Members of the Resistance

                                             A little food for weekend thought:

     "Failures will be forgiven; it is acquiescence that is fatal, the permitted, regularized presence of an area in ourselves which we still claim for our own.  We may never, this side of death, drive the invader out of our territory, but we must be in the Resistance, not in the Vichy government.  And this, so far as I can yet see, must be begun each day.  Our morning prayer should be in the Imitation: Da hodie perfecte incipere--grant me to make an unflawed beginning today, for I have done nothing yet."
                        C.S. Lewis
      Lewis adds that we need to repeatedly, doggedly continue to renounce this all too easy spirit of acquiescence, of acceptance of our weaknesses and sin-prone tendencies.  It requires "the daily or hourly repeated exercises of my own will in renouncing this attitude, especially each morning, for it grows all over me like a new shell each night."
     Oftentimes, it's just so much easier to just shrug our shoulders and sigh, "Well, that's just the way I am" rather than fight the good fight, in the power of the Spirit, against our selfishness or laziness or pridefulness or greediness... or whatever our sin-prone area might be.  Sure we will sin; but, Lord, help us never to learn to love, or even just passively accept, that sin. As we remember You on the cross, might we resist hard and long against the incessant cry of our flesh.  "..for He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world." (I John 4:4)
     Might we this week encounter the enemy--satan and sin--as members of the Resistance... and not weak-willed Vichy compromisers.  Help us, Father, to fight the good fight of faith... all the while knowing that You have already won the War.   To God be the glory.