The Spiritual battle

Luke 22: 31 - 32 

31 “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. 32 But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

Every time we consider human history, we find warfare around; the violence and battles are a crosscutting for all cultures and regions. It's like the human being has a tendency deep inside to create conflicts, but the Bible says that everything that God created was good then. What about this reality? Well, we can recognize the reality of evil as a tendency prevalent in human nature, but not as something included in the original design, but provoked by the presence of sin. The creation has an enemy, who tries every moment to create conflict with God and His creation included us. Sometimes we can experience spiritual battles even if we don't notice it, or we can confuse it with personal or material warfare. The truth is, we are amid a spiritual warfare with the evil from Genesis until Jesus comes again. This evil acquires concrete manners, material, historical, structural, and spiritual.

When we think about being prepared to face a battle, we can consider the story of the moose. National Geographic ran an article about the Alaskan bull moose. The males of the species battle for dominance during the fall breeding season, literally going head-to-head with antlers crunching together as they collide. Often, the antlers, their only weapon, are broken. That ensures defeat. The heftiest moose, with the largest and strongest antlers, triumphs. Therefore, the battle fought in the fall is really won during the summer, when the moose eat continually. The one that consumes the best diet for growing antlers and gaining weight will be the heavyweight in the fight. Those that eat sport weaker antlers and less bulk. There is a lesson here for us. Spiritual battles await. Satan will choose a season to attack. Will we be victorious, or will we fall? Much depends on what we do now--before the wars begin. The bull-moose principle: Enduring faith, strength, and wisdom for trials are best developed before they're needed.

Luke clearly presents us the relationship between the Last Supper of Jesus and the Jewish Passover Supper, and in this way, also clarifies the relationship between the Passover of Egypt and the Passover of Jesus. The Supper and His death acquire meaning essentially in unity with the resurrection. Jesus carries out the plan of salvation established by God, and accepts voluntarily and with total obedience, the path of suffering that He must undertake due to the fight against the power of darkness that opposes this plan and to which Jesus had already defeated at the beginning of His ministry, in the story of the temptations. In Gethsemane, the true humanity of Jesus appears crudely, who, in full internal combat, comes to sweat blood.

Luke emphasizes the meaning of the passion not so much because of a rebellion against Rome, but as the fulfillment of the prophecies, those of the just Servant and martyr who suffers the fate of the prophets. The mercy of Jesus, His attentive approach to specific people, which Luke's gospel highlights, is also present in this long story: despite the suffering and painful situation He is going through, Jesus still has time to heal His ear cut off from the servant, to look at Peter after the denials, to worry about the women and children of Jerusalem, and, already nailed to the cross, He forgives the executioners. The last words of Psalm 31 express absolute trust in the Father on the part of the one who finds himself consumed by pain and mocked by everyone.

Although He is from afar, His people follow Jesus to the cross and watch him die. This way, they can be witnesses. Luke has structured his gospel as a long path that leads Jesus to Jerusalem. In the passion story, He invites us to continue following Jesus Christ along this same path, which passes through suffering and death, but does not end with a cold tomb excavated in the rock. Luke, in the second work, Acts of the Apostles, will discuss the Church as the work of the Holy Spirit and as the area in which the mission of Jesus continues to be present among His followers and witnesses of him. Thus, the Church emerges as a sacrament of Jesus, in which He lives and acts. The passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus also reveal to us the final destiny of man, the meaning of His life, His sufferings, and that of His own death. Thus, He is the hope of those who experience decline and weakness in old age, approaching the always dramatic point of death.

How can one be trained to face a spiritual battle? How can we do it if we are not totally aware of what is really happening? In all disciplines, the key factor is the training; we must be aware that as Christians, we are exposed to spiritual battles at every moment because we live in a war with evil. When we rest in Christ and trust God's promises, even though spiritual warfare runs through both the Old and New Testaments, the apostle Paul in Ephesians 2:1-3 helps us to identify the three main types of spiritual warfare in Scripture, which are: the world, the devil, and the flesh. In the Greek Orthodox tradition, the day after Easter was devoted to telling jokes. They felt they were imitating the cosmic joke that God pulled on Satan in the Resurrection. Satan thought he had won and was smug in His victory, smiling to himself, having the last word. So, he thought. Then God raised Jesus from the dead, and life and salvation became the last words. At the end of Scripture, John the apostle witnesses a heavenly vision of Satan, death, and hell all being thrown into the lake of fire where they will be tormented forever (Rev 20).

Therefore, as we review what Scripture and the church have said about spiritual warfare, we must always remember that we already know the outcome: Jesus has won the victory in this spiritual warfare, and we live in the Spirit and power of His victory. In the power of the Spirit, we can take up a peaceful and confident attitude, knowing that our Lord has conquered all our enemies. Every time we face a spiritual battle, we can consider that God is with us, and Jesus won the victory for us. In any case, in the end, God will show us His mercy and goodwill, and we can be sure that His plan is better for us than ours, and we can live in peace under His plan for eternity.