SPIRITUAL WARFARE 5: It’s about spiritual growth

The 4th article explained the stages God leads us through in spiritual growth. Spiritual growth is growth in relationship with our Triune God—the very thing our enemy wants to prevent.  Throughout our life, he has been watching your courageous efforts at tackling vices and sin.

Previous to this desire to grow in holiness, Satan could tempt with mortal sin or ‘sins of the flesh’. These sins render us with no more control than animals. Once mortal sin is conquered, he reverses his tactic and attacks with what seems ‘good’.

• In purgation, God gives the grace of earnest desire for Him and actual graces to aid the person in overcoming these habitual sins. Satan’s tactics may be more obvious, especially with periods of desolation. The peaks and valleys of the spiritual life may be more extreme. It is a period of coming to know God and ourselves. This is done by developing an honest discernment between God’s inspiration, our own psyche, and Satan’s ways. The person does not proceed without this honesty for it is in those conversations of prayer that much healing takes place in the soul. Satan’s games are permitted as they not only build up natural virtues in the soul but also provide the opportunity to willingly hand over the attitudes and attachments that keep us self-centered even if leading a very devotional life.
• In the illuminative period, Satan will be much more subtle in attempting to present himself as a person of the Trinity. He is attempting to lead you on a trajectory that looks like God’s path. Spirits with an alluring nature will draw your attention. It is a trial in which the person must decisively deny themselves and choose God. Having previously overcome attachment to simpler preferences in life, the attachments rooted out in this period are more intertwined with our perceived self-identity. Eventually the person enters the “dark night of the senses”, an excruciating time in which these deeper attachments are purged. The person has fewer moments of ‘lights’ from God and He seems distant. Using Satan as an instrument for you to uncover and conquer unknown venial sin, God will permit him to accost the soul with extraordinary actions.
  • Saints testify that during this period people often regress in their path to holiness. Without proper spiritual guidance, they do not understand the battle in order to know how to fight it. That can be remedied with catechesis and guidance. However, people also regress due to refusal to give up their self-perceived identity and the attachments that form it. At the root are the deep wounds from life that they have successfully suppressed and avoided until now, and they are unwilling to give up control. Observation reveals some souls misuse that which they have learned of the spiritual life to present a faux-holiness as wise, inspired, or having charisms of prophecy and discernment.
• In the unitive stage, the temptation is to rely upon oneself as knowing God’s will or plan. Having His presence more habitually in the soul is a felt experienced lived daily. With an undercurrent of peace usually present, a person can wrongly rely upon this peace as a ‘sign’ that their idea or choice is right. This is why the saints teach the importance of not assuming one’s own ideas as God’s will and instead to remain discerning. This is particularly important with major choices in life; however, the smaller choices dispose us either toward or away from honest discernment. Thus, living the discerning life is critical to preparedness for God’s direction and designs. Ideas or choices that God illuminated in the past may not be His will for the present moment. Satan will attempt to distract you in the present moment with small habits of self-reliance, such that you forget to even consult God. He will tempt with the false consolation brought on by presumption.  During this or the previous stage, he will offer you many false visions, locutions, and internal ‘knowings’, giving you thoughts to presume these are of God. In doing so, he presents an illusion of God and forms your psyche to believe it. Imagine on your dying breath not recognizing the real God because you have followed Satan’s illusion during life! Those authentically on the path of holiness do not trust their own experiences of locutions, visions or prophecy and instead do as Mary modeled for us: these are pondered in the heart. 

Notice how Satan acts as God’s instrument in our battle with our own concupiscence. Because Satan and his accomplices are eternally separated from God, they are eternally separated from Wisdom and Truth. They have intellects that are superior in knowledge to our own, but our Christian life opens us up to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. These gifts form the soul to see with God’s Wisdom and Truth. These gifts are infused in the soul through baptism but ‘activated’ by the manner in which we live the ‘small stuff’ of our lives with virtue.  Satan’s follies are simply the tool used for us to grow which then results in God growing within us. You can see why Satan is so pesty in bothering us, like gnats and flies that will not go away. Never be intimidated by Satan’s knowledge, abilities or tactics. Those beings who chose to be eternally separated from God are actually the stupidest of creatures in the cosmos.

(Keep an eye open for our next post from Kick Butt! The Quick Guide to Spiritual Warfare: Frontline Defense Strategies for Everyday Life )