Welcome
once more to “Sunday Snippets – A Catholic Carnival”, RAnn’s weekly convocation
of Catholic bloggers at This That and the Other Thing. The main site is here, where we hang around the barbeque grill swapping posts
and swatting mosquitoes (and black flies here in Maine; nasty critters).
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| Saint of the Week, St. Ignatius of Loyola |
But
first: Thursday of this past week was the feast day of St. Ignatius of Loyola,
whom I mentioned in passing at the time, but did not have to opportunity to
give the attention he deserves. I’ll try to make up for that lapse in this
retrospective on the week past.
Like St. Martin of Tours, St. Ignatius had
been a soldier before he turned his life over to God. After his conversion he sought to live his
life in a different way. Instead of the
military officer’s stern and harsh way of addressing his subordinates, for
instance, he employed a humble and gentle mode, even when administering
necessary discipline. At the same time,
he never lost his “fighting spirit”, even if he expressed it in a different
way; and instead of directing his fire at human enemies, he was now concerned
with “the principalities, . . .the
powers, . . . the world rulers of this present darkness, . . . the spiritual
hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12)
In fact
he saw the inner life of every believer as a battlefield, where each one of us
must choose between following the battle standard of Christ, or that of
Satan. His distinctive spirituality
includes an emphasis on the “discernment of spirits”, which is a prayerful
sifting of feelings and other influences to determine whether they are from the
Spirit of God or the Spirit of the Devil.
Having
self-disciplined himself in this way, the Christian should then, like a good
soldier, submit to his superiors in obedience: “ . . . we ought always to hold that the white
which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it”, St. Ignatius says in
that part of his Spiritual Exercises called “To Have the True Sentiment Which We
Ought to Have in the Church Militant”.
Not, however, simply the outward obedience that is required of the man
under arms, but also the inner obedience of both the Will and the Intellect, as
he explains in his famous Letter on Obedience [text here] . In other words, an obedience born of love, not
fear.
This seems
a good time to remember the concept of the “Church Militant”, and that each of us
is called to be a Soldier for Christ.
I’m not talking about soldiering in a literal sense, although with our
ancient conflict with Islam heating up again it’s likely that there will be an
increasing need for it. I’m thinking
more of the war to defend ourselves and our culture against the “spiritual
hosts of wickedness” that St. Paul mentions in his letter to the
Ephesians. Of course, the two are not
unrelated: the Jihadists and their allies can see the spiritual decay in our
culture, which only serves to embolden them (just as Osama Bin Laden says he
was inspired by the apparent weakness of the United States after our inelegant
withdrawal from Somalia). As the forces of Jihad discovered at Lepanto, however, they can’t hope to succeed against a
Christendom united in Faith and fortified with Prayer; against Secularism,
well, what’s to stop them? The battle,
then, will first be won or lost in the heart of each of us, and in our Churches
and communities.
And that
is the post that I would have written on the Feast of St. Ignatius. As for the week's other posts:
Monday:
After reading an article in Catholic World Report about the
shameful neglect of Joseph (“Don’t-Call-Me-Papa”) Haydn, I thought it best to
make up for my neglect. And it’s about
time. “Haydn – ‘The Heavens Are Telling’, from The Creation” [here]
Tuesday:
The evidence shows that so-called "incremental" anti-abortion measures really do help, not only
in reducing the incidence of abortion, but in moving public opinion in favor of Life. “News
From Texas: Pro-Life Laws Work” [here]
Thursday:
The Liturgy of the Hours starts with the Invitatory Psalm, which draws us into
the daily drama of prayer. “The Invitatory: A Call To Relationship With God (LOH
4 – Throwback Thursday Edition” [here]
Friday:
I was once accused, many years ago, of being President of The No-Fun Club, a title I have since proudly
embraced. And so here I once again
discharge my Presidential duties, loudly harrumphing at Devil mascots, skulls
on Children’s clothes, and other perfectly harmless emblems of the Culture of
Death. “Why would you want Satan as a mascot?” [here]
A final
thought: The baseball team known as the Tampa Bay Rays played for the first
time in 1998. For their first ten years
the name was actually the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (named after a fish, to
be sure, not the Prince of Darkness himself); in those first ten seasons they
finished in last place nine times, second to last once. In 2008, the first season after the team had
exorcised the word “Devil” from its name, they went to the World Series as
American League champions. Now, I’m sure
that’s just a coincidence but, hey, just sayin’ . . .
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| These Guys were losers . . . |
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| . . . and these guys were American League Champs |
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