A guest post in the season of Lent By Jessica Ryder-Khalil

Some conversations stay with you for years, remaining in our memories as the building blocks of our love for each other. I had one of those enduring talks with a young lady from Sohag, Egypt in January 2014. We stood on her apartment balcony looking down at the street- a rhythmic flow of mopeds, cars and the occasional farmer with his livestock passing by below. Just months earlier in August 2013, Ireny had to take shelter and hide in this same apartment with her widowed mother and two sisters for the better part of a week. Extremists were on a rampage in her city, burning churches and other Christian owned properties. I saw with my own eyes the damage done to St. George Church in Sohag, burned out with smoke marking the walls almost to the ceiling, yet the altar untouched. 

She described what those days were like for her family. Fear focused into prayer. Anxiety offered to God; and our Heavenly Father accepting that offering and replacing it with the peace of the Holy Spirit. Despite this violent experience, whose source was not the humans perpetrating the acts but the Evil One, Ireny and I ended our conversation in agreement that our lives are in danger no matter where we live. Recalling to ourselves the Scripture, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.  Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.” (1 Peter 5:8-9)

Six years have passed since that talk, but I often think about Ireny. I think we both silently understood that evil does not care about devouring your body; it wants your faith.  It wants you to disobey the will of God and become comfortable with sin. Thus, making life in the USA just as dangerous as in Egypt and other countries the world over. Our Christian brothers and sisters worldwide face a terrifying external threat to their physical safety and well-being.  They suffer terrible injustices not to be lightly dismissed. This BBC article from May 2019 points out that persecution is not only spreading geographically, but also increasing in intensity. The point is the nature of our spiritual warfare in the USA and other western countries is different, yet still deadly.  

Lulled into comfort by our perceived freedoms in the West, I believe these are the two tendencies where we often lose the spiritual battle.  We let our guard down and forget we are under continual spiritual bombardment.  Or we turn outward seeking to make others accept our standards of Christian living, as opposed to turning inward to fight the good fight. Whether we are slack in safeguarding our spiritual life or we have confused spiritual life with being overzealous for worldly matters, we have been deceived. As St. James wrote in his epistle, “Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4). What then can we do to keep ourselves from falling either to the left or the right? How do we remain on the Way that leads into the Heavenly Kingdom?

As we live this Lenten season, the presence of the Holy Spirit should fill us with repentance, leading to an optimism that we are fully prepared to face both faults: 1) laziness toward sin and 2) pursuing Christendom or worldly power instead of internal struggle. Let me be the first to confess from the depths of my heart–I have sinned, am sinning and would continue to sin except that the Lord Almighty save me. Please, my Christian family, forgive me. We shall not linger in despair, however. No one is expected to climb that great mountain alone. No one is expected to face the demonic, masked executioners without the entire choir of saints, past and present, interceding with, “Kyrie eleison.” There is hope and strength in all the ways the Christian family can help and support each other in spiritual growth.

This quote attributed to St. Anthony the Great sums up a path for resisting those two sinful tendencies beautifully: “Whoever you may be, always have God before your eyes; whatever you do, do it according to the testimony of the Holy Scriptures; in whatever place you live, do not easily leave it. Keep these three precepts and you will be saved.” These instructions for Christian living contain the watchfulness, righteousness and steadfastness we need for spiritual warfare no matter where we are on the globe. Pursuing virtue this way, we will build a subculture of purity and holiness in our churches and homes, even if that is in direct defiance of the parent culture in which we find ourselves.

Working backwards through St. Anthony’s spiritual advice, let us first examine this piece, “In whatever place you live, do not easily leave it.”  This maxim from our holy father affirms that the battles of spiritual warfare will hunt a Christian believer without care for the continent upon which the individual stands.  Therefore, let us be prepared to make our stand where we are. Remember, where we make our homes is consecrated to the Lord. We should not be willing to abandon holy places without a struggle, foremost the holy ground in our hearts.

Let us cultivate the virtue of steadfastness. When the news reports scare us, let us stand firm in the heavenly victory of the Gospel. When we feel threatened, let us remember Who fights for us, none other than Lord of Hosts, maker of Heaven and Earth. When overindulgence in pleasures dims our resolve, let us joyfully indulge in the fasting seasons of the church to bring us back to ourselves, which is to really say to bring us back to Him. When we feel different from the people around us, rejoice that we are and will forevermore be a new creation in Christ, unrecognizable to the world! Not unlike Jacob, let us wrestle with God saying, “I will not let go unless You bless me” (Genesis 32:26). With the same tenacity, let us plant ourselves and our families in the place where we live and insist that we will not leave until the spiritual fruits grow and blossom stretching up to Heaven.  

In the previous paragraphs, we have answered the question of where we will engage in spiritual warfare. And the answer is simply: everywhere. The second instruction in St. Anthony’s words are, “Whatever you do, do it according to the testimony of the Holy Scriptures.” This answers the question of how Christians can endure the fiery arrows of the Evil One. There is no duality in the Christian life, which is why the tendencies towards luxury and control are so heinous. We fall in sin, yet fail all the more by covering ourselves with the fig leaves of hypocrisy. But never for a moment are we left helpless. The blessed father of monks commends us to the virtue of righteousness, as if opening to us the armory of the heavenly realms.  

Let us build a firm foundation with the virtue of righteous living. At home, let us pray the hours and read the Scriptures with our families. At work or school, let us be honest and good-natured.   At church, let us serve with all eagerness and joy. Let us select those who influence us carefully and let us not seek influence over others. Rather, by our submission to God’s will, let us be ambassadors of His divine love without reservation. Let us freely give, for freely we have received (Matt 10:8). It is through purity of heart and righteous living that the world will know that we are followers of the One Lord Jesus Christ. 

If we have explored questions of where and how we become soldiers of spiritual warfare, then the next inquiry must be why. For whom do we live and for whom do we even perhaps dare to die (Rom. 5:7)?  Why do we fight spiritual battles? Here St. Anthony teaches, “Whoever you may be, always have God before your eyes.” Repetition of the Psalms should not let these magnificent words become dull.  We pray in the Feast of the Resurrection from Psalm 24, and daily in the Third Hour of the Agpeya, “Who is this King of glory?  The Lord strong and mighty.  The Lord mighty in battle” (verse 5). He is the One who trampled death by His death. He is the One who invited us back into His eternal joy, even after our betrayal. Being jealous for our salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ admonishes us to be vigilant in many different ways.  

Let us focus ourselves with the virtue of watchfulness. So often when our spiritual life is dull, we start to grumble that God has left us. Keeping St. Anthony’s teaching, “always have God before your eyes,” it will be clear that that He is constant. We are the ones who vacillate, as St. James writes to us, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” (James 4:8). The Mighty King defending His heavenly seat of glory is also the loving, patient Father who takes us by the hand when we do not know where we are or where to go. Watchfulness will build our trust. When we trust, we love more deeply. When we love from our deepest selves, we will never tire of looking at our Beloved.  

So wherever we are, let us find God’s revelation of Himself in that place. No matter what we do, let our body be His and His actions be ours through the guidance of the Holy Scriptures.   Let us lift our eyes to the One from where our help comes. If we are looking at Him, the pleasures of the world are but ashes and the power of this world is but a perishing illusion. It is my prayer that the season of His Temptation and Passion realign us to that one pure purpose of heart. Let us take His yoke upon us with joy and when the world thinks us strange, let us rejoice all the more to be seen as children of God. Let us remember all those around the world who walk freely in the Truth when they can, who shelter in place when they must, and who offer themselves as a living confession and sacrifice at the time when the Holy Spirit calls. 

Jessica Ryder-Khalil is a frequent contributor to Being in Community. She is a wife and mom of four children- three boys and a girl. A member of the St. Antonious and St. Mina Coptic Orthodox Church in East Rutherford, NJ, she participates in the church’s ministry for mothers of young children called Fellowship of St. Monica and teaches Sunday School as well. Jessica was baptized into the church 14 years ago and is a continual learner along the path to Orthodoxy. Before family life took the lead role, Jessica taught English as a Second Language both abroad and in the USA. Her previous posts include An Hour in a Few Minutes and What My Mom Taught Me About Authenticity.