This Servant School talk described how the decision to serve one another humbly in the same way Jesus did involves one in a spiritual battle with Satan. Clem Walters used Ignatius of Loyola’s Two Standards meditation to point out that Satan tempts with riches, honor and pride, but the Lord’s way is marked by poverty, insults, contempt and humility.
Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
CLEM: . . . This is Servants talk number four. I think what we’ll do in numbering the talks is we’ll include the sharing of those people who will come in from time to time to share their experience in Servant School or in serving.
Now that we’ve become aware of our personal pridefulness and our pridefulness as a people and our need to become humble, we need to explore and acknowledge the spiritual warfare involved in our personal decision, the decision that we must make.
Under that, the first choice we can make is to continue to be a prideful people or a prideful person. Being self-centered, selfish, a lover of self, a lover of our own ideas and ways, ways of doing things. And then the other choice we have is to become a humble people. That is, dying to ourselves and following Jesus’s clear example and his teaching. This teaching is from Scripture, which was meant for each one of us.
That is, the teaching is to become submissive and obedient, humbly serving one another. And that is, being submissive and obedient as Christ himself was submissive and obedient to the Father, even to death on a cross. And humbly serving one another in the way that—and through the example that He gave us, that is, of washing one another’s feet.
This choice that we must make involves a battle, or warfare, which began right at the beginning. The battle lines were drawn after Lucifer, and after Lucifer’s prideful fall from the courts of heaven, and with Satan’s absolute desire to overpower God, so to, himself, reign supreme and reign as God himself.
The battle has raged ever since—with all creation, ourselves included in that, caught in the crossfire. And you can use your imagination and think of a crossfire. That is, pictures in the newspaper of people who are very innocent people with large, frightened eyes, who were caught as innocent people in a war. They were nonetheless injured and suffering, but they were caught in the crossfire between the lines of battle.
From Adam and Eve, right through to the present, we and all creatures and all creation have been caught in this crossfire. It was Satan’s implanting pride into Eve, and then on to Adam, which caused their fall. And, as you recall, they disobeyed God, assuming to be his equal. That is, pride was involved in that disobedience. And that was at the urging of Satan himself, that Adam and Eve, through pride, thought themselves to be as great as God or equal to God.
I want to read from Genesis to describe the consequences of that prideful act. This is the third chapter.
Then Yahweh God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, be accursed upon all cattle, all wild beasts. You shall crawl on your belly and eat dust every day of your life. I will make you enemies of each other: you and the woman, your offspring and her offspring. I will crush your head and you will strike its heel.” To the woman he said, “I will multiply your pains in childbearing. You shall give birth to your children in pain. Your yearning shall be for your husband, yet he will lord it over you.” To the man he said, “Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree of which I forbade you to eat, accursed be the soil because of you. With suffering shall you get your food from it every day of your life. It shall yield you brambles and thistles, and you shall eat wild plants. With sweat on your brow shall you eat your bread, until you return to the soil as you were taken from it. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”
As a result of this battle and our being wounded, in other words, being caught in the crossfire, we’re forced to live our lives in a way far different than God originally had intended for us. It is true that Christ’s death reconciled us with God and made possible our eventual total union with him. However, we are forced to live out our lives constantly bombarded and tempted by Satan. We are very much still involved in the raging battle.
Satan attempts to control our lives through our carnal self, that is, our flesh, and through demons and spirits. In other words, there—those are the two fronts of his battle plan: an attack through self, our carnal flesh, and then the other attack, the other front that he has in his battle, is an attack from the outside, through demons and spirits.
Control through carnal self represents our flesh, the fleshy part of us, ourselves. In other words, control from within. That’s one of his battlefronts. And the other battlefront is control through evil spirits and demons, which are separate entities, which have only taken up residence within us and can be evicted through deliverance. And, in fact, this is the basis for a deliverance ministry, not only here in the community but the deliverance ministry throughout all the churches. And we’ll take that up and talk about deliverance later, as many of us have already been very involved in—in being prayed for deliverance—prayed with for deliverance.
Don Basham, in his book Deliver Us from Evil, gives us a surefire way to test to see if Satan is controlling us from within. In other words, it’s a way to test which of the ways Satan is attacking us, which of his battle plans he’s using at a particular time with us. And this is how he suggests in this book that we proceed in testing to see which way we’re being attacked.
First, you treat your hangup as a carnal or a fleshy sin. You confess it, ask forgiveness for it, believing that forgiveness has been granted. Now we must apply willpower, discipline, and prayer to the habit patterns that have entrenched themselves in this area, this sinful area that we’re working on. And whenever they reappear—that is, these habits, the habit patterns that have entrenched themselves in us—whenever they reappear, we must put them under the crucifixion of Jesus, under the power of his resurrection, knowing that he is able to effect change and healing, even when we’re not.
If by doing that, and that surefire test—in other words, treating it just in that way, if that produces no victory—then you can assume that you’re dealing with an evil spirit that you need to be delivered from. In other words, you’re being attacked from without, from the outside, and you need to be delivered from the demons and spirits that you’re being—that are being thrown at you, or [that] you’re being attacked [by], or that are dwelling in you.
We can now clearly choose to request reinforcements in our battle against Satan. We can choose to accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, and the Spirit of the living God as our wisdom and protection, and thus win the battle over Satan and his control of our lives through these demons and spirits, through this attack from the outside.
To further identify the ways Satan attempts to control us in his unending battle with God, I’d like to now touch on Saint Ignatius’s meditation of the Two Standards, and then one of his other meditations, which is the Three Modes, or the Three Forms of Humility.
For many of you, this is not new. You’ve either made the exercises or you’ve heard them. At least you’ve heard the meditation on the two camps during the Community Weekend at one time or another.
The Two Standards, or the two camps, examines Satan’s ways and Christ’s way and Christ’s plan for the world, and is aimed at this decision that we must all make. It’s aimed at helping us in making that decision that each one of us in our lives must make. That is, to follow Christ, serving in Christ’s army, with the knowledge of the ways and schemes of Satan used to draw men away from Christ and into Satan’s camp.
So a part of this meditation will be using your imagination because we’re going to draw a battle plan. We’re actually going to use our imagination and proceed in in this.1
A meditation on the two standards. The one of Christ, our Supreme Captain and Lord, the other of Lucifer, the mortal enemy of our human nature. Here it will be how Christ our Lord calls and wants all men beneath his standard, that is, beneath his flag, beneath the standard bearer in his army. And how Lucifer, on the contrary, wants all men under his standard, or under his flag.
Okay, we need to first have a mental picture of the place of the two camps, the two armies that are formed. On the one hand will be Christ and the others—the other will be Satan himself. So we need to use our imagination.
Here we need to see a vast plain covering all the region about Jerusalem, where the supreme leader of the good is Christ our Lord, and the other plain or the other camp, the other encampment, the other army in the region of Babylon, where the evil chieftain of the army is Lucifer.
So I think you have—you can draw a mental picture of the two places, the two camps.
“The first point is to imagine how the evil chieftain of all the enemy is seated in the center of the vast plain of Babylon on a great throne of fire and smoke, a horrible and terrible sight to behold.” And if you want to use your imagination even further, you can see yourself walking through that encampment, that army encampment of Satan, and looking at the people that are there. You might even, in walking through the camp, see the fear, which is certainly a way that Satan uses to control mankind. You can see fear in the eyes of the people as you walk through there. And you might even imagine that the smoke that you see there in that encampment, and the dust, is just foul, that the smoke itself is—has a smell of sulfur. And it burns your nostrils and burns your eyes as you’re walking through.
“The second point is to consider how he calls together”—this is Satan—“countless demons and how he scatters them, some to one city and some to another”—he might even, say, to one prayer group or to one household, and then some to another—“throughout the whole world, missing no providence, [sic] no place, missing no state in life, nor even any single person.”
The third point is to listen to the harangue which he delivers to them, “how he spurs them on to ensnare men and to bind them in chains. He bids them first to tempt men with the lust of riches, that they may thereby more easily gain the empty honor of the world, and then come to unbounded pride.”
The first step, then, in his snare is that of riches, that is, of money and of things. The second sn-, in his snare is honor. That’s very closely tied to the first, being rich and having things, and then becoming puffed up and being honored. And then all of that leads to the third and—item in his snare is pride.
“From these three steps, Satan leads on to all the other vices.” Okay, so I think we have that picture and we can very clearly expand that with our own imagination.
In a like manner, we’re to imagine, on the other hand, the supreme and true leader, who is Christ our Lord, and imagine his camp.
This is around the plane of Jerusalem.
The first point to consider is how Christ our Lord takes his stand in a lowly place in that great plain about Jerusalem. And he is beautiful and gracious to behold.
And in this camp, as you use your imagination again, as you walk through the camp, you might picture a very blue, beautiful day. And how warm the sun is as you walk through this camp, and how it’s on a grassy plain. There’s no dust and there’s no smoke. It’s very crystal clear. And as you look around and see the people in this camp, as you walk through, you notice a very peaceful look in their eyes and a depth in their eyes, and a love in them. You might even pick a beautiful red rose that you notice blooming as you walk through, or whatever your—your color is.
The second point is to see how the Lord of the entire world chooses so many persons, apostles, disciples, and sends them throughout the whole world to spread his sacred doctrine among men of every state and condition.
The third point is to listen to the discourse which Christ our Lord makes to all his servants and friends whom he sends on this mission, charging them that they should seek to help all men. First by encouraging them to embrace the most perfect spiritual poverty. And, if it should please His Divine Majesty to choose them for it, also to embrace actual poverty. Secondly, he encourages them to desire insults and contempt, for from these two things come humility.
So, then, there are three steps. The first: poverty opposed to riches that Satan was bombarding us with. The second: scorn or contempt, which is opposed to Satan’s leading us to worldly honors. And the third is humility, opposed to Satan wanting us to be prideful and a prideful people.
From these three steps, let them lead men to all virtues.
Assuming that we, after listening to that, desire to serve in Jesus’s camp, or his army, thus rejecting Satan’s plan of riches and of honor and pride, and assuming that we want to become humble servants, let’s further examine Saint Ignatius’s meditation of the Three Modes, or the Three Forms, of Humility.
I hope no one’s having real difficulty listening. This is written in a very different way, and it’s hard to—sometimes hard to listen when the way is quite different than our way today, some centuries later.
The Three Modes of Humility.
The first mode of humility is necessary for eternal salvation. This requires that I humble myself as much as possible for me, in order that I may obey in all things the law of our God, our Lord. Accordingly, I would not give consideration to the thought of breaking any commandment, divine or human, that binds me under the pain of sin, even though this offense would make me master of all creation or would preserve my life on earth.
So that’s the one form of humility.
The second mode, or the second form, of humility is more perfect than the first. I’m in possession of it if my state of mind is such that I neither desire nor even prefer to have riches rather than poverty, to seek honor rather than dishonor, to have a long life rather than a short one, provided that here be the same opportunity to serve God, our Lord, and to save my soul. Nor would I, for the sake of all creation or for the purpose of saving my life, consider committing a single sin.
So that’s the second form of humility, which is a little better than, a little more perfect than, the first.
The third mode or form of humility is the most perfect. This exists when the first and second forms already possessed, and the praise and glory of the Divine Majesty being equally served, I desire and choose poverty with Christ poor rather than riches, in order to be more like Christ our Lord. When I choose reproaches with Christ thus suffering rather than honor, and when I’m willing to be considered as worthless and a fool for Christ, who suffered such treatment before me, rather than to be esteemed as wise and prudent in his [sic] world.
What I’d like to do now is take just another minute or two in just quiet prayer and meditation before we move on to discussion.
[Recording ends here.]
Endnotes:
- In the following passages, Clem quotes from The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius by St. Ignatius of Loyola. Return to text
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