Fighting the Unseen: Prayer and Spiritual Warfare
October 31, 2024 - Thursday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
Ephesians 6:10-20
Today, our meditation on Paul's letter to the Ephesians ends with a passage on spiritual warfare. Paul helps us realize what we often fail to recognize: our real enemies are not other people but spiritual forces of evil. Paul's statement, "For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens" (Eph. 6:12), has had a transformative effect on many who have given up "arms" and taken up the Bible and rosary beads.
Imagine viewing the history of the world from Paul's perspective. Let’s take the twentieth century, one of the most brutal in human history. Two world wars, German Nazism, and Soviet Russia led to the death of more than 100 million people. Who was behind these events? We can name individuals and nations against whom others fought with weapons of war. But how many realize that these individuals and nations were "puppets in the hands" of the principalities and powers Paul mentions? And what might have happened if the world had heeded the message of Our Lady of Fatima in 1917, who called for repentance and prayer, predicting the rise of communism and the Second World War?
Most of us underestimate the power of prayer. Yet the Bible and the history of Christianity provide ample evidence that genuine prayer can change individual lives and the course of history. When the Assyrian forces threatened to destroy Jerusalem, King Hezekiah prayed for deliverance to the Lord. God sent an angel who struck down 185,000 Assyrian soldiers, leading them to retreat and saving Jerusalem from destruction (see 2 Kings 19:14-36). The victory of Lepanto in 1571, when small Christian forces defeated the vastly larger Muslim troops of the Ottoman Empire, is attributed to the power of the rosary. Prayer and nonviolence also played pivotal roles in the American Civil Rights Movement (1950s-1960s), in the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the end of the Cold War in 1989.
Paul, in making us realize that our struggle is not against people but against spiritual forces of evil, uses military imagery to describe the spiritual resources we need to fight evil. The "armor of God" includes the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, shoes of readiness to preach the Gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit (see Eph. 6:14-17).
During World War II, German soldiers had written on their belts, "God is with us." But that was a lie, a clear example of misusing God for evil purposes. As Christians, we possess the truth of the Gospel and are called to reflect it. The world today needs the Gospel of Peace more than ever because the gods of war seek to destroy us and our planet. Since we are engaged in spiritual warfare, our enemies will certainly confront us in battle, making trust in God's protection and the assurance of our salvation crucial. The enemy will try to undermine our faith, putting doubts in our minds and hearts, and constantly reminding us of our weakness and sinfulness. We engage these enemies with the Word of God, the Bible, and especially the Gospels. I encourage you to find time for prayer and meditation with Scripture.
According to the Book of Acts, Paul worked in Ephesus for two years (Acts 19:10), during which many miracles took place, including the expelling of demons. In today’s passage, the apostle shares the key to his "success." Let us heed his call, put on "the whole armor of God," and make prayer our top priority. In doing so, like Paul, we can positively transform our world, expelling from it those principalities and powers that seek to destroy us and this beautiful world.