When Spirits Attack
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Reviews on Saturday, April 02, 2011 10:00 AM
Jennifer Fulwiler penned an important post on spiritual attack earlier this week.
A famous revert to the faith—who then reverted right back out—is what prompts her thinking.
I remember reading some years ago that something like 50% of the people who come into the Church at Easter fall away again within a year.
I don’t think that’s all a matter of poor catechesis.
I think Jen is right: we need to be better armed against spiritual attack, which generally comes in the form of thoughts that dispirit and discourage us to the point of feeling overwhelmed and drained of the spiritual energy to continue in prayer and the life of grace.
How do I know the voice I hear is God? Does He really want me to be this miserable? Which of these several great opportunities is the right one?
To answer these questions takes more than following our most passionate feeling, and for that it takes spiritual direction and the art of what the Church calls the “discernment of spirits.”
A wonderful introduction to that topic: clear, concise, and with examples anyone who has tried to have a consistent life of prayer will recognize, is Fr. Timothy Gallagher’s The Discernment of Spirits: An Ignatian Guide For Everyday Living.
In it, Fr. Gallagher illustrates concretely exactly what we are to be discerning. There are all kinds of levels of self-awareness: physical, emotional, moral, for example, that don’t bear directly on discernment. What interests St. Ignatius, the father of discernment, are the motions of soul which directly affect our faith, hope and charity and our spiritual energy for prayer and good works.
The book also makes lucid distinctions between the “sting of conscience” which the good spirit sends when we are headed in a bad direction and is felt in the conscience and the rational part of our souls; versus general and nebulous feelings of confusion, heaviness, sadness and unrest caused by the evil spirit when we’re headed in the right direction. These latter feelings reside more in the imagination than the reason.
So when we’re feeling down and burned out and overwhelmed, one thing to do is analyze whether it’s our reason or imagination which is inflamed.
The short declarative “You shouldn’t have done that,” and the gentle remonstrance, “Why are you hurting someone you love?” are of an entirely different source and nature than the feeling of being “stuck” or completely drained of all taste or impulse for holy things, or overwhelmed by open-ended suggestions such as, “Why bother? It’s all such a waste.”
One of the things the evil spirit loves to do is take control of time in our imagination. It tells us that positive experiences in the past were false: (“That intimacy with Christ you had in prayer? You must have imagined it.” “Who are you to think you could be so holy?” or “You never really loved your husband.” “Your life has been a waste.”) And it makes it seem as if present trials will last forever. Many burdens are bearable today; it’s the fear that nothing will ever change and we’ll be stuck in this painful situation for the rest of our lives that makes us shrink from shouldering them.
Perhaps this is what the Lord meant when he told us to “take no thought for the morrow.” He’s not against prudent planning; he’s warning us not to get ahead of ourselves in projecting the duration of our crosses.
As I read that particular portion of the book, I thought of the study done at Rutgers in the 1990s that tracked couples in terrible marriages (just boilerplate terrible: not speaking of abuse or addiction here) and on the brink of divorce. The vast majority of those that stayed together instead of divorcing reported they were happy five years later. But it’s hard to imagine in a moment of pain that there will ever be release.
Terrible times don’t last forever, but the enemy of our soul likes to obscure that. The experiences we have with Christ in prayer are real…and the enemy likes to obscure that, too.
Do you ever wonder about people who say they are at peace about doing things which are obviously contrary to the commandments?
Fr. Gallagher addresses that, as well. When we are in pain (say, the pain of a bad marriage or a stressful situation at work), it is always—of course!—a relief to simply not have to face the issue any longer.
But this natural sense of release is a “satisfaction,” and may not be the peace that passes understanding. The relaxation and pleasure we get from stomping out of the job or leaving a home filled with anger and strife, or finally hauling off and letting our spouse have it is not necessarily the peace of the Lord encouraging us to keep going along that path. That would have to be discerned.
Not every thought we have is to be trusted. The Discernment of Spirits won’t supplant an experienced spiritual director, but it’s a valuable introduction to the topic, and in certain respects I’d say almost a work of mercy, in that it provides so many weapons against what Jen Fulwiler calls “spiritual attack.”
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