God Strong

(Part of the Church Militant Training Series. This follows from the post: One Thing Necessary)

The U.S. Army ran a very effective “Army Strong” ad campaign to recruit soldiers. The key message was: “There is strong, and then there is Army Strong.” The commercial goes onto say, “It is a strength like none other. It is a physical strength. It is an emotional strength. It is strength of character. It is strength of purpose. The strength to do good today, and the strength to do well tomorrow. The strength to obey, and the strength to command. The strength to build, and the strength to tear down. The strength to get yourself over, and the strength to get over yourself.”

These are warrior assets necessary to overcome the enemy. However, recall that our struggle is not against flesh and blood combatants, but against the much stronger and craftier spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm (Eph. 6:11). This means it is not enough for you to possess the power of a warrior. You must discover what it means to be supernaturally empowered by God. You are to become not just Army Strong, but “God Strong.” You must know what it means to be in a “state of grace.”

“St. Thomas Aquinas believed that man is more than a composite of body and soul, that his is nothing less than elevated to a supernatural order which participates, as far as a creature can, in the very nature of God. Accordingly a person in the state of grace, or divine friendship, possesses certain enduring powers, the infused virtues and gifts, that raise him to an orbit of existence as far above nature as heaven is above earth, and that give him abilities of thought and operation that are literally born, not of the will of flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (Fr. John Hardon).

Jesus told St. Faustina:

“The graces of My mercy are drawn by means of one vessel only, and that is – trust. 
The more a soul trusts, the more it will receive. Souls that trust boundlessly are a great comfort to Me, because I pour all the treasures of My graces into them. I rejoice that they ask for much, because it is my desire to give them much, very much. On the other hand, I am sad when souls ask for little, when they narrow their hearts.” (Diary, 1578).

This is amazing! Jesus is telling us that we can literally grow our spiritual hearts to be capable of more and more of His supernatural graces. Our spiritual heart is a vessel, Jesus tells us. It’s like a “trust bucket” that we bring to the well of God’s graces. The greater our trust, the larger is our bucket for receiving His amazing grace.

The unfortunate reality is that the modern campaign of secular propaganda has been so severe that only a remnant remains who believes or trusts in God’s supernatural power. As a result, the spiritual hearts (“trust buckets”) of many are reduced to the size of a thimble, only ready to receive a few meager drops, if any, of God’s supernatural graces.

The great philosopher, Dr. Alice von Hildebrand, put her finger on the place where the real battle lines are drawn:

“Now let us abolish the terms ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’, the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ which are secularistic. I suggest that we say from now on ‘those who have kept the sense of the supernatural and those who have lost it’. That is the great divide; that is the essence. Do you look at the Church and her teaching, whether dogmatic or moral, with a supernatural eye, or do you look at it with secular lenses? That is the divide. Left and right confuses the issue. Let us rediscover the greatness and the beauty of the supernatural and I claim that it is so difficult in the polluted world in which we live, that if we don’t pray for it every single day, we are going to be infected. It is the air that you breathe, the newspaper that you read, the television show that you see, time and again you will see this is a fight and attack on the supernatural.”

In speaking of the need for a New Evangelization, Pope Benedict XVI said, “the true problem of our times is the ‘Crisis of God’, the absence of God, disguised by an empty religiosity” … a kind of lukewarm; going through the motions of one’s faith, which ends up collapsing completely.

“A real concrete statistic around this is that 70% of the baptized faithful are staying away from Mass on a regular basis. And we’re doing well in comparison with the European countries. Vatican II said the Mass is the source and summit of the Christian life … everything leads to and flows from the Mass. The Eucharist is everything, and 70% could care less about it. Yes, there are many reasons around why some do not go to Mass, but I suspect that, for most, they are suffering from spiritual sloth; they could just care less” (Fr. Robert Barron, Seven Deadly Sins…).

Aristotle said, “No one can long remain in sadness without any joy.” So, depriving oneself of spiritual joy through neglect and sloth leaves one desperate to fill that void with inferior pleasures. It is no wonder why we see so many people frantically attempting to fill their lives with every kind of activity and distraction possible, desperately trying to avoid the gloom of emptiness. St. Augustine said, “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

In fact, busy-ness can often be a cover-up for sloth. You can be as busy and effervescent and active as you want, and all of that buzzing around, all of that activity can just be a cover up for spiritual sloth, that you just can’t rouse yourself spiritually to action. Therefore, like Martha (of Martha and Mary), even though our busy-ness may be noble deeds, we remain anxious and upset about many things. How, then, do we break free from this powerful modern epidemic of slavery to spiritual sloth?

(Church Militant Training Series continues with next post)