Beware If You have No
Temptations
Whom does the devil pursue must? Perhaps you
are thinking that it must be those who are tempted most; these would
undoubtedly be the habitual drunkards, the scandalmongers, the immodest and
shameless people who wallow in moral filth, and the miser, who hoards in all
sorts of ways. No, my dear brethren no, it is not these people. On the
contrary, the Devil despises them, or else he holds onto them, lest they not
have a long enough time in which to do evil, because the longer they live, the
more their bad example will drag souls into Hell.
Indeed, if the
Devil had pursued this lewd and shameless old fellow too closely, he might have
shortened the latter's life by fifteen or twenty years, and he would not then
have destroyed the virginity of that young girl by plunging her into the
unspeakable mire of his indecencies; he would not, again, have seduced that
wife, nor would he have taught his evil lessons to that young man, who will
perhaps continue to practice them until his death. If the Devil had prompted this
thief to rob on every occasion, he would long since have ended on the scaffold
and so he would not have induced his neighbour to follow his example. If the
Devil had urged this drunkard to fill himself unceasingly with wine, he would
long ago have perished in his debaucheries, instead of which, by living longer,
he has made many others like himself. If the Devil had taken away the life of
this musician, of that dancehall owner, of this cabaret keeper, in some raid or
scuffle, or on any other occasion, how many souls would there be who, without
these people, would not be damned and who now will be? St. Augustine teaches us
that the Devil does not bother these people very much; on the contrary, he
despises them and spits upon them.
So, you will ask
me, who then are the people most tempted?
They are these, my
friends; note them carefully. The people most tempted are those who are ready,
with the grace of God, to sacrifice everything for the salvation of their poor
souls, who renounce all those things, which most people eagerly seek. It is not
one devil only who tempts them, but millions seek to entrap them. We are told
that St. Francis of Assisi and all his religious were gathered on an open
plain, where they had built little huts of rushes. Seeing the extraordinary
penances which were being practiced, St. Francis ordered that all instruments
of penance should be brought out, whereupon his religious produced them in
bundles. At this moment there was one young man to whom God gave the grace to
see his Guardian Angel. On the one side he saw all of these good religious, who
could not satisfy their hunger for penance, and, on the other, his Guardian
Angel allowed him to see a gathering of eighteen thousand devils, who were
holding counsel to see in what way they could subvert these religious by
temptation. One of the devils said: "You do not understand this at all.
These religious are so humble; ah, what wonderful virtue, so detached from
themselves, so attached to God! They have a superior who leads them so well
that it is impossible to succeed in winning them over. Let us wait until their
superior is dead, and then we shall try to introduce among them young people
without vocations who will bring about a certain slackening of spirit, and in
this way we shall gain them."
A little further
on, as he entered the town, he saw a devil, sitting by himself beside the gate
into the town, whose task was to tempt all of those who were inside. This saint
asked his Guardian Angel why it was that in order to tempt this group of religious
there had been so many thousands of devils while for a whole town there was but
one -- and that one sitting down. His good angel told him that the people of
the town had not the same need of temptations, that they had enough bad in
themselves, while the religious were doing good despite all the traps which the
Devil could lay for them.
The first
temptation, my dear brethren, which the Devil tries on anyone who has begun to
serve God better is in the matter of human respect. He will no longer dare to
be seen around; he will hide himself from those with whom heretofore he had
been mixing and pleasure seeking. If he should be told that he has changed a
lot, he will be ashamed of it! What people are going to say about him is
continually in his mind, to the extent that he no longer has enough courage to
do good before other people. If the Devil cannot get him back through human
respect, he will induce an extraordinary fear to possess him that his
confessions are not good, that his confessor does not understand him, that
whatever he does will be all in vain, that he will be damned just the same,
that he will achieve the same result in the end by letting everything slide as
by continuing to fight, because the occasions of sin will prove too many for
him.
Why is it, my dear
brethren, that when someone gives no thought at all to saving his soul, when he
is living in sin, he is not tempted in the slightest, but that as soon as he
wants to change his life, in other words, as soon as the desire to give his life
to God comes to him, all Hell falls upon him? Listen to what St. Augustine has
to say: "Look at the way," he tells us, "in which the Devil
behaves towards the sinner. He acts like a jailer who has a great many
prisoners locked up in his prison but who, because he has the key in his
pocket, is quite happy to leave them, secure in the knowledge that they cannot
get out. This is his way of dealing with the sinner who does not consider the
possibility of leaving his sin behind. He does not go to the trouble of
tempting him. He looks upon this as time wasted because not only is the sinner
not thinking of leaving him, but the Devil does not desire to multiply his
chains. It would be pointless, therefore, to tempt him. He allows him to live
in peace, if, indeed, it is possible to live in peace when one is in sin. He
hides his state from the sinner as much as is possible until death, when he
then tries to paint a picture of his life so terrifying as to plunge him into
despair. But with anyone who has made up his mind to change his life, to give
himself up to God, that is another thing altogether."
While St.
Augustine lived in sin and evil, he was not aware of anything by which he was
tempted. He believed himself to be at peace, as he tells us himself. But from
the moment that he desired to turn his back upon the Devil, he had to struggle
with him, even to the point of losing his breath in the fight. And that lasted
for five years. He wept the most bitter of tears and employed the most austere
of penances: "I argued with him," he says, "in my chains. One
day I thought myself victorious, the next I was prostrate on the earth again.
This cruel and stubborn war went on for five years. However, God gave me the
grace to be victorious over my enemy."
You may see, too,
the struggle which St. Jerome endured when he desired to give himself to God
and when he had the thought of visiting the Holy Land. When he was in Rome, he
conceived a new desire to work for his salvation. Leaving Rome, he buried
himself in a fearsome desert to give himself over to everything with which his
love of God could inspire him. Then the Devil, who foresaw how greatly his
conversion would affect others, seemed to burst with fury and despair.
There was not a
single temptation that he spared him. I do not believe that there is any saint
who was as strongly tempted as he. This is how he wrote to one of his friends:
"My dear friend, I wish to confide in you about my affliction and the
state to which the Devil seeks to reduce me. How many times in this vast solitude,
which the heat of the sun makes insupportable, how many times the pleasures of
Rome have come to assail me! The sorrow and the bitterness with which my soul
is filled cause me, night and day, to shed floods of tears. I proceed to hide
myself in the most isolated places to struggle with my temptations and there to
weep for my sins. My body is all disfigured and covered with a rough hair
shirt. I have no other bed than the naked ground and my only food is coarse
roots and water, even in my illnesses. In spite of all these rigours, my body
still experiences thoughts of the squalid pleasures with which Rome is
poisoned; my spirit finds itself in the midst of those pleasant companionships
in which I so greatly offended God.
In this desert to
which I have condemned myself to avoid Hell, among these sombre rocks, where I
have no other companions than the scorpions and the wild beasts, my spirit
still bums my body, already dead before myself, with an impure fire; the Devil
still dares to offer it pleasures to taste. I behold myself so humiliated by
these temptations, the very thought of which makes me die with horror, and not
knowing what further austerities I should exert upon my body to attach it to
God, that I throw myself on the ground at the foot of my crucifix, bathing it
with my tears, and when I can weep no more I pick up stones and beat my breast
with them until the blood comes out of my mouth, begging for mercy until the
Lord takes pity upon me.
Is there anyone
who can understand the misery of my state, desiring so ardently to please God
and to love Him alone?
Yet I see myself
constantly prone to offend Him. What sorrow this is for me! Help me, my dear
friend, by the aid of your prayers, so that I may be stronger in repelling the
Devil, who has sworn my eternal damnation."
These, my dear
brethren, are the struggles to which God permits his great saints to be
exposed. Alas, how we are to be pitied if we are not fiercely harried by the
Devil!
According to all appearances, we are the friends of the Devil: he lets
us live in a false peace, he lulls us to sleep under the pretence that we have
said some good prayers, given some alms, that we have done less harm than
others. According to our standard, my dear brethren, if you were to ask, for
instance, this pillar of the cabaret if the Devil tempted him, he would answer
quite simply that nothing was bothering him at all. Ask this young girl, this
daughter of vanity, what her struggles are like, and she will tell you
laughingly that she has none at all, that she does not even know what it is to
be tempted. There you see, my dear brethren, the most terrifying temptation of
all, which is not to be tempted.
There you see the
state of those whom the Devil is preserving for Hell. If I dared, I would tell
you that he takes good care not to tempt or torment such people about their
past lives, lest their eyes be opened to their sins.
The greatest of
all evils is not to be tempted because there are then grounds for believing
that the Devil looks upon us as his property and that he is only awaiting our
deaths to drag us into Hell. Nothing could be easier to understand. Just
consider the Christian who is trying, even in a small way, to save his soul.
Everything around
him inclines him to evil; he can hardly lift his eyes without being tempted, in
spite of all his prayers and penances. And yet a hardened sinner, who for the
past twenty years has been wallowing in sin, will tell you that he is not
tempted! So much the worse, my friend, so much the worse!
That is precisely what should make you
tremble -- that you do not know what temptations are. For to say that you are
not tempted is like saying the Devil no longer exists or that he has lost all
his rage against Christian souls." If you have no temptations," St.
Gregory tells us, "it is because the devils are your friends, your
leaders, and your shepherds. And by allowing you to pass your poor life
tranquilly, to the end of your days, they will drag you down into the
depths." St. Augustine tells us that the greatest temptation is not to
have temptations because this means that one is a person who has been rejected,
abandoned by God, and left entirely in the grip of one's own passions.
By Saint John Vianney
Photo Credit wakingphotolife
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