13 July 2020
Resisting Temptation
SO
LONG as we live in this world we cannot escape suffering and temptation. Whence
it is written in Job: “The life of man upon earth is a warfare.”4 Everyone,
therefore, must guard against temptation and must watch in prayer lest the
devil, who never sleeps but goes about seeking whom he may devour, find
occasion to deceive him. No one is so perfect or so holy but he is sometimes
tempted; man cannot be altogether free from temptation.
Yet
temptations, though troublesome and severe, are often useful to a man, for in
them he is humbled, purified, and instructed. The saints all passed through
many temptations and trials to profit by them, while those who could not resist
became reprobate and fell away. There is no state so holy, no place so secret
that temptations and trials will not come. Man is never safe from them as long
as he lives, for they come from within us—in sin we were born. When one
temptation or trial passes, another comes; we shall always have something to
suffer because we have lost the state of original blessedness.
Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation
of Christ, p18
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