Glorious battle…
Lent begins now. Or rather, tomorrow after Forgiveness Vespers. The general buzz among my friends is wary resolve. “I hate it, but it’s good for us, so once more into the breach…”
Among the new folks—the recently baptized, Chrismated, or the catechumens—there are some romantic ideas about spiritual battle, as if they’re about to enter a kind of crusade or holy war. They’re not wrong, but the battlefield is (probably) nothing like what they expect. It’s not outside of us—a place we can enter and retreat from when the fighting gets fierce. It’s within, and therefore inescapable.
“Obviously?”
Maybe. But we do tend to load up our Lenten observance with a lot of “I’m gonna do…”
Me? I’m acutely aware that I’m in a time of transition, and whatever comes next is certain to be radically different than what was before. Some of it is obvious: divorce, career change, etc., but there’s also something more. Something I can’t yet see or understand. It’s like I can see a beckoning figure across a scorched desert valley; a silhouette on on the other side, buzzing and dancing as though through a heat mirage.
This Lent seems, to me, full of extra import. Laden with meaning.
Lent for me has always been a brief time of intense battle followed by a quick, complete, and decisive defeat. In the best times, I would enter Lent with lots of good intentions and resolve to “make the most of it this time.” My record is about two weeks before complete and utter collapse. I learned to hate Lent a long time ago. I’d blame it on various external factors, living, as I often thought, in a sort of perpetual Lent.
Poor me, I know.
I, like many others, had one wrong fundamental idea about Lent. I made it all about my effort.
I needed some wise counsel, so yesterday I drove two hours to meet with my priest for a little bit.
I had no agenda. Even if all we did was chit-chat about this and that, it would have sufficed. I wanted commune with a fellow warrior. Father is a few months younger than me, but in all of the ways that count, he’s “done life better.” I admire him as a veteran of the struggle. As if to validate my regard for him, he would reject such a positive assessment.
Our talk was mostly chit-chat, (Sam Houston, insane family histories, the dangers and the utility of imagination…) although I knew, even in the wandering midst of it, that the goods were gettin’ delivered.
I asked him if he had any advice for a guy who is inclined to write about spiritual warfare. Is there an Orthodox badge you have to earn or something?
He gave the same boring answer as always: “Be humble.”
He noted how all the Church Fathers began their discourses with some version of, “Forgive me, Lord, a filthy sinner…” It wasn’t false humility, (which is easy to assume of people who the ages know as sanctified), and it wasn’t despair. They were grounding themselves. Otherwise it would be far too easy to get lost in their own self-regard.
Noted.
The greatest Lenten danger for new Orthobros (and others) is thinking they’re not doing enough. They’ll laser in on this-or-that Lenten practice and treat it like a workout target.
It’s natural. I get it. We’re men of action after all. Even my men’s group, which is made up of serious, sober-minded, intentional dudes, uses trackable metrics to gauge our spiritual success.
We can lose ourselves in the metrics, though. Our weights and measures can get quite heavy indeed.
The things we give up for Lent are often, let’s face it, not such a big deal…until Lent begins. You know—no chocolate for 40 days. But then you’d murder a puppy for just one Hershey’s Kiss.
There’s one of your manacles right there…
The extra actions we add to our Lenten time—the kathismas on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or saying a rosary every day—these become lead blocks in our hearts. The billion distractions of the day, the unexpected and wildly bizarre fights with our spouses, emergencies with children… All these curve balls become cannon balls shot right through our good intentions.
The Evil One, whose supernatural intelligence and monstrous pride has and will contribute to the damnation of countless souls, will derail your Lenten plans with bitchy little tricks like getting your belt loop caught on a kitchen cabinet knob just as you’re in a rush to find your keys.
But we can’t just…do nothing…right?
Well, as we say over here in the east: “Talk to your spiritual father.” If no flesh-and-blood spiritual father is available, we have plenty of books.
Speaking of which, here’s a passage from “Unseen Warfare,” a veritable field manual for spiritual battle of every kind. This passage, from Chapter 4, seems particularly relevant at the beginning of Lent:
CHAPTER FOUR
How to recognize whether a man acts without self-reliance and with perfect trust in God
It often happens that self-reliant men think that they have no self-reliance whatever, but put all their trust in God and rest confidently in Him alone. But in practice it is not so. They can ascertain it for themselves, if they judge by what is in them and what happens to them if they fall down. If, when they grieve at their downfall, reproaching and abusing themselves for it, they think: 'I shall do this and that, the consequences of my downfall will be effaced and all will be well once more,' this is a sure sign that before the downfall they trusted themselves, instead of trusting God.
Sounds familiar…
This is the epicenter of all my struggles. I must do more. I must make the decisions. I must white-knuckle it and endure.
The results of that approach have never changed.
Confusion.
Loss.
Ruin.
So, I take comfort in the rest of the passage from Unseen Warfare:
If a man does not rely on himself but puts his trust in God, when he falls he is not greatly surprised and is not overcome with excessive grief, for he knows that it is the result of his own impotence, and, above all, of the weakness of his trust in God. So his downfall increases his distrust of himself and makes him try all the harder to increase and deepen his humble trust in God. And further, hating the vile passions which caused his downfall, he thereupon endures peacefully and calmly the labours of penitence for having offended God; and armed with still more trust in God, he thereupon pursues his enemies with the greatest courage and resoluteness, even unto death.
C.S. Lewis wrote, “No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.” I might modify that a bit to say, “No man knows how self-absorbed he is until he tries to rely on God.”
It flies in the face of our romantic notions of spiritual battle. Many of us men, especially us new recruits, want to channel our natural aggression and need to act into a fight against the forces of Hell. In reality, what we need to do is divest of all these things. Empty ourselves. We need to approach the battlefield not laden with armor, but in sackcloth and ashes. Instead of swords in hand, we should wield our prayer ropes and rosaries.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
God and my Guardian Angel slapped me upside the head yesterday. I accompanied my mom to the grocery store, a major act of penance for me. I dislike shopping and she reads every label. So I used the time to pray the Rosary. It kept me calm and charitable. I gave myself a pat on the back, fool that I am. When we were checking out I made an uncharitable response to the person in front of me. Pride, even in good deeds, is toxic. God and my Guardian Angel never miss the opportunity to whack me upside the head, and for that I’m grateful.
I went to adoration yesterday for the first time in ages. I felt very clearly by the end that Lent (for me) this year should be about simply making space. Not with a laundry list of what to fill the space with, but just 2-3 things to allow space for God to do whatever he's got in mind. As a consummate Type A, we'll see how it goes (ha!). My 3 things are go back to weekly adoration, use time on train commute for unrushed spiritual reading/prayer, and stay off social media without replacing it with obsessive news checking. It's hard not to add more. Praying for a fruitful Lent.