Spiritual struggle
The temptations of Satan
Satan tries to draw souls away from God through temptation.
Christians, through spiritual struggle, prayer, faith and obedience to God’s commandments, must not accept Satan through his persuasive urgings to evil.
Satan’s strategy is always the same in convincing man that a life lived in disobedience and sin is better than one lived in obedience to God.
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Satan works to separate man from God
"The devil’s last trick was to spread the word of his death». The French agnostic André Gide (1859-1951): «I do not believe in the devil; but it is precisely what the devil hopes: that we do not believe in him".
(Giovanni Papini - Writer, Franciscan tertiary)
Satan's ordinary action is to tempt man to make him rebel against God and drag him to where he is. And falling is extremely easy, so much so that even the Lord warns us: «watch and pray so as not to fall into temptation. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak"
(Mt 26,41).
Even the most careful vigilance is not enough to prevent us from falling into guilt, as God's grace is necessary. In fact, many fall precisely because they have distanced themselves from the teachings of the Gospel, from prayer, and from the sacraments. Without prayer it is impossible to resist the temptations of the devil; Saint Alfonso de' Liguori said: "he who prays is certainly saved, he who doesn't pray is certainly damned."
The devil is cunning, and his technique is always repeated identically, as in the "case" of Adam and Eve. The temptation begins with an apparently innocent approach, but which hides dangerous pitfalls: «why don't you eat from that fruit?», and Eve replies: «we can eat from all the fruits there are, but not from this tree. The Lord told us that if we eat it we will die."
The serpent insinuates the poison of doubt, asserting the truths of God as untrue. Satan drags us to evil, making us deny the words of God: it is not true, you will not suffer any harm by doing what has been forbidden to you, on the contrary you will experience things that you didn't know before, you will overcome every taboo. The troublemaker will try to convince us that sin does not exist, but only useful and beneficial experiences exist, and he will incite us to try them all.
And this is how the devil mainly blows on the fire of our three great passions: sex, wealth, success; and this is how his action, unopposed, can make its way through those accesses that open up before it and which are represented by all the other vices.
God, however, has given us for our defense and salvation the observance of the Decalogue, of which certainly the most disregarded of the commandments is the first: "I am the Lord your God". We should continually turn our thoughts to God and reflect on the fact that everything we have been given comes from Him, that God is love and mercy, that He sent and sacrificed His Son to redeem us from sin, that He created us for heaven, to save us. And even if we were to sin again, he gave us the way to repent, to confess to be absolved from our miseries. If we cannot think of Him, how is it possible to love Him with all our heart, with all our mind and with all our strength? If we do not love God and are not united with Him, we will fall into every form of idolatry and belief in false gods.
Another of the most violated commandments is the sixth: "do not commit impure acts". Even if in itself it is not the most serious sin, because the most serious sins are those of pride and arrogance, nevertheless due to human weakness it is the most common and easiest sin to fall into. Furthermore, if it is written in the Decalogue not to commit adultery, it is equally true that there are many passages in the Bible, as in the Gospels, in which other sins against chastity are listed, which are not derived from direct acts of adultery; the Lord is demanding, he wants our pure heart and, when Jesus tells us "whoever looks at a woman with desire for her will have committed adultery with her", he is terrible in expressing the judgment that this precept implies; and then certain girls who dress inappropriately or certain films which feature extremely provocative scenes are all "sources" of adultery which lead, in cascade, to all the other crimes against chastity.
Blessed are the pure in heart because they will see God, others will not see him: not seeing God means going to hell. It is so easy to fall into this fault that great and diligent observance is always necessary. The Lord urges us to be vigilant and to pray so as not to fall into temptation: with our own strength alone we cannot resist the pushes of evil and we are destined to succumb therefore, with this awareness, we must seek God's help through prayer and the sacraments.
We absolutely must not fall into the irremediable and terrible mistake of justifying sin, of sugarcoating it, believing that what is bad is actually good, because with this belief there will be nothing left to do, any act of repentance will be impossible, repentance and conversion.
A particular action of the devil is also that of giving the mind and body disorders of an evil nature, which occur with a certain frequency. How can you avoid them, how can you get rid of them? With the teachings that have always been warmly suggested to us: prayer, fasting, renunciations, frequency of the sacraments, Eucharistic adoration and often the sacrament of confession. «Watch and pray […]. The spirit is ready but the flesh is weak".
