So I’m giving the helix editor a whirl. Usually, I write my blog posts in vscode and then use a vibe-coded plugin to push the post into micro.blog, but I’d need to do some pipe-to-a-shell-script thing to accomplish the same thing. The purple color scheme is nice, and the lightweight vim-like feel also feels sort of comfy. The tutorial (which I have not completed) is also well-done.
Last night at OCIA, a catechist discussed spiritual warfare, on which I have some complicated thoughts.
On the one hand, the Bible and the Catechism are clear: spirits exist, and they are either helpful aids to our salvation or adversaries bent on our destruction. Dismissal is not an option, and I have zero problem whatsoever acknowledging this aspect of our faith to myself or anyone else. There’s no whitewashing or handwaving. We should understand them, their nature, their missions, and so forth.
It’s the obsession with the warfare metaphors that makes me a little uncomfortable, because it seems a bit too easy to go down a few different (and in my estimation, wrong) pathways. First, the battle is over. It was over, definitively and eternally, on Easter morning. The idea that, somehow, we’re in a pitched battle on the ground with armies of demons and whatnot elevates the adversary to an entirely unmerited position. We don’t need to be on a constant battle footing because they have no power except what we willingly give them, which brings me to my second point.
The battle, if someone wants to retain the word, is principally interior: the movements of our passions, thoughts, and will are where the attention needs to be focused. This is where temptation happens, and this is where we can lean on the ordinary means of sanctification - prayer and the sacraments, chief among them - to obtain the graces we need to defeat it. This means a lot of sitting quietly, honest introspection, prayerful trips to the confessional, and maybe spiritual direction. If you want to see what spiritual battle looks like, you can’t do much better than St. Anthony the Great, when he was attacked in the tombs:
He lay watching, however, with unshaken soul, groaning from bodily anguish; but his mind was clear, and as in mockery he said, If there had been any power in you, it would have sufficed had one of you come, but since the Lord hath made you weak, you attempt to terrify me by numbers: and a proof of your weakness is that you take the shapes of brute beasts.' And again with boldness he said, If you are able, and have received power against me, delay not to attack; but if you are unable, why trouble me in vain? For faith in our Lord is a seal and a wall of safety to us.' So after many attempts, they gnashed their teeth upon him, because they were mocking themselves rather than him.
Anthony’s confidence lay in the victorious Christ and in the words of scripture, not in any effort or merit of his own. Mocking dismissal is his response, because it’s all they deserve. The battle is won in a place of stillness and quietude - hesychia - obtained from the struggle to release the self from its sinful attachment to passing things. It’s fought with pretty ordinary methods: prayer, fasting, or other askesis, and almsgiving. These aren’t as hot-and-sexy, though, as the constant proliferation of military iconography in our culture tends to encourage, but they surely (to me) seem more in keeping with the example of our Lord.
A Christian anthropology views the human being as the imago dei, damaged and susceptible to concupiscence, but also reconciled with God and given the means to be restored to its rightful telos. Though this struggle takes place in the context of the community (for that is precisely what we are made for), it is undertaken by the individual and it is kenotic, rather than assertive, in nature.
