In the battle for souls, God has placed the means to win in our hands

By Marcellus Roberts *

“Battle of David and Goliath” by Daniele da Volterra, Louvre Museum, Paris

Wake up! This age in which we live is an age of legends, where spiritual truths transform the mundane into the mystical, and words of worship decorate the halls and walls of hearts belonging to earth’s holiest heroes. You and I, my brother, my sister, fortunate soldiers of Christ, we ride with a mighty company of “innumerable angels in festal gathering… the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven… a judge who is God of all… the spirits of just men made perfect… and… Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.” (Hebrews 12:22-24)

Ours is a faith confirmed by chrism and the eyes of our understanding are filled with a heavenly light, flowing from the potency of this anointing. St. Robert Bellarmine says, “by virtue of this anointing it [the sacrament of Confirmation] strengthens it [the soul] to make war on demons and boldly profess the Christian faith beyond any fear of torment or death” (Doctrina Christiana). We were baptized for our salvation. We were confirmed for war.

The Church Militant has an objective that includes freeing our fallen members who have been “hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13). To be hardened in sin is the lowest degree and classification of the Christian life. It should strike us as strange, but true, that even the best cask of wine, the kind Christ crafts at a moment’s notice and saves for last, has its dregs: Christians who mortally sin with consistency and refuse to turn to God in prayer.

It’s flawed theology to think that because a person has hit “sleazeball-bottom” or “drug-binge-bottom,” they couldn’t possibly be at “Christian-rock-bottom.” Outwardly, there is no perceptible difference. Christians at rock-bottom reason and respond to life like their non-Christian counterparts; they blend in with the darkness and live like night creatures too. They have no oil in their lamps; thus, Satan intends to recruit their voices for his chorus of weeping and gnashing of teeth. But not if we can stop him.

We march onto the battlefield of prayer to recover our wounded. The indelible mark of Baptism on the soul helps us to identify fallen comrades. Come Heaven or Hell, these hardened sinners are eternally Christians. Let me clarify: Every baptized criminal is not only a child of God by creation, but by adoption as well, and, ipso facto, a child of Holy Mother Church, “of the household of faith.” (Galatians 6:10)

Confidence in three key areas — our skills, our weapons and our God — is necessary for success on the battlefield of prayer. Young David carried himself with this kind of confidence. He had no problem informing King Saul about how he delivered his father’s lambs from the lions and bears, confident in his skills. He refused King Saul’s armaments and chose five smooth stones and a sling instead, confident in his weapons.

Then David met the Philistine giant on the battlefield and slew him in the name of the Lord of Hosts, confident in his God.

Jesus Christ, the most confident warrior of them all, simply graced a given place with His Presence and the demons trembled, fled or begged to be banished, a proximity effect. This is when the enemy exposes his position out of terror that holiness has drawn near. It is this level of holiness that needs to be our aspiration if we intend on gaining significant territory in the hearts and minds of hardened sinners during our few years on earth.

Most of us have a long way to go before we’re living like heroes. Jean Baptiste Chautard, OLSO, in his spiritual classic, The Soul of the Apostolate, mentions nine degrees of the Christian life, arranged in ascending order from hardened in sin to complete sanctity. At the sixth degree, called “Fervor,” the Christian no longer deliberately commits venial sin, and mortal sin has been totally defeated. The eighth degree is called “Heroic Perfection,” and at this level, a Christian no longer thinks of himself but prefers to suffer for the conversion of sinners rather than experience even the lawful joys of this life. We have a long way to go, but we have got to find a way to move on up a little higher.

The gift of our Provident Father

Okay. Listen carefully. Press up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, Select, Start. Confused? Most gamers know exactly what I’m talking about. This is the Konami code. Konami, the Japanese videogame development company, programmed special features into its games that greatly increased the likelihood of a player’s success. I knew kids who never played these games without first entering this code and accessing its hidden advantages. Has our Provident Father, the programmer of all that is good, included an equivalent hack among His holy doctrines and dogma? Of course He has. Come, follow me, I’ll show you…

The sun is at full strength, and after breaching the brow of a grassy hill, you and I push forward into a dense and somber forest of fir, hemlock and cedar. The trees, pushing upward for light, are very tall and free from limbs for more than half their height. Their tops form a continuous cover which the sun rarely penetrates, and on which the light snows of early winter fall and melt, without reaching the ground.

We stop midway and drive shovels into deep, moss-covered alluvial soil until a hollow, wooden trunk fills the forest silence. From the hole we recover a chest; yes, a treasure chest secured by ninety-five locks. Some are simple, others are quite complex mechanisms, but they all crumble beneath the blows of our Tridentine hammer.

It takes the both of us to pull back the heavy lid and the sight leaves us staring, bleary-eyed and astonished at what we see. Books! Stacks and stacks of thin, blood-burgundy, hardback books, all of them emblazoned with the same words in shimmering gold leaf: “The handbook of Indulgences, Norms and Grants.”

A single copy rises slowly from the stack and opens to a page, pulsing with a glowing passage that reads, “Any of the Christian faithful who, being at least inwardly contrite, perform a work carrying with it a partial indulgence, receive, through the Church the remission of temporal punishment equivalent to what their own act already receives.” (Apostolic Constitution Indulgentium doctrina, norm 5)

The Handbook of Indulgences is a collection of approved devotions that carry with them a double-shot of merit from the inexhaustible treasury of Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the holy angels and saints. How could any Christian avoid desiring the skill proper to wielding such a powerful weapon? Who could fearful be, on the battlefield of prayer, carrying cold steel of this caliber? The Almighty God, who equips His soldiers for victory, deserves all the praise.

Get excited about this doctrine on both sides of the razor wire. It is a doctrine that gives hope, and if holiness is the game, indulgences are a gamer’s dream. We could decide to shadow box with the air, but St. Paul doesn’t advise it. This collection of devotions can subdue the passions, discipline the body and bring both under the Holy Spirit’s rule. Athletes call it trimming fat; I call it gaining confidence in our skills, our weapons and our God.

The weapons of our warfare have a divine power

We live in an age of legends, where eternal souls teeter on the brink of destruction. Fear must be swallowed up in confidence, and our marching orders: holiness at all costs. So, before taking up arms again, admire the doctrine of indulgences once more. Test its swift stroke; eye its harmonious curves; marvel at the skill evinced in its forging. How it bends but doesn’t break; cease resisting your attraction to the efficiency of this powerful spiritual weapon.

Now go, warrior, knowing the words once written remain true: “for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds.” (2 Corinthians 10:4)

*Marcellus Allen Roberts is a 40-year-old Prison Oblate of St. Benedict’s Abbey, Atchison, Kansas. He is serving a 25-year penance in the state of Texas. He entered the Catholic Church in 2015, completed his noviciate year in 2016, and now serves the Catholic community on George Beto Unit as cantor and catechist. He is writing a regular column for Inside the Vatican because Rome has need of his words…

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