Towards the start of this series, we looked at a couple sayings that talked about the importance of starting small in our sacred practices, and training up to more extreme disciplines. Today we’ll look at a necessary corollary of this teaching: that the stronger we become in the life of faith, whether in terms of fighting temptation, inaction, or despondency, the greater the challenges that will come our way.
[Amma Syncletica] also said: ‘Those who are great athletes must contend against stronger enemies.’ (Amma Syncletica 14)
Let’s start by working with Amma Syncletica’s sports analogy. As they say, in order to be the best, you’ve got to beat the best. This isn’t just true in terms of winning actual championships, but also in the whole history of what it takes to get there, both in training and competition. If you’re weight-training, it’s important to start small, but you aren’t going to see growth if you don’t incrementally increase the weights as you become more comfortable. The same can be said for distance running. When I started to run, it took me a few weeks to build up to running 5 km; now, years later, I can start at close to 5 km after a long absence (due to injury, illness, vacation, or a harsh winter — often some combination of several of these!) and build up to my seasonal goal of 10 km runs. But the point is that in order to improve, I need to push myself with longer distances (or once I get to those distances, with faster paces). Competition works in a similar way; having watched my nephews progress through kids hockey leagues, I was surprised at how quickly young athletes are divided up into different levels by ability. And this is a self-reinforcing process, since the top levels get access to the best coaching and training opportunities.
A similar thing happens, unfortunately, with our spiritual lives. While it’s true that in order to accomplish big things, we need to start small, it’s also true that the stronger we get, the bigger the challenges that will appear. This has certainly been my experience. At the start of my faith journey, there were so many more consolations than there are now and beautiful experiences seemed close at hand. There would certainly be times of desolation, but consolations would soon arise to help put me back together again. But as time goes on, and as I’ve matured, the difficulties have increased as the consolations become smaller and peak experiences rarer. This is not unique to me at all. In fact, it’s exactly what St. John of the Cross was talking about in the Dark Night of the Soul.
In this way, the life of faith is like training too. But, rather than like a sport where we have to be intentional about finding bigger challenges or stronger opponents, spirituality is more like a video game, where the challenges get harder as we play on, whether we want them to or not.
So Amma Syncletica’s words are both a lesson and a statement of fact. As a lesson, we need to remember that if we want to accomplish anything in the life of faith we need to challenge ourselves incrementally. But as a statement, we need to remember that as we grow, the challenges are going to get more difficult, whether we want them to or not.
May God strengthen us for the spiritual battles ahead of us. Amen!
Matthew Root 