On Fighting Demons

This posted after the monastery grounds was vandalized on Halloween:

[A little update here on the reality of spiritual warfare, and that Halloween is a time of increased satanic activity. We have some little wayside shrines along the mountain path on our property, and today we noticed that the crosses have been broken off and thrown on the ground, or driven upside-down into the ground. There are definitely people around here who hate us because we serve and worship the true God and his Son Jesus Christ!]

...when we begin to do what pleases ourselves instead of what pleases God, we lose the armor of God, our spiritual swords fall from our weakened hands, and thus we have no more defense against the wiles and works of the demons.

So we have to turn to Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has power to cast out legions of demons with a single word, but we have to align our will firmly with his. Otherwise, we will not be set free, like that poor woman who wouldn’t surrender completely to God even though she had wanted, at least to some extent, to be delivered. With God it is all or nothing, just as in the final judgment the verdict will be either Heaven or Hell. There’s no sitting on the fence, no part-time faithfulness to God. Whoever is not with Him is against Him. The devil knows, perhaps better than we do, what the stakes are in this perilous adventure called human life. So he is relentless in his pursuit of our souls, for he knows that God is merciful and he hates that, so his main efforts are aimed at turning our wills away from God—not only so that we will fall into sin, but that we will eventually despair, having become disconnected to God’s grace by repeatedly withdrawing our will from Him through sin.

On the other hand, one way to keep our wills focused on God is through gratitude, as we also learn from the Gospel. Jesus said to the newly-liberated man: “Declare how much God has done for you.” When we reflect with gratitude upon all the graces and mercies God has granted us throughout our lives and even up to the present time, and when we also reflect upon all that He has promised to those who are faithful to Him through the struggles of life, it will be less likely that we will incline our wills toward anything that is not of God, and more likely that we will keep our hearts fixed on Him.

Read more here.