The War Zone

Seeing Christianity as a battle against sin and Satan

09/04/2022

Lk 14:25-33 Great crowds were traveling with Jesus, and he turned and addressed them, “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and say, ‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.’ Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops? But if not, while he is still far away, he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms. In the same way, anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”

Recently, my nephew Isaac graduated from West Point and is serving in the U.S. Army as a “tanker” (servicemen in the tank division). So, someone sent me this joke. A cowboy, who just moved to Wyoming from Texas, walks into a bar and orders three mugs of beer. He sits in the back of the room, drinking a sip out of each one in turn. When he finishes them he comes back to the bar and orders three more. The bartender approaches and tells the cowboy: “You know, a mug goes flat after I draw it. It would taste better if you bought it one at a time.” The cowboy replies: “Well, you see, I have two brothers. One is an Airborne Ranger and the other is a Navy Seal, both serving overseas somewhere. When we all left our home in Texas, we promised that we would drink this way to remember the days we drank together.”

The cowboy becomes a regular in the bar, and always drinks the same way. One day, he comes in but only orders two mugs. All the regulars take notice and fall silent. When he comes back to the bar for the second round, the bartender says, “I don’t want to intrude on your grief, but I want to offer my condolences for your loss.” The cowboy looks puzzled at first, but suddenly smiles and says: “Oh, no, everything is fine. It’s just that my wife and I joined the Baptist Church, and I had to quit drinking. Hasn’t affected my brothers, though!”

I mention this military imagery not only because my nephew Isaac is in the Army, but also because Jesus uses a military analogy in the gospel today. Did you catch it? He says: “What king marching into battle would not first sit down and decide whether with ten thousand troops he can successfully oppose another king advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops.” In other words, the whole Christian enterprise can be envisioned as a great military campaign against sin and Satan, whose demonic legions basically outnumber us Christians twenty thousand to ten thousand.

Our enemies, therefore, are not worldly forces, or nuclear missiles, or drone attacks. Rather, St. Paul taught the Ephesians: “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness.” And since that is the nature of this war, Paul lists the spiritual armor that Christians should rely on: the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit. That is, Paul, like Jesus, saw the Christian life as essentially a spiritual war zone. And while to be sure Jesus has won the war, the battle for each Christian soul still rages on.

My friends, I would suggest to you that not only the Scriptures but also the sacraments underscore this image of spiritual warfare. What does that mean? Well each of the seven sacrament can be given a military interpretation. Take, for example, Baptism: when a baby is baptized, he is first anointed with oil. Why? Well, in ancient times soldiers and warriors had their entire bodies anointed with oil before the next day’s battle. The oil symbolized divine strength, so they could have confidence of victory relying on God’s power.

In the sacrament of Confirmation, the bishop used to slightly slap the face of the person to be confirmed. Do some of you old timers remember that? That gesture was a test of readiness to suffer as a soldier in the coming contest of faith. The Holy Eucharist is essentially our “military rations” commonly called “MRE’s” that is, “Meal, Ready-to-Eat”. And Communion tastes about as good as an MRE! A couple who has received Holy Matrimony and been married more than a week knows that a wedding can feel like warfare! Ask any couple if a bed has ever become a battlefield.

The sacrament of Holy Orders puts a man in a rank as an officer in the Lord’s Army. The pope is a spiritual general and the altar servers are spiritual privates. I often compare the religious orders – the Carmelites, the Jesuits, the Benedictines, and Franciscans – to the special forces, the Airborne Rangers and Navy Seals. The whole Church is a spiritual army that has been mobilized for war.

The sacraments of the Anointing of the Sick and Confession are designed to heal us when we are wounded in battle. Pope Francis wrote that “the Church is a field hospital after battle.” Do you remember that popular television show called “M.A.S.H.”? MASH stands for “mobile Army surgical hospital”, and that is essentially what we priests do when we hear confessions and go to the hospital and homes to anoint the sick. We are doing spiritual surgery on wounded warriors. In other words, Christians don’t have to die on the battlefield, because there is a M.A.S.H. unit in the sacraments of healing to help you recover.

C. S. Lewis picked up on this “war zone” imagery when he wrote in his classic book called Mere Christianity: “When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going. He does it by playing on our conceit and laziness and intellectual snobbery.” My friends, that is why we go to Church. We put on spiritual armor, we are fed with military rations, we are tested for battle, and we are healed when we are wounded on the battlefield. If you don’t go to church, you are essentially walking onto the battlefield naked.

But when we put on the armor of God, our smaller Christian forces of only ten thousand troops can gain the victory over Satan’s imposing army of twenty thousand troops. The Christian life is a war zone, and my nephew Isaac is not the only soldier who is preparing for battle.

Praised be Jesus Christ!