Pages from the Past: Spiritual Warfare

From Dom Augustin Guillerand, O Cart. I added paragraph breaks to make it more readable. In my journal I did not keep track of which of his books this excerpt is from. (Sorry!)

St Michael, defend us in the battle!

Creatures—and the devil who uses them—do not let themselves be ousted without a struggle. The life of prayer calls for continuous battles…. The human heart is a city; it was meant to be a stronghold. Sin surrendered it. Henceforth it is an open city, the walls of which have to be built up again. 

The enemy never ceases to do all he can to prevent this. He does this with his accustomed cleverness and strength with stratagem and fury. He puts before us such happy thoughts (and occasionally useful ones), pictures so attractive or frightening, and he clothes it all with reasons so impressive that he succeeds all along the line to distract us and entice us away from the divine presence. 

We must always be starting again. These continual recoveries, this endless beginning again, tires and disheartens us far more than the actual fighting. We would much prefer a real battle, fierce and decisive. But God, as a rule, thinks otherwise. He would rather we were in a constant state of war….He is love and this continuous warfare calls for more love and develops that love still further.

"Pages from the Past" are randomish excerpts from my old journals. I process things in writing, so there were a lot of volumes, but here and there I found notes that were still pertinent or helpful. I got rid of the books (hello, shredder!) and typed up the things I wanted to save, whether for myself (mostly) or to share.