What to do when tempted
By
Fr. ROY CIMAGALA,
roycimagala@gmail.com
March 8, 2025
OBVIOUSLY, the thing to do
is to immediately go to Christ who will show us and empower us with
the proper way to deal with the many temptations in our life. We
should never just be by ourselves when these temptations come,
thinking that we can rely solely on our own strength. Such thought
definitely would come from the tempters themselves – our wounded
flesh, the world’s allurements and the devil himself.
When we find this recourse
to Christ difficult to do, we should just force ourselves to be
humble, always acknowledging our helplessness before the forces of
evil, and begging our Lord to help us. This way we can even convert
these temptations into golden occasions to grow in our spiritual
life. St. Paul said so in so many words: “In all things God works
for the good of those who love him.” (Rom 8,28)
It’s only when we refer
these temptations to Christ that things get clarified. Let’s
remember that temptations will always make use of something
desirable, anchored on some good and true things which are subtly
and deceptively distorted and corrupted.
They will always appeal to
our weaknesses. Thus, if we would just use a little bit of common
sense, temptations can offer us some advantage since they point to
us where our weaknesses are, where we have to focus our efforts to
correct.
In a sense, temptations
encourage us to develop the virtues that are affected by them. They
remind us to be always humble and to ever depend on God rather than
on our powers alone.
And so, we have to work
hard in building up this relation with God if we want to keep some
safe distance away from temptations. If our love for God is hot, the
devil and the other tempters will find it hard to get near us, just
like a fly would not get close to a hot soup.
Our usual problem is that
we tend to be by ourselves when temptations come, and to rely simply
on our powers which actually are already heavily compromised since
our wounded flesh is an ally of the enemies of our soul. We always
have a Trojan horse in our personal lives.
Without God’s grace we
simply cannot do anything except to fall, if not soon then later. It
would just be a matter of time. But when we are with God, we get to
see the whole picture, and can distinguish the poison embedded in
the many good, beautiful, true and sweet things that the temptations
come with.
From there we would know
what strategy to take. Very often, what can be effective is simply
to ignore the temptation and to pour scorn on the evil spirits
behind the temptation. This is effective if in the first place our
spiritual life is healthy, with faith and love for God and for souls
vibrant and strong.
But then when such faith
and love is not that strong, the temptations can gain some foothold
in us. When we notice this, our reaction should be just to stay calm
and not to dare to get overexcited. When there is a storm around, we
usually would stay home or at a safe place to ride it out, and avoid
going around.
The same with this
particular case of temptations gaining some foothold in us. It
simply means that God is allowing these temptations to come to show
us where we are weak, and therefore where we should do something
about.