Why We Lose in Spiritual Combat
Everyone wants to go to war against the Devil. But no one is battling his ally
“He who doesn’t know how to conquer himself is the greatest enemy to himself. For in this victory consists the perfection of the soul, and without it all other victories are vain.”
— Lorenzo Scupoli
Spiritual combat isn’t mainly about fighting demons. It’s about fighting the part of us that keeps siding with them.
The most dangerous enemy isn’t outside of ourselves, but within: it’s the will that refuses discipline, the pride that resists correction, and the comfort that dodges or rejects sacrifice, and so on. It’s our disordered passions, whether sinful or not. These fronts mark the drama of the interior battlefield. Yet most of us don’t pay enough attention.
The Devil’s Ally
St. Francis de Sales makes the same point from another angle. When writing about the three sources of temptation—the world, the flesh, and the devil—De Sales insists that the most dangerous of the three is the flesh. The world can onlysuggest, and the devil can only tempt from outside of ourselves, but the flesh (the self) cooperates with them both.
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The devil doesn’t tempt us with his own material. He doesn’t create our disordered desires; he studies them and exploits them. What the world offers as an occasion for sin, the will must still accept; what the devil prompts, the will must assent to. This is why self-conquest (or self mastery) matters more than demon-hunting. The devil has no power over a soul, but the soul’s willingness to indulge what needs to be disciplined is the real breach in the wall. THe threat isn’t the tempter’s voice, but the interior consent that answers it.
“Open the gates!”
“Right away!”
