1Peter 5
Many spiritual ‘gurus’ teach people how to live with a peaceful mind and heart. They teach certain methods to pacify everyone. Accept everyone as they are, recognize all lifestyles as all good, acknowledge all kinds of philosophies and religions as all equal!
On the other hand, all saints of the Church lived lives of struggles, battles, torments, persecutions, and pains. Although they look calm on our prayer cards, lives of saints were series of confrontations against all kinds of evil within and without, and also against Satan and demons. They had to go through temptations and tests. They had to battle against their vices and weaknesses. You might not believe this, but saints are those who went to the Confession much more frequently than average Catholics. And many saints were eyewitnesses to demons and Satan, which made them tortured and fearful. Saints of the Church are not certainly those spiritual gurus in any sense.
Christians live a harder life. It’s because we are born of the water and the Spirit. We are no longer living as the flesh only but as the spirit. An alert spirit always struggles with the flesh, as St Paul teaches us. From the moment of Baptism, we start struggling. The more spiritual we are, the more severe our struggles become. And Satan is always around to tempt us and to destroy us.
“Cast all your anxiety on him [God], because he cares for you,” St Peter consoles us in today’s first reading. We are all struggling and suffering because the world hates us as it hated Christ first. “Your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering,” St Peter tells us.
