Tag: Temptation

Giving Him Our Love and Trust

Early in the 20th century, there was a man in Scotland—we’ll call him Owen—who, as a boy of fifteen, had fallen and broken his back. As a result, he was confined to his bed for the next forty years, all the while in terrible pain. Nevertheless, his...

The Path that Leads to Eternal Life

St. Ephrem, a deacon and theologian who lived in the 4th century, was pondering the question of why God allows good people to be tempted; after all, he thought, it would seem reasonable that He would want to spare His children this difficulty...

Faith and Religion

As I have pointed out many times before, there is a basic difference between faith and religion. In a nutshell: people of religion spend their life looking for a Deity who is convenient and who can grant them what they request of him according to...

‘Do Not Abandon Us to Temptation’

This is the recent change made by Pope Francis to the Italian translation of the Lord’s Prayer. A similar alteration has also been made in French: ‘Do not let us fall into temptation’. On the face of it, both changes remove an uncomfortable...

The Improbable Way is the Right Way

In order to appreciate and benefit from what the Church offers to our consideration every first Sunday of Lent there are several facets of the narrative of the temptations of Jesus in the desert that we have to keep before our eyes. We have to see...

An Interior Tug-of-War

One of my fondest memories from my college days at Holy Cross was the annual spring intramurals. While there were a variety of events, the tug-of-war had the greatest impact on my memory. The contest pitted the most brawny and surliest behemoths of...

Meditations on a Baseball

One of the lighter sides of Barack Obama’s first presidential victory was his modest admission that he was still struggling with his “vice” of cigarette smoking. I am certain this was one trait that appealed to millions of voters who occupied seats...

The Corruption of Goodness

You and I have prayed The Lord’s Prayer countless numbers of times. In it we always ask God to “lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” Some translations of that famous prayer have it “and subject us not into the trial.” Just what is...