Our greatest spiritual battle is against ourselves

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File:Joan of Arc on horseback.png
Joan of Arc on Horseback Wikimedia Commons).


Sometimes life is a war zone. So many things disturb our peace. The kids act defiantly. An important contract falls through at work. Our finances are in trouble. The phone rings during a serious conversation. These are all surface battles. The real war we fight is the war against ourselves.

God created man in love and goodness. Adam and Eve sinned. Evil entered their hearts. Where once it had been easy to do God’s will, it became a struggle. They passed this struggle down to us, their children.

 

I want to do good, but I don’t

St. Paul wrote, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate… So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members” (Romans 7:15, 21-22). Haven’t we all experienced this?

We start the day with a prayer for grace and resolutions to do God’s will. Then temptation hits us, and we give in to the sin that we promised God we would resist. We know we do not really want to be sinful. We know that disobeying God cannot make us happy. And yet, we give in, because we are weak, or tired, or—for a moment—indifferent to the consequences.

Read the rest at Contemplative Homeschool.

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