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| Image by Denis Doukhan from Pixabay |
Day eight at Fish Eaters.
Day eight at The Catholic Company.
Today's reading from the Imitation of Christ gives some solid advice about temptation. We'll always experience temptations in this life—as the book of Job says, "The life of man upon earth is a warfare." We're warned not to simply flee temptations (although we should avoid those near occasions of sin), but to learn to overcome those temptations with God's help. We should not put ourselves into these situations, but when they come, overcoming the temptation will teach us the virtuous way.
Indeed, it is suggested that temptations are useful:
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.
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