and winged, as in the case of Pegasus (sired by Poseidon/Neptune), it represents the active power of the spirit that enables the soul to have direct contact with the gods on Olympus. In C.S. Lewis's tale The Magician's Nephew it is a winged horse called Fledge, created and called by Aslan, who carries the boy Digory to the earthly paradise in order to bring back an apple of life for his dying mother. This is a detail from the "Narnia Window" in Holy Trinity Church, Headington, where Lewis used to sit in the congregation, close to the site of his grave.