The Table on the Battlefield

I was "almost" a straight-A student back in High School.

But so often, I'd fall just short. I'd bring home that card with six A's and one B. Which grade do you think I fixated on?

The lone B.

I think I even had a lone "C" on a report card of A's once. O, I thought my academic career, my hopes for scholarships, all of it was over! Woe is me! I got a C! (that rhymed, I know... I'm a poet, but didn't know it).

Well, what foolishness that was! Yet here I am, in my mid-40s, and it seems I'm still that teenager fixated on one little flaw and it blinds me to all the graces God has given me.

One stubborn weakness has a way of swallowing our whole field of vision, until we can no longer see the abundance of blessing.

Have you ever gone through Lent, or a season of really focusing on one particular, pesky, sin... only to come at the end of it to find it still there, still festering?

We want the ultimate victory! A clean kill! A total, shut-out win!

I've done this many times, now. And when the time of penance ended, when Lent was over, and the the struggle remained, my first instinct was to write the whole thing off as failure. I needed more discipline, I told myself. More self-denial. More effort.

Well, no longer. Because I've learned that "feasting" is often the weapon that finally does the devil in. Gratitude is the guillotine of grace that is exactly the "missing weapons" that we often need to deal the final blow against the enemy/sin that taunts us.

 

Gratitude as a Weapon

Today is Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael and All Angels. If you do not belong to a tradition that observes this holiday (it's not very well-known, I know), let me fill you in.

It is a day for thinking about warfare. Scripture gives us the picture of it: "And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven" (Revelation 12:7-8, NRSV-2CE).

We tend to imagine this battle in terms of swords and shields. But the very next verses tell us how the victory was actually won: "But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony" (Revelation 12:11).

The weapon is not finally the sword, the last major display of penance. It is the testimony of the Lamb, the grateful acknowledgment of what God has done.

David understood this. In the most beloved and well-known of all his psalms he writes, "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows" (Psalm 23:5).

The Hebrew verb here, 'arak, means to arrange or set in order. It is the same word used when armies "draw up" their battle lines against one another.

God does not merely set a table; He arranges a feast the way a general arranges his troops. Gratitude is not a retreat from the fight. Gratitude is the fight.

Notice, too, where the enemy is standing. He is not defeated and gone. He is present, watching, while David eats.

How subversive our praise can be! How glorious a victory is gratitude in feasting, while the enemy limps around the battlefield, spouting his lies, trying to tell us he's won? It's a pathetic thing, that little devil, isn't it?

 

Counting What the Liar Hides

Today ends a practice, also not well-known, called "St. Michael's Lent." It's like a little "Lent" in the middle of the year. A time of penance, of fasting, and the like. It was practiced most famously by St. Francis.

With a fraternity of men this year, I walked through it. I'm not going to go into all the details of our practices, and what we did. But today is the end of it. It's Michaelmas. It's the day we recognize how God empowered a single angel, one of lesser celestial "rank" than Lucifer, to cast out the very devil from His presence.

And today, I started counting up the blessings. The one, single, vice I hoped to conquer is still limping around the battlefield. It wans to tell me, "O, you silly person! You did all of this and here I am, still lingering, still tormenting you! You failed!"

Hardly! When I started counting up all the blessings I received in this season, I was astonished. And it exposed that wily little devil's lie for what it is.

The very struggle I had labeled a failure had become the furnace in which God forged nearly everything else. Because I kept falling, I learned humility. Because I kept returning, I learned hope. Because I could not fix myself, I learned faith. I grew in patience with others who struggle, in gentleness toward the weak, in generosity, in guarding my tongue, in a quiet peace that had nothing to do with my own performance.

Paul's list came alive: "By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Galatians 5:22-23).

And yes, I had grown even in virtue against the vice I set out to conquer. Not by my efforts alone, hardly! But by grace alone! The old enemy was not standing tall. It was limping.

Yet there I had been, staring at the one wounded dragon and ignoring the field of slain ones around it.

Who taught me to see that way? To have such a clear victory in sight, but to call it a "failure?"

Jesus says who: "he is a liar and the father of lies" (John 8:44). Revelation calls him "the accuser of our comrades" who "accuses them day and night before our God" (Revelation 12:10).

His whole strategy is accusation. He cannot undo grace, so he tries to distract us from all the grace we've received. He cannot stop God from setting the table, so he convinces you that you are are not worthy to take the seat before the very table prepared for you!

I'm not unique here. Paul endured the same exact thing! He begged God three times to remove his thorn in the flesh, and the answer was given: "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9).

The thorn stayed. The grace grew. Sometimes God permits a wound to remain precisely because it keeps us kneeling, it is the battle God has prescribed so we can grow in so many other ways.

 

Fire Before the Throne

There is a detail in Revelation that many readers miss. The final judgment of God's enemies happens "in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb" (Revelation 14:10), and "the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire" (Revelation 20:10).

The fire is not somewhere far off. We think of "hell," prepared for the devil, as some far-off distant place, so far removed from heaven that it's in practically another dimension. But Revelation tells us that the lake of fire burns before the throne.

The devil's ruinous defeat and the saints' feast occur in the same place, before the same Lamb.

You set a table before my enemies.

It's David's very song, realized in heaven itself.

This means the final way to cast the accuser down is not to leave the table behind, to go and try to wrestle with him for another round.

It is to sit down and eat.

Every act of thanksgiving is a testimony, and this testimony conquers.

The battle is fought through fasting, yes. But it is finally won in feasting.

So, today this is what I tell the devil, that wily little snake. Take that little apple you hold out to me with you into the lake of fire. I no longer have a taste for it. Today, I feast on the Lamb, alone!

Taking that apple, that temptation. It's like filling yourself up on candy and junk food when a prime-rib is being prepared for you! Fill yourself up on the candy, and you'll have only a stomach ache. The real meal not only tastes much better. It's what really satisfies.

This is why Paul can say, "put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation" (1 Thessalonians 5:8), and in the same chapter, "give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you" (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

There's a place for the armor, for the weapons of war. But not to the exclusion of giving thanks. Give thanks now. Because that's the boot to the chest that finally tosses the tempter into the fiery lake.

 

Putting It Into Practice

I often write in these meditations about doing a daily examen, taking an inventory of our day. Often, though, when we implement this practice we fixate on what we did wrong, our flaws, our shortcoming, are lingering vices.

Well, that's only one part of it.

Tonight, before you examine your failures, take an inventory of grace. Write down every virtue that has grown in you this year, especially the ones that came through your hardest struggle. Don't take pride in this growth. It was all grace at work in you. So give thanks! Be specific, too. Sure, that old enemy might be limping around, taunting you, trying to distract you. Don't pay him heed. Name, instead, all the graces you've received. Have you grown in patience, in love, in hope, in faith? Are you more compassionate now than you were before? How has God worked through that very struggle to grant you these graces?

When the accuser whispers that you have lost, answer him out loud with testimony. Not "I will try harder," but "Look what God has done." Then, if the old temptation returns, do not simply resist it. Replace it. Offer a deliberate prayer of thanks in that very moment, and let gratitude silence the liar.

The war is not over. But the table is set, and the enemy is limping. So, sit down and eat.