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).