“If we suffer, we shall also reign with him…” (King James Bible, 2 Timothy 2:12)

On Ascension Day, when Our Blessed Lord returned to Heaven, he led his Apostles out of Jerusalem, over the brook Kedron and up the Mount of Olives, passing on the way the Garden of Gethsemane where he had waited for his enemies six weeks before.

What greater contrast could there be than between these two scenes, between the Agony in the Garden and the Ascension, the one at the darkest hour before the dawn, the other in the full splendour of day.

Nevertheless, as he ascended to Heaven by way of Gethsemane, so also did he enter his glory through that Agony. In Gethsemane his hour of trial had begun and, as the forces of evil clustered round on every side, the temptation was pitilessly pressed upon him to set himself in opposition to God by refusing to drink the cup of suffering and accomplish the work of our salvation. That temptation he conquered, and so untouched by sin, he returned on Ascension Day to the glory which he had enjoyed from all eternity.

And with him he brought back his perfect human nature which he had taken to himself all those years before when, for us and our salvation, he came down from Heaven, but which now bore the marks of the nails and the soldier’s spear.

So he had told the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory? (NRSV, Luke 24:26). His sufferings began in Gethsemane where his will triumphed over evil, and fittingly he entered into his glory from the hillside above.

And we, too, must pass through our spiritual warfare if we are to share his glory. As St Paul says, “If we suffer, we shall also reign with him…” (King James Bible, 2 Timothy 2:12). For some that includes the suffering of persecution, for all it refers to the spiritual struggle of the Christian soul and to the pain of penitence many times renewed.

Thus at our Baptism each of us was signed with the sign of the Cross as a token of this warfare in which we are pledged to fight bravely against the world, the flesh and the devil (see Note below).

There is the struggle against the sin of worldliness and especially against the degrading and hardening attraction of money which can stifle and crush a man’s or a woman’s love for God more quickly and effectively than anything else – especially when their energies are focussed on getting and spending it. Not without reason does St Paul refer to the love of money as the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10).

The struggle against the flesh is the hard effort required to master one’s instincts and thus gain that self-control which distinguishes human beings at their best and highest from the animal creation.

And all the time there has to be the resistance against the subtle and varied manoeuvres of the Devil who never rests in his endeavours to draw us away from God and from all that is godly, by concentrating our attention on ourselves and on what we want or think we should have.

So long as we are prompted and led, either consciously or unconsciously, by such things we are not free beings. For we become masters of ourselves, not when we are for ever turned this way and that by the “storms of passion, the murmurs of self-will” (1), but when we are steering a straight course because God’s restraining and guiding hand is on the tiller of our life.

There can be no true freedom without freedom from the dictatorship of sin, and that means surrendering the sovereignty and independence of one’s soul to Our Blessed Lord. For we can achieve this freedom, not when we are constantly at the beck and call of every wrong desire and unworthy impulse, but when we shake ourselves clear of all that and obey the will of God by thinking and saying and doing only what is pleasing to him.

Only by complete submission to him can we gain complete liberty. His service is perfect freedom, or, to put that truth in its original form, “to serve him is to reign as kings”; and that, not only in this life, but also in the life to come. As Our Blessed Lord has said, “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour” (NRSV, John 12:26, our emphasis).

Yet how slow and reluctant are we to enter wholeheartedly and strenuously into this spiritual warfare against the world, the flesh and the devil. Nevertheless, until we do we shall never know the joy and the strength of inner freedom which comes from bringing ourselves, and all our thoughts of every day, into captivity to Jesus Christ. On the one hand we seek the power to achieve that freedom by giving ourselves to God in our Sunday worship and by receiving Our Lord himself in the Blessed Sacrament; but on the other hand in our daily life we allow ourselves to cling to the things with which Our Lord has nothing in common.

Nevertheless, if we evade this warfare of the soul, we do so at our peril. There is no easy way to Heaven. We have Our Lord’s assurance on that point. “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (NRSV, Matthew 7:13,14, our emphasis).

The Christian religion is not popular and never will be. Often it is not even wanted, for it demands self-control; it demands detachment of spirit from the attractions of the world; it demands the suppression of our own selfishness.

Most people prefer instead to be slaves to the world, the flesh and the devil.

We are reminded of the Israelites of old after they had escaped from the slavery of Egypt. They murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness and said, “If only we had died…in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread…” (NRSV, Exodus 16:3). Yet that austere and forbidding wilderness was the only way to the Promised Land which flowed with milk and honey: just as it was by way of Gethsemane that Our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into Heaven. And it is only by the renunciation of self in hard, spiritual endeavour that we shall get there too.

Note

See Catechism in the Book of Common Prayer and the summary of what Godparents did for us (Question 3): http://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-worship/worship/book-of-common-prayer/a-catechism.aspx

Reference

1. Bode, J.E. (1868) O Jesus, I have promised. Available from: http://www.oremus.org/hymnal/o/o309.html (Accessed 10 May 2014) (Internet).