Temptation

Ash Wednesday 2018 began on February 14th, Valentine's Day, a day of love, but coinciding with Ash Wednesday brings to mind not the possessive and fleeting romantic love compelled by the instincts of the flesh of man but Christ's sacrificial and abiding unconditional love compelled by the Holy Spirit that is united with God and the Son Whose sufferings ought to be on the mind often throughout the Lenten period.

Suffering did not begin from without; it began with a temptation [1].  While suffering continues to this day, so do temptations.  Below is a paragraph on temptation quoted from Divinum Officium, pre-Trident Monastic's Ad Matutinum's reading for February 18, 2018 [2]:


Reading 9 
We ought to know that temptation worketh through three forms. There is, first, the suggestion; then the delectation [3]; lastly, the consent. When we are tempted, it often happenth that we fall into delectation, and even into consent, because in the sinful flesh of which we are begotten, we carry in ourselves matter to favour the attack. But God, when He took Flesh in the womb of the Virgin, and came into the world without sin, did so without having in Himself anything of this lusting of the flesh against the spirit. It was possible therefore for Him to be tempted in the first stage, namely suggestion; but there was nothing in His Mind in which delectation could fix its teeth. And thus all the temptation which He endured from the devil was without, and none within Him.


[1] http://www.usccb.org/bible/genesis/3
[2] http://divinumofficium.com/cgi-bin/horas/officium.pl
[3] Dictionary.com  defines delectation as "delight; enjoyment." See http://www.dictionary.com/browse/delectation