I don't like talking about myself...unless there's a lesson in it for you
It happens after every vacation. It follows a period of difficult but willful and necessary disconnect from the grind of daily life—personal as well as professional—making every effort to “turn it all off,” to detach mentally as well as physically from the work of ordinary life so that you can relax and rejuvenate. Then, once vacation is over, you plunge back into what took you days, a week, or more to detach from.
It happens to all of us on some level, but for me it takes on a particular form as a Catholic communicator.
It’s Battle Fatigue.
It might also be called Warrior Fatigue, but that changes the subject just a bit. It’s the warrior who is fatigued, but it’s the battle that causes the fatigue. “Warrior Fatigue” puts the focus on the weary warrior. “Battle Fatigue” keeps the focus on what has made him weary. The distinction is important because sometimes exhaustion is not evidence that the warrior has become weak. It is evidence that he has been long in the fight.
The battle has long left me weary, my friends. I feel it in my spirit and in my bones—I’m tired.
“I’m tired, Lord” is something that has crept into my prayers for years now. Lately, what’s been added to it is, “...dreadfully tired.”
I feel it all the more these days. The grind of social media and comment wars; writing, podcasting, editing, marketing, and distributing the work constitute only some of the strain. On top of that is probably a heavier weight, which is the mental work, from which there’s practically no real rest at all. To be a communicator, you have to be thinking about everything in order to communicate about it.
In an apostolate like mine, you have to remain constantly attentive to the Church, the culture, and the world where the two meet. You have to keep pace and keep your finger on the pulse. That mental work is part of the process, and without the mental work, there's nothing to speak or write intelligently about.
After vacation, it's hard to be instantly plunged back into these things that take days, a week, or more to detach from. My immediate reaction when I try to do that is, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“I’m tired, Lord. Dreadfully tired!”
I just want a life of peace, a life of tranquility where all I have to deal with are the ordinary and normal stressors of life and family. I spent so much of my life, literally two-thirds of it, on the battlefield. Now there’s something in me, and it has been present for a long time, that just wants to leave the battlefield and tend peacefully to my "farm".
That is my sincere ambition, but it is not the warrior’s way.
This is a scene from Rocky IV that really spoke to me a number of years ago, at a time when I really needed to hear it. In the rest of this essay I'm going to call on some of the lines in this scene, so don't skip it
That scene was a revelation to me—a reminder that hit me like a slap to the face—at a pivotal point in my life years ago. Maybe I'll share that story with Inner Circle members some time.
It comes to mind again today, not because I’ve forgotten the message in it, but because it says more powerfully the lesson that I want to share with you today.
“We don’t even have a choice. We’re born with a killer instinct that you can’t turn off and on. We have to be right in the middle of the action because we’re the warriors. And without some damn war to fight, then the warrior may as well be dead.”
I feel that! I really feel like I don’t have a choice—not really. I'm a Catholic communicator. God made me this way. He made me who I am, and to choose against it—to permanently exit the battlefield of apologetics, evangelization, and formation—would be to choose against my nature and to act against God’s design.
The only way not to find myself in the middle of the action with some damn war to fight would be to shut my eyes and to cover my ears. Because as long as I can see and as long as I can hear, I’m always spotting the action, and I’m always drawn to it, even if I don’t want to be. Even if I want to just give up and say, “Let it all burn. I’m going back to my farmhouse.”
I know that what will really happen if I try to do that. I will indeed go back to that farmhouse, but just to dig out my old shield and my old sword, and then march out onto that battlefield, shouting up to heaven, “Let’s do this again, Lord. Holy angels and saints, be at my side. Lord, help me to do your will and only your will. Lord Jesus, make me dangerous in these moments—but just for today, and then let me rest.”
But it’s always a years-long day.
I’m talking about myself here, but at the end of the day, I'm really talking about you. I don't like talking about myself unless there's a lesson in it for you.
Your Battle Fatigue
You have all felt a similar fatigue in Catholic life. It’s the fatigue of the spiritual life. It’s the fatigue of Orthodoxy. It’s the fatigue of your duties as a Catholic and as a Christian. It’s the fatigue of purging yourselves of vice and trying to build virtue, and the fatigue of discovering again and again just how attached even to minor vices you really are.
It’s the fatigue of swimming in a world full of temptation unlike anything it has been in generations past. It’s the fatigue of wanting to understand why God sets things in order this way or that, and why he allows such and such a thing to happen in our lives. It’s the fatigue of never getting the answer that you long for. It’s the fatigue of instead having to search for the answer, only to find more questions—to be, as Homer said, a sadder and wiser man or woman, because wisdom is a crushing crown.
"We’re tired, Lord. Dreadfully tired."
But here's the reality check, my people. We don’t even have a choice. Because each and all of us have been courted by the Truth, by the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, by the Truth of the Holy Gospel, by the teaching of the Holy Church.
We have been courted and won over by the Truth; unable to betray it, even if sometimes we resist it. We may sometimes want to "become like regular people" but "You can't change what you really are" once the Truth has become part of who you really are.
The Warrior Spirit
Deep inside each of us is a warrior spirit. The battle is unique to each person, even where our struggles overlap. Universally, one battlefield is the interior self, but what each person encounters there—and how the battle takes shape—is his own. Some of us are also called onto other battlefields.
It may be building a prayer life. It may be overcoming a particular vice. It may be the battlefield of hopelessness or the battlefield of pain and rage and anger that we find holds us back from our eternal destiny and the crown of victory.
Yet still we fight. Because God has made us this way.
Restless Warriors' Hearts
Our hearts are restless until they rest in him, as St. Augustine taught. We were made for God, and so we are made to fall in love with Truth. So we fight through the trial and tribulation of everything that separates us from it—within ourselves and outside ourselves.
The alternative is to live comfortably but inauthentically. It’s to deny who we truly are, as God made us. It’s to betray our nature.
And what do we win after all of that—after trying to become "like regular people"? Well, without some damn war to fight, then the warrior may as well be dead. And isn’t that what we truly are when we decide that we’ve had enough, and that we're done fighting?
Battle Fatigue is real. It’s natural to feel it, and it’s okay to acknowledge it. It’s true that we find rest in the Lord, but it’s also true that to be on the path to our eternal destiny—sainthood, Heaven—it’s natural, even necessary, that we struggle and toil, because becoming like God is, by its nature, very hard to do.
So when you experience your own Battle Fatigue, here’s what I want you to do.
Rest where you can, and only when it’s prudent. Don’t lose your discipline, but try to modulate a bit if you find it helpful. Change your routines a little where you can.
Above all, remember this: Peace is absolutely essential! If you lose your peace, you’re losing the battle. Paradoxically, there must be peace even in war.
The enemy tries to draw us away from peace even more than he tries to tempt us to sin, because once he’s lured us away from peace, he can lead a soul just about anywhere he wants over time.
Whatever form your rest takes, let peace be the guiding principle. And never regard rest as inaction, or inaction as acceptable rest.
Hiding is not respite. It’s surrender.
Fight on, brothers and sisters. God is with you. Jesus goes before you. The saints are behind you. And I'm right there struggling with you all.
God be with you.
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