To the Band of Brothers: September 26, 2022

On one of my trips this summer, I was scrolling through the index of movies I could watch on my American Airlines flight. It’s never an easy task. Depending on the length of your flight, you have to make sure you don’t start watching something you can’t finish. There’s nothing worse than hearing the pilot tell flight attendants to prepare for landing when you still have 45 minutes of a movie to go. How does it end? Does the killer get caught? Is the monster finally eliminated, or is the alien sent back to his home planet with his tail or tentacles between his legs? Will there be a sequel?

Fortunately, this particular flight was to Spain. I could have watched “Gone with the Wind” three times and still had enough time to watch a couple of episodes of “The Office.” It’s on airplanes I get my chance to catch up on movies. Sometimes, it’s even worth seeing one for a second or third time. Some movies are actually worth watching a hundred times. For example, I’ve seen “Raiders of the Lost Ark” so many times I can recite the lines in my sleep. As I've mentioned before, I cringe every time I run into a student who tells me he hasn’t seen it. What a deprived childhood for the young man who hasn’t been exposed to Indiana Jones.

On my flight to Spain, I came across “Braveheart.” What a great film! This one I’ve seen a few times as well. Only this time, I noticed a line I had not particularly noticed before. In the scene, the Scottish rebel William Wallace leads his band of kilt-wearing brothers to a field where they confront the English invaders. The leaders of the clansmen have their faces painted blue and are mounted on horses. As both sides wait to see who makes the first move, a small delegation of  Englishmen ride out to the center of the field for an attempt at negotiations. Just before the Scotts ride out to meet them, Wallace approaches. The head clansman stops him and asks what he is going to do. Wallace looks back at him and says, “I’m going to pick a fight.”

I knew the line was awesome when I found myself apologizing to the guy sitting in front of me because I had just punched the back of his seat. How could I have missed that line in the past? Here you have this lone man dead set on his conviction that Scotland should be freed from the oppressive clutches of the English, and he is riding out to confront them not to negotiate or bargain, but to pick a fight.

Then I thought, it’s like being a Christian. C.S. Lewis wrote, “Christianity is a ‘fighting religion’ – not in the sense of hatred or violence directed at other persons, but rather in the spiritual struggle against the evil in ourselves and in the world around us, where our weapons are love, justice, courage, and self-giving.” We need to see ourselves as being in a spiritual battle. St. Ignatius of Loyola referred to it all the time. He claimed the devil is just as interested in your soul as God. The difference, of course, is the devil is interested for his own sake; God is interested for yours. You were created by God and we belong to Him and, like St. Augustine said, “our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”

There is a curious and powerful image I came across a few years ago that curiously illustrates this fight. An unknown artist painted an image of the Blessed Mother punching the devil in the nose. That’s right, just like I described. Mary is punching Satan right smack-dab in the nose. She’s not dialoguing with him, not riding out on a horse to negotiate with him, not engaging him in conversation. She is simply walking up to him and punching him in the nose. 

In a world that claims to value dialogue, encourages us to work towards finding common ground, and insists we oftentimes need to compromise our standards for the sake of peaceful resolutions, Mary tells us there is simply no dialoguing with the devil. Mary tells us there is no backing down from this fight because it means the very salvation of our souls. What’s wrong is wrong, what’s unacceptable is unacceptable, and there is nothing wrong with standing up to it and punching it right in the nose. No cowering, no compromising, no agreeing to disagree, just knowing what God calls us to and living it to the fullest extent.

Auspice Maria,