From the Friars: Marching into Battle
Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve war has been a sad reality for the human race. Our history is filled with one violent conflict after another. It seems a bit insane that we continue to line up armies to kill each other despite the horrendous suffering that it causes. The recent news of yet another mass shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis reminds us of another and greater war, one in which we are all in the middle of.
How can a good God allow such horrible things to happen? Sacred Scripture can help us begin to understand “the mystery of iniquity.” (2Thes2:7) Revelation 12 gives a synopsis of salvation history. The great red dragon and his angels rebel against God and are cast out of Heaven. He then seeks to devour the newborn Christ and, furious with the woman after her child’s escape, with great wrath goes off to make war on the rest of her offspring. That would be us.
This may sound like a video game but it is reality. In the Gospel today Jesus speaks of a king marching into battle with an army of ten thousand against an enemy with twenty thousand. This describes our life in this world. We have an enemy far stronger and smarter than we are who is determine to drag us to hell and share his fate of eternal torment. When God allows the “murderer from the beginning” (Jn 8:44) to take innocent lives, He only does so to bring a greater good out of the evil.
An eight-year-old and a ten-year-old shot during Holy Mass likely went straight to Heaven. The shooter may have been mentally ill, he may have been possessed. In any case the hate that was obsessing him was straight from hell. We cannot conquer the dragon with only our natural strength. If it takes reducing us to helplessness and fear before the enemy to get us on our knees then it will be allowed, for the infinitely greater good of our salvation.
Our Lord’s point is that only by giving ourselves completely to Him, through the Woman, can we crush the head of the serpent (Gen 3:15), can we win the war.
–Fr. Peter