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A fierce war rages for your soul. Are you ready for battle? Like it or not, you are at war. You face a powerful enemy out to destroy you. You live on the battlefield, so you can't escape the conflict. It's a spiritual war with crucial consequences in your everyday life and its outcome will determine your eternal destiny. You must engage the Enemy. And as you fight, you need a Manual for Spiritual Warfare. This guide for spiritual warriors will help you recognize, resist, and overcome the Devil's attacks. Part One, "Preparing for Battle," answers these critical questions: - Who is Satan, and what powers does he have? - What are his typical strategies? - Who fights him alongside us in battle? - What spiritual weapons and armor do we possess? - How do we keep the Enemy out of our camp? Part Two, "Aids in Battle," provides you these essential resources: - Teaching about spiritual warfare from Scripture and Church documents - Scripture verses for battle - Wisdom and inspiration from saints who fought Satan - Prayers for protection, deliverance, and victory - Rosary meditations, hymns, and other devotions for spiritual combat St. Paul urges us to "fight the good fight of the faith" (1 Tim 6:12). Take this Manual for Spiritual Warfare with you into battle. Premium Ultrasoft with two-tone sewn binding, ribbon marker and gold edges.

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Philosophie et théologie

Prayer in Christianity

Catholic Church

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Publié par	TAN Books
Date de parution	01 décembre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781618906540
Langue	English

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MANUAL FOR SPIRITUAL WARFARE

Paul Thigpen

Charlotte, North Carolina
Nihil Obstat: Reverend Matthew Kauth, S.T.D. Censor Deputatus Imprimatur: Most Reverend Peter J. Jugis, J.C.D. Bishop of Charlotte May 31, 2015 Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary
The nihil obstat and imprimatur are official declarations that a book is free from doctrinal or moral error. No implication is contained therein that those who grant the nihil obstat and imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions, or statements expressed.
Copyright © 2014 TAN Books, PO Box 410487, Charlotte, NC 28241. All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise noted, or in texts quoted from other sources, all Scripture quotations from the New Testament are from The New Testament of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: A Revision of the Challoner-Rheims Version (popularly known as the Confraternity New Testament). Published in 1941 by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. Some words and punctuation in these texts have been updated.
Unless otherwise noted, or in texts quoted from other sources, all Scripture quotations from the Old Testament are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible — Second Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition). Copyright © 2006 Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Except where otherwise acknowledged, prayers and other texts have been taken from a variety of print and online sources and are believed to be in the public domain.
Cover illustration courtesy of iconizer / Shutterstock (sword); Digiselector / Shutterstock (border)
Cover and book design by Ryan Scheife / Mayfly Design
UltraSoft Edition: 978-1-61890-653-3
eBook Edition: 978-1-61890-654-0
Cataloging-in-Publication data on file with the Library of Congress
TAN Books
www.TANBooks.com
Charlotte, North Carolina
2014
For Fr. Neil Dhabliwala
and all the faithful spiritual warriors of
St. Luke Catholic Church,
Dahlonega, Georgia
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood,
but against the Principalities and the Powers,
against the world rulers of this darkness, against
the spiritual hosts of wickedness on high.
E PHESIANS 6:12
CONTENTS
How to Use This Manual
Part One: Preparing for Battle
1. Know Your Enemy
2. Know Your Battle
3. Know Your Commander and Comrades
4. Know Your Weapons
5. Know Your Armor
6. Keep the Enemy out of the Camp
Part Two: Aids in Battle
7. Church Teaching About Spiritual Warfare
From Catechisms
From Church Councils
From Papal Documents
8. Scriptures for the Battle
Scriptural Names and Images for the Devil and Demons
Incidents in Scripture Involving the Devil and Demons
Scripture Verses for Warfare
9. Help From the Saints
Words From the Saints
Spiritual Warfare in the Lives of the Saints
10. Prayers, Devotions, and Hymns for Battle
Prayers to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit
The Blood of Jesus
Litany of Christ Our Champion
The Name of Jesus
Prayers to Our Lady, Vanquisher of the Enemy
Rosary Meditations for Spiritual Battle
Prayers to the Saints and With the Saints
Prayers to the Angels and to God for Their Assistance
Prayers for the Church
Prayers for the Family and Home
Prayers With Sacramentals
Prayers From Traditional Liturgies
Prayers for Strength and Deliverance
Scriptural Prayers for Deliverance
Hymns for Spiritual Warfare
For Further Study
HOW TO USE THIS MANUAL
S acred Scripture speaks of our ongoing battles with the world, the flesh, and the Devil (see Jas 4:1–7). This book focuses on our struggle with the last of those three adversaries, for several reasons.
First, belief in Satan’s existence and activity is today widely dismissed as an outdated superstition. As a result, most Catholics hear very little about him, leaving them unprepared to understand and defeat him. They need to know their Enemy and his strategies.
Second, even among those who recognize the Enemy’s activity, few are aware of the resources available to combat him. They need to know their Commander, their comrades, their weapons, and their armor.
Third, though it’s true that at times our struggles with the flesh and the world may not be directly provoked by the Devil’s interference, still he takes advantage of those struggles and seeks by way of them to establish a stronger presence in our lives. So we need to pay close attention to his movements.
The first part of this book lays out the biblical and theological foundations for our warfare with the Devil. The second part offers aids for the battle: Church documents, scriptural texts, words and anecdotes from the saints, prayers and hymns, and further resources for study.
The primary purpose of this manual, then, is to help everyday Catholics recognize, resist, and overcome the Enemy’s attacks in their own lives and the lives of those for whom they bear responsibility (such as parents have for their children). For this reason, the book is for private use, and its prayers are not intended for use in public deliverance ministry. Nor is it intended for use in performing exorcisms, which can be legitimately carried out only by priests.
Our hope is that countless Catholics, and other Christians as well, will find this manual so helpful that they will carry it with them and make frequent use of it. For this reason, the book has been produced in a sturdy, compact edition that allows you to keep it handy and refer to it often.
As you struggle daily with the Enemy of your soul, we encourage you to “fight the good fight of the faith” (1 Tim 6:12). And we stand with you as comrades in the strife, joining our prayers to yours that Our Father in heaven will “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One” (see Mt 6:13).
P AUL T HIGPEN, P H. D .
E DITOR, TAN B OOKS
PART ONE
Preparing For Battle
1
KNOW YOUR ENEMY

Be sober, be watchful! For your adversary the Devil, as a roaring lion, goes about seeking someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith . . .
1 P ETER 5:8–9
L ike it or not, you are at war.
No matter who you are—whether or not you know it—you have a mortal enemy who wants to destroy you, not just in this life, but in the next.
No matter where you live on this planet—whether or not you can see it—you live on a hotly contested battlefield, and you can’t escape the conflict.
It’s a spiritual war with crucial consequences in your everyday life. And the outcome of that war will determine your eternal destiny.
The first rule of any type of warfare is to know your enemy. How can you fight an adversary you can’t identify? Worse yet, how can you avoid being a casualty in a battle going on all around you if you don’t even recognize that you’re in danger?
Your adversary is the Devil, with his army of demons. Your battle with him rages not only all around you, but also within you, a fierce conflict for control of your mind, your heart, and your ultimate destiny.
The world may scoff and tell you there is no Devil and no battle. But the world has been blinded to these realities by the Enemy himself. Its skepticism is part of his stealth strategy: Those who deny his existence are an easy prey.
Evidence of the battle
H ow do we know that demons are real? Consider first the accumulated evidence of confirming testimony. Throughout all history, peoples of vastly different cultures around the globe have affirmed the reality of evil spirits—even when they have disagreed about most other spiritual realities. Many of our contemporaries as well, who by any reasonable standard are intelligent and in their right mind, have testified to having encounters with demonic powers.
No doubt, some types of mental and physical illness have been wrongly attributed to demons, today as in the past. Nor can we deny that superstitions and legends about evil spirits abound. But these misguided ideas about the Devil don’t in themselves prove that he doesn’t exist, just as age-old beliefs about a flat earth don’t prove that our planet doesn’t exist.
Skeptics may demand “scientific” evidence. But what kind of relevant evidence would scientists be capable of measuring? The natural sciences measure time, matter, energy, and motion; the social sciences analyze human behavior. Demons have no physical bodies, and they aren’t human. We can’t put them in test tubes or subject them to psychoanalysis.
The most, then, that scientists can do is to observe the effects of demons on the physical world or on human behavior. But the prevailing mentality among scientists will press them to seek other explanations for such phenomena, even when these explanations are utterly inadequate.
In any case, for Catholics and other Christians the issue should be settled. A number of passages in the Bible testify to the existence of the Devil and his evil allies. (See chapter 8, “ Scriptures for the Battle .”) The Gospel accounts in particular record that Jesus Christ Himself conversed with Satan. Our Lord’s debate with the Devil in the wilderness was not simply some inner dialogue with Himself about temptation.
Christ referred to demons on more than one occasion, and casting evil spirits out of those who were possessed was a striking and indispensable aspect of His mission. Of course, some interpreters have claimed that when Christ cast out evil spirits, He was simply healing a physical or mental disorder misunderstood as demonic possession. But we need only reply that on at least one occasion, at Christ’s command, the demons left their human host to take possession of animals instead.
You can’t cast a medical disorder out of a man into a pig. If Christ knew what He was doing—as Christians must insist—and if the Gospel account is historically reliable—as Christians must also insist—then we must conclude that the forces described there as evil spirits are pr