Lenten Meditations, 1: The Inescapable Battle

It's a battle we each fight, separately and alone, each in his own struggle, locked in his enemy's embrace, locked in his very own embrace, because too often we are the enemy. I know it too well: it has shown its face to me in many forms, changing faces to trip me again, that I, not recognizing the foe for what he is, might once again fall prey to him. The distinction between attacked and attacker is not always clear. I struggle, and for what? To be understood by men, to be loved by God, to speak words that please me or others, to speculate, to answer truth? Weakness lurks always in the shadows. What once was pure is too easily stained by lesser desires. Sometimes I abstain and remain hungry, but unable to fill myself. The battle is ongoing.

In love I fight, in love I persevere. Love is our battle cry as Christians: Love saved us, love is saving us. That love became incarnate: we have Jesus Christ as living proof. Living and dying proof, and through that the greatest living proof there is.

Nothing is worth anything without that love. And that is why I struggle and pray for the grace not to run after any desire apart from that love. I am learning that it is supreme. Nothing in me deserves it, and I am not even that good at seeking it. But I do know that this love is faithful and my everything. It has succeeded in wooing me, even if I am not completely faithful. I strive to be faithful, in my weakness. And my goal is to open myself to its purifying fire. I gladly relinquish anything in me that is not pure. But the struggle can be painful.

Mine is with sin, of course, but not just with sin. It is with my own fear, my own depression, my own perfectionism and anxiety, my obsession over things I need to leave in the hands of my Father. I fail not because I rebel but because I am weak. And I know that he is the Great Physician. And so I just keep coming to him, as honestly and persistently as I can, even when I don't know the answers and especially then. Even when I am utterly lost and do not find peace in knowing he is good, even when I am utterly exhausted and alone, I come to him. With his grace, I will not stop. The day I do, I will lose everything and be left to my own misery (though I pray his grace would seek me out even then). I know that, regardless of anything else I might need, I need him. And so, hypocrite or not, I seek him. Just as he takes prostitutes, he will take hypocrites with open arms if the hypocrite is only humble and asks for help.