Castles occupy a special place in the modern world. These ancient structures, built with simple tools, stand long after the empires and principalities they were designed to protect have fallen. We consider these buildings to be places of strength and power, but they are ultimately just unique architecture. What is the use of a castle if there is nothing to guard, defend, and protect?

The Christian life is both gift and mystery. It is a multi-layered gift that must be unpacked one layer at a time. Each layer brings new meaning, significance, and understanding, a new joy to discover at every stage. It is mystery because while we can comprehend some of its deeper truths, it is impossible for us to fully understand it. The proposition is simple: accept the natural law inscribed on our hearts and follow God’s law, and we shall be truly free. They are rules written not to ensnare us or to subjugate us, but to foil anything which threatens our freedom.

It is easy for us to accept greater than 90% of its precepts without concern or even much effort. They are those things to which we are not naturally predisposed and therefore are not a struggle. It is in the last 10% that our faith is won and lost. These are the parts of God’s law that we’d prefer to tinker with, those inconvenient things that get in the way of how we think our life ought to be lived. Though we do not possess the limitless vision of God, or His purest of pure intentions, we toy with a level of permissiveness of those very things that seek our destruction. He is the athletic trainer setting out the training program, and we are the unfit participant proffering our tweaks to the plan.

We are body, mind, soul, and heart. Our consciousness exists in our mind, that fortress of intricate design. It is where we live our daily lives. It is where our thoughts begin and are developed. All of this occurs quietly to the outside world and loudly to us. Everything that happens within our mind is between us and God, unreadable and unknowable unless we choose to share it with those around us. It is in this sacred and personal space that the Christian life, and love itself, is desired, willed, and chosen.

A castle is a powerful structure, but its value is not in its architecture or protective design. Its value is the ability to protect something worthy within it. The people, stores, foodstuffs, and goods kept safely behind its iron gate are its reason for being, so long as they are happy and healthy within its walls. A long duration siege is a battle of wills. The aggressor can simply wait until the food is gone, and the well has run dry. Then, lacking resources, the castle is less of a protective barrier and more of a prison for those who dwell inside.

The fortress of our mind is where we do daily battle to merit the rich heritage of which we are inheritors. It is where we choose those things that allow us to know, love, and serve God, and it is where we reject and defend against those things that seek to steal our joy and suffocate the life within us. But the fortress of our mind can only defend us when it is fueled by the garden of the heart. The garden is what provides those things that support and sustain our fight. It is the place where virtue is developed and strengthened, where the Word of God refreshes us, and where the good fruits we need to eat come into bloom. When our interior life is strong, when our garden is producing a perennial harvest, the fortress has something within it worthy of protection.

The garden of the heart must be attended to daily, weeds must be pulled, new seeds planted, fertile soil encouraged, and green shoots nurtured. All of that diligent labor on ourselves, on more perfectly forming our life to Christ, provides our mind and our soul the strength it needs to say yes to God and no to every other thing.

There are difficult days, there are moments when the lights grow dark and the negativity feels overwhelming. There are days, weeks, and months when it feels like we are about to slip beneath the surface, overwhelmed by the current and the height of the waves. But we only lose to the current when we stop swimming, the stores only run out when we stop growing, and the siege only succeeds when we give up.

In every dark moment, in every place of despair, in every moment of regret, at every point of failure, we do not reside alone in the fortress of our mind. We are accompanied by the God who gave everything for us. God who promised to be with us until the end of the Age, and said that nothing would prevail against us. God who designed not just the intricacies of the human body, but gave us the fortress of the mind to defend and protect us, and the garden of the heart to support and sustain.