“Never lose heart. God is with you and will never leave you” (Inner Word).
There is no doubt that we Christians are called to fight a battle, and it is coming to a head in an increasingly anti-Christian world, with its politics and mentality. But it is not only visible tribulations that we face. As St Paul tells us, our struggle is against “the principalities and powers” (Eph 6:12), that is, against the spirits of evil, the fallen angels, whom we must fight with the power of the Lord. To this battle are added various inner afflictions that come from our soul, as well as the experience of our own weakness and all kinds of limitations and trials.
Whatever it is, we must never lose heart, for we are not alone and at the mercy of all kinds of adversity. Our Heavenly Father, who never forsakes us, will sustain us in them, teach us how to go through them, how to overcome them and how to make them fruitful for the Kingdom of God.
The key to this is to seek God in everything, to call upon Him, to lift our eyes to Him, as our Lord did on the Cross when He fought the hardest battles for our sake.
When we look to our Father and lift up our hearts to Him, firmly believing in His presence, we receive the courage which, strengthened by the gift of fortitude, becomes an “impregnable bulwark”. From the Lord we receive the grace we need to overcome all the adversities that come our way. In time, we learn to see them not only as heavy burdens, but as challenges that the Lord allows so that we can grow and do our part in the Kingdom of God. To achieve this, we need to be anchored in our Father, for our strength quickly reaches its limit. God’s grace, on the other hand, never runs out.