Temptations And The Tempter

A week ago I wrote in a footnote that temptation in and of itself is not evil but the inability to resist it is [1].  While resisting one luscious temptation after another offered by others everywhere is not easy, especially when the next temptation is even more luring, when it excites and heightens even more our deep seated desires, whatever they maybe at the moment, resisting the urge to tempt another [2] with increasing intensity, each time with an even redder and sweeter and more fragrant "forbidden" fruit in order to exhume another's forsaken debaucheries is more difficult, because when one is the tempter, he/she has already succumbed to the tenacious grip of the Dark Archangel of All Temptations and is already doing the work of Satan.

It is very difficult to see ourselves as slaves of Satan even though every day most of us inevitably do some of its work, either deliberately or unknowingly.  None of us has the power to overcome Satan's will and dominance over us without prayer.

Adam, a creation of God, given his Free Will and everything else any human would ever want without having to work for any of it, was unable to resist the Serpent's one and only temptation because the Evil One is powerful.  It took the Son of God, Himself a part of the Holy Trinity, to be able to freely resist and reject without reservation the advances of Satan [3] and the Mother of God, conceived without Sin by the Holy Spirit, to do the same.

Accordingly, prayers are the salvation of our souls and the souls of those for whom we pray.  I believe it to be worthwhile to place God daily on our minds, on our lips and in our hearts.

God Bless.



[1] http://lemomentdepaix.blogspot.com/2013/09/another-thought-on-good-and-evil_7.
[2] Although I maintain that a temptation is not in and of itself evil, it does not follow that being the tempter is not evil.  The tempter is evil.  Temptation has to exist for Free Will to veer away from all that is good without being asked to do so.  What an entreater of temptation does is to manipulate and deceive Free Will to embrace what is evil -- that is an active force of evil and has in its center the energy and very essence of Evil.
[3] Martyrs and saints had been able to withstand Satan's beckonings, bribes or torments with the grace of God.  None of them had lived their entire lives without Original Sin and its progeny in thought or in deed.  If any of them had, then he/she would have been like the Blessed Virgin Mary Who was entirely human and entirely sinless, and there has been no record of anyone before or since who has been so blessed.