As I announced in the Jan 1 post, and explained in the subsequent one, the first of the three dimensions of the Christian Way that I will be exploring this year is that of “combat.” In the series of practical articles that form the framework for my exploration, the essays on “combat” end up revolving around three main sub-themes: the combat against sin, the combat of prayer, and the combat of suffering. Today, we will consider the first of these, which is perhaps the one subject to most misunderstanding and confusion.
The article by Maria Schörghuber begins by putting this combat in context. The Christian spiritual path begins with Baptism, and this event forms the necessary frame for approaching all the subsequent dimensions of the Way:
In our Baptism, God has told us forever that He loves us as we are, no matter what happens. This conviction is the starting point on the interior journey; without it, we would be running on the wrong path because, in this race, it is not about earning anything by ourselves or proving anything to anyone but living freely, enjoying God's love. “We have come to know and believe in the love God has for us,” St. John writes (1 John 4:16). Following these words of the Gospel, St. Josemaría says: “We must let these truths of faith fill our soul until they change our life. God loves us!”
After 20 centuries of Christianity, the idea that “God loves us” seems banal — reduced to a tired slogan when it is not despised as empty sentimentality. But even among those who claim to believe this, many still frame their struggle against sin as if this doctrine were somehow in doubt, as if God’s love had to be earned.
Really believing in God’s love, in such a way as to shape one’s whole way of thinking and acting, is objectively difficult. To start with, it causes all kinds of metaphysical problems, since it is hard to see how the utterly transcendent ultimate source of all reality could be in love with His finite and changeable creation. In fact, one of the main reasons why Jesus allowed himself to be crucified, and why he established the whole sacramental structure of the Church, is precisely to make this belief possible.
Grounded in the certainty of God’s love, as palpably sealed in the rite of Baptism, the believer is free to face the reality of his or her own way of acting, without evasions or excuses. As Fr. Andrés Cardenas reminds us in his article,
Every process of spiritual growth involves looking squarely, realistically, at our own actions, including those that cause us discomfort or remorse. We need to look, with God, at our thoughts, words, deeds, or omissions; to understand where we may have hurt God and others (or worse, treated them with indifference), and where we have harmed ourselves by allowing weeds to grow in our souls. Only the truth can set us free (cf. Jn 8:32), especially the truth about our own lives.
This is where the Christian combat against sin begins. Having surrendered to God’s love, letting Him take possession of our whole being, we want to cooperate with Him in the gradual transformation of our entire body with all its activities into a pure conduit of His own love and goodness. This perspective empowers us to endure all the suffering and opposition involved in breaking free of long habits of egoism and injustice, as a way of pleasing our Beloved and placing ourselves more completely in His hands.
Fr. Cardenas goes on to enumerate three mistakes people frequently make in approaching this struggle, all of them contrary to the perspective that flows from Baptism:
In this task, we must avoid three temptations: first, the temptation to minimize our guilt, either through a superficial examination of conscience or by avoiding the interior silence where the Holy Spirit awaits to reveal our own truth to us; second, the temptation to shift the blame to others or to circumstances, so that we habitually appear as victims, or like we never harm anyone; and finally, a temptation that seems the opposite of the previous one but leads to the same sterile complacency: the temptation to divert our repentance from God and others to focus on our wounded pride and on the fact that we have failed ourselves once again.
The first temptation, the reluctance to face the ugly reality of my actual behavior, really betrays a lack of faith in the strength and solidity of God’s love for me. If I am really sure of that love, then I want to arrive at the truth as quickly and completely as possible — even if it hurts — so that He may begin to heal me. The second temptation reveals an even deeper lack of faith, implicitly blaming God for the circumstances outside of my control that make a good life impossible. If God really does love me, then He will give me the power to shine brightly with His goodness in every circumstance, no matter how horrible, as He did on the Cross. The third temptation, however, is the most subtle, and can strike with particular force when we see that the process of transformation proceeds much more slowly than we expected. This is particularly frequent in the 21st-century Western economy where we are accustomed to instantly acquiring whatever we desire.
Fr. JP Mitchell focuses on this aspect in his own article from the series, citing a line from the 18th-century Jesuit spiritual writer Jean Nicolas Grou that sums up a standard point of Christian spiritual teaching:
There are people, one of these teachers writes, who “are frequently amazed by their faults, who become uneasy, who get ashamed; they get angry with themselves and end in discouragement. These are all effects of self-love, much more harmful than the faults themselves.” The last sentence is surprising. The shame, unease, and discouragement we fall into when we see our limits are harmful. They push us away from God and predispose us to sin – which, ironically, is what discouraged us in the first place. It is, in short, a vicious circle that prevents us from reconciling with God, looking at His face and telling Him that we are sorry and we want his forgiveness.
This brings us to the heart of the main combat, the same as the original combat agains the serpent in Genesis 3. Then as now, the main goal of the enemy is to cause us to doubt the love of God for us, his intentions for us. And the victory comes through faith: the faith that empowers us to “look at his face, tell Him that we are sorry, and ask for His forgiveness.”
This whole teaching on Christian combat is beautifully summarized in two reflections by St. Josemaría Escrivá that are cited in these articles. The first comes from his meditation on the Seventh Station of the Way of the Cross, which contemplates Jesus’ second fall on the way to the site of the crucifixion:
May our stumbles and defeats separate us from Him no more. Just as a feeble child throws itself contritely into the strong arms of its father, you and I will hold tightly to the yoke of Jesus. Only a contrition and humility like this can transform our human weakness into the fortitude of God.
Faith in God’s paternal love for us enables us to convert our sins into motives for turning towards Him, rather than fleeing from Him in shame. Specifically, we cling to the Cross, the “yoke” of Christ (cf. Mt. 11:30), which is where we find the invincible proof of His love. And it is precisely this motion, this combination of contrition and humility, that opens the door to real transformation: the gradual divinization by which we acquire God’s own strength.
This brings us to the second reflection, which makes the first one concrete and actionable. In a homily on the Christian virtue of hope, St. Josemaría points to the Sacrament of Confession (also called the Sacrament of Penance), as the flesh-and-blood, human place where we can “throw ourselves into the arms of our Father,” and “cling to the yoke of Jesus”:
I would like to see you going to the holy Sacrament of Penance, the sacrament of divine forgiveness, every week, and indeed whenever you need it, without giving in to scruples. (...) We will find a new joyful perspective to the world, seeing that it has sprung forth beautiful and fair from the hands of God. We will give it back to him with that same beauty, if we learn how to repent.
When we turn to God and tell Him our sins out loud, through the mediation of the priest — and hear Him welcome us and forgive us and assure us that His love has never changed — our whole perspective on reality is altered. Our faith in God expands, and becomes faith in the goodness of all that has come from His hands. This faith enables us to search for and find the beauty of the divine intentions hidden under the often-enigmatic surface appearances of all created realities — and then to harmonize our life with these intentions and offer this beauty back to Him in a hymn of thanksgiving.