12 days ‒ Emptying oneself of the spirit of the world
“After having (…) employed twelve days, at least, in emptying themselves of the spirit of the world, which is contrary to the spirit of Jesus Christ.”
St. Louis de Montfort, A Treatise on the True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, 227
Introduction
At the very beginning, let’s try to comprehend our situation. We may illustrate it in the following way: the first people who lived in Paradise functioned in the atmosphere of the spirit of God. Day and night, they were unceasingly immersed in God; they breathed Him, and He permeated them entirely. But after the sin, the atmosphere in which people lived also changed. Outside Paradise, their natural environment was different. They had to face the consequences of their sins, suffered death and distance from God. It may be said that it is “the spirit of the world”—a space where people live separately from God, where they need to cope on their own with all the hardships they encounter. And Christ came into such a reality—the world troubled by sin.
On the eve of His Passion, Death and Resurrection, during His prayer to the Father, Christ uttered the following words: “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” (Jn 17:14‒18). “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). And what did the world do to the Son of God? Crucified Him. This is what the love of God is like. This is what the answer of the world is. Christ died and rose again; He ascended into heaven and sent the Holy Spirit. We received all of this at the holy baptism. Through the baptism, we were ripped from the captivity of this world, and we became the children of God. But living in this world as the children of God, we were soaked up by the way of thinking of this world. St. James wrote: “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God” (Jas 4:4). Living in the friendship of God excludes adopting the style and the spirit of the world hurt by sin that encourages to sin even further. More deeply than usual we need to discover the great grace of the holy baptism. The very moment people decide to come back to God by dedicating their lives to Him, they discover how they are soaked up by the spirit of the world. Having accepted our decision to come back, God wants to bestow on the plenitude of blessings and freedom; that is why we need cleansing from all that is from this world within us. We still live in this world, and God sends us to it, yet we are not supposed to act in the manner of this world but in the manner of God. And each of us needs to follow this way individually. What does it mean? Evil has become deeply rooted in us: in our decisions, motivations, responses, and perceptions. We need to cleanse our souls because many of our weaknesses that result in sins are consciously or unconsciously due to the adopted mentality of the world, which is opposite to the life of faith. The sin contaminated our interiors. Fruitfulness of our life will depend mainly on the faithfulness and effort we put into not living the earthly spirit. And it is not possible to be led simultaneously by the spirit of the world and the Spirit of God. Our Lord says that we cannot serve both God and money. The proverb says: “Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas” which means that while living in the world, we soak up the modern mentality. It is essential to look closer at our way of thinking because the conversion is about changing it.
First, we want to accept the good news about God, who loves and redeemed us so that we can, as free men, take up the fight and not lose our freedom. Let’s look at all of what has happened from the perspective of consecration: having created the world, God gave us power over the world; He gave us everything, including His love. And what did we do? Through sin, we gave it to the devil, becoming the slaves of sin, Satan and the world. Yet God didn’t remain indifferent to our captivity of sin. God was the first to give Himself to Mary. In her, He became the man. She was His new Paradise. She was entirely devoted to Him. The Son of God became the man. He came to the very bottom of degradation and sin, even though he didn’t commit any sin. For the wages of sin is death, so He suffered death for our sins; He bought us with His own precious blood and entrusted us to God. From the height of the cross, He gave us Mary so that, like St. John the Apostle, we entrust ourselves to her and take her into our lives so she may teach us the life devoted to God. Every day, we should learn from her how to entrust different areas of our lives, our motivations and decisions. We want her to be the Champion of the spiritual life, teaching us to live with Christ. She, who spent 30 years with Him, got to know Him best. According to Christ’s will given to us on the Cross, she is to be our Mother.
She guides us on the path of opening our hearts to God’s love so that we can discover the great grace of baptism. Her presence and her name are our solace! Her tender love is our harbour. Her desire to search for all lost is the fire of our zeal. We must attune our hearts with the Immaculate Heart of the one who never refused God anything. She will lead us on the paths of our cleansing. She will teach us submissiveness and trust in the paths God leads us daily. And this is what the battle with the spirit of the world is about: never again cross the boundary from beyond which we were ripped. This is the price of our freedom. This is our to-be or not-to-be. The path of emptying of the spirit of the world isn’t limited only to 12 days of this retreat. However, many things may be done during this time. But the most essential is to learn how to contend with the spirit of the world and how to become more vigilant in our everyday lives.
The essence of life in covenant with God was expressed by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, in the Beatitudes. They are a new law—not based on observing the rules but on discovering grace when the world won’t give us answers. Here is the frontline of the battle to persevere with God.
The “Blessed” Christ spoke about in the Sermon on the Mount mean “happy, fortunate”. Christ has his blessings, but the world also has its blessings, which are very different from what Christ talked about. Christ has his wisdom, but the world also has its wisdom. St. Louis de Montfort writes: “This worldly wisdom consists in an exact conformity to the maxims and fashions of the world; a continual inclination towards greatness and esteem; and a subtle and endless pursuit of pleasure and self-interest, not in an uncouth and blatant way by scandalous sin, but in an astute, discreet, and deceitful way. Otherwise, the world would no longer label it wisdom but pure licentiousness. (…) Never has the world been so corrupt as it is now, for never has it been so cunning, so wise in its own way, and so crafty. It cleverly makes use of the truth to foster untruth, virtue to justify vice, and the very maxims of Jesus Christ to endorse its own so that even those who are wisest in the sight of God are often deceived.”[i] The spirit of the world wants to delude us, deceive us and rob us of God’s blessings. None of us wants to be deceived, so for the next few days, we want to expose the lies that we are fed by the world’s mentality so that we don’t live in a worldly manner but in the manner of God. The point is that if we want to be fully Christians (i.e., like Christ), we have to desire to be emptied of anything related to the way of living of the world that is, after all, the enemy of God.
Christ says: “I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one” (Jn 17:15). This forestalling grace of God protects us from evil. This is our protection from the temptation of defeatism and our way to victory. “Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 Jn 5:5). And even though the Scripture says that “the whole world lies under the power of the evil one” (1 Jn 5:19), ultimately the gospel lies in the words of Christ who encourages us: “In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!” (Jn 16:33).
[i] St. Louis de Montfort, The Love of Eternal Wisdom. (Montfort Missionaries, 2003), 75 and 79.