I was listening to talk radio (code for Right wing extremism) in the car the other day. This is my usual fare when not listening to the fundy preachers and country gospel music.

The guy said he was ‘a happy warrior’. It stuck in my mind when reading the epistle today at Mass from Ephesians about putting on the whole armor of God and fighting against principalities and powers and ‘the spiritual forces of wickedness in high places.’ I love that passage–especially at this most supernatural time of the Church year.
Tomorrow is Halloween when we admit that we are fighting against the monsters of the deep, the Leviathan, that great Serpent the Devil, the goblins, the ghoulies, the ghosts and things that go bump in the night. Then we worship with all the saints the next day and sing ‘for all the saints’ in triumphant procession. Next day we pray for the holy souls and offer the sacrifice for their benefit, then through the whole month of November we pray for the dead.
It is like a rich spiritual and supernatural harvest as well as a battlefield. Our weapons are the harvest scythe and sword of the spirit both.
This ‘happy warrior’ battle talk is what makes the faith vital and real for me, and I realize that the perhaps the greatest fault of the modern church is that it has lost the desire or the need to be the church militant. The church has become feminized, emasculated and undone. The great Church militant has become like a soppy old Labrador–only interested in another tidbit and rolling over to have her tummy scratched.
As we head into November and Advent, I’m for a renewal of the battle, a stronger commitment to the spiritual warfare and