Wrestling Against the Powers of Darkness

Speaking about the condition of man in the world, St Paul, in this Sunday’s epistle says “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”   Today‘s gospel tells a sad story of a nobleman’s son struggling against the power of death.  But his father’s faith in Jesus’s words brought him into salvation.

The opposite of faith is fear, the opposite of hope, despair; and the opposite of love, indifference. Doubt is like a spiritual drought, a starless night of the soul, a low tide when faith seems to have retreated forever. Nearly all of us experience these dry, dark, difficult times when God doesn’t seem real and it’s hard to keep going, much less growing.  Fear is the default mode of the soul that dwells in darkness, that regards the empirical world and its flux as ultimately real, and therefore “sees in order to believe.” The life of faith, on the other hand, looks beyond the realm of appearances to behold an abiding glory – and therefore “believes in order to see.” How we choose to see is ultimately a spiritual decision for which we are each responsible.

– Fr Pothin