August 11, 2019

Dear St. Martin of Tours Parishioners,

Last week I raised the conundrum of seeming unanswered – or what seems to be unreasonably delayed answered – prayer.

Why pray, if God is going to be so slow to respond?

This is a very good question that ought not be taken lightly. It certainly is not due to your lack of faith or your fervor. Its cause is a hidden reality, a dimension in which there has been a perpetual war since the beginning of time:

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12).

If you do not believe in angels and demons, then this Pastor’s Pen (and much of Scripture) will not be for you. Over every soul created by God, there is a war in heaven. Angels and demons are in a war over your soul. A war is comprised of battles. Some battles are fierce. Others are mere skirmishes. But battles are strategically arrayed and of different kinds and intensities.

Some battles result in intense human suffering and destruction. Either quietly yet poisonously within the depths of the soul; or with great volume and catastrophe to one’s life and to the lives of loved ones. In these cases, the demons involved in battle have been kept in the arsenal of Hell, biding their time, until conditions become ripe; suddenly these assault the soul. Horrible things happen.

The undoing of the damage and stronghold of such powerful demons is not going to be effected by a few rosaries or a novena. For the greatest problems, the demon associated with such can only be driven out, “through prayer and fasting” (Matthew 17:21). Keep in mind, the Lord himself had to fast to get these demons out. How much more you and I?

So at times we must step up our prayer and practice what is called spiritual warfare:

“Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).

We fight the war by becoming resistance fighters against the onslaughts of the enemy: being more careful to avoid sin; to pray more; augmenting our prayer with self-sacrifice, fasts, the embrace of sufferings, even the forbearance of luxuries and things that make life better (heat during the summer, hunger with a full refrigerator, etc.).

St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), the Carmelite nun reformer, once had a vision of her recently deceased friend, the Franciscan Friar St. Peter of Alcantara (1499-1562), a man was one of the holiest lights of the 16th century. She asked him for illumination and guidance. St. Peter, said only three words to her: “Penance! Penance! Penance!”

In Christ,