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
Father Lorenzo Scupoli wrote ‘Il Combattimento spirituale’ originally published in 1589. It remains relevant in 2015 as he describes the spiritual battle that takes place every single day for the soul of every human person.
I read this document as if written for the business leader in today’s world. Father Scupoli touches on the very basic struggles that Attollo helps its members with; focus, working with passion, zeal and with intention, being flooded with and eliminating the daily “urgent” things that distract from the important plans to build and run a business from the framework of Catholic Social Teaching. I work with very serious business leaders who are helping build the kingdom of God. The enemy is engaged in warfare and has dug three pits for them to fall into. (see below)
“From the moment we open our eyes in the morning after sleep to the moment we close them again for the night we are surrounded by a succession of activities, which follow one another and leave no moment empty, provided always we keep attention in ourselves and are not sick with laziness and negligence.
Moreover not only the practice of lifting the heart to God in prayer, not only the obligations of dealings with others in truth and love, not only the efforts to achieve a right equilibrium between body and soul in works and self-mortification, but even everyday affairs with laymen must all be directed towards achieving salvation, and practised with strict attention, watchfulness and diligence.
God helps those, who show their zeal to do all things rightly, by sending them His grace and by granting them the protection of angels and the prayers of saints. But the enemy never sleeps. In everything we do he strives to disrupt the smooth course of our efforts and to lead us astray from right to wrong actions. He either hastens to stop us undertaking them, or, when they are begun, attempts to interfere with their progress; if he has failed in this, he strives to make their results worthless; or, having once more suffered defeat, plots to deprive them of all value in the eyes of God, by inciting vanity and conceit.
St. John of the Ladder speaks thus about it: ”In all the efforts by which we try to please God, the demons dig three pits for us—
- First, they try to obstruct our good undertaking;
- Second, if they have suffered defeat in this first attempt, they try to make our work not according to God
- Third, when these thieves are unsuccessful in this scheme too, then they steal noiselessly to the soul and flatter us by suggesting that we please God in everything we do.
The first temptation is opposed by fervent zeal and memory of death; the second—by obedience and humility; the third—by always reproaching oneself.”
An excerpt from “Unseen Warfare” by Father Lorenzo Scupoli +1610
