How Does Temptation Work? | Fr. Joseph-Anthony Kress & Fr. Gregory Pine
September 26, 2024
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: And this is Father Joseph-Anthony Kress.
Fr. Gregory: And welcome to Godsplaining. Thanks to all those who support us. If you enjoy the show, please consider making a monthly donation on Patreon. Be sure to like and subscribe to Godsplaining wherever you listen to your podcasts. Okay, so Father Joseph-Anthony…
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Talk to me.
Fr. Gregory: Here we are back at it in the fall, slash late summer, slash whatever it is. I don’t know exactly how do seasons work because it seems like like fall is three and a half weeks long. Spring is like six and a half weeks long. Winter’s like seven months long. Summer’s like, I don’t, so it seems like this whole three months, a new season is somewhat latitudinally based. Had you make sense of your seasonal experience in life? Do you? –
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: No.
Fr. Gregory: Okay.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: I don’t even try. You just endure. I just go with it. You just go with it. I enjoy it. I’m like, oh, it’s fall. The leaves have changed. It’s beautiful. I get to wear flannel, which I don’t own. And so other people get to wear flannel. And I wish I was them. Should I get a flannel habit?
Fr. Gregory: You can’t rule it out. Yeah.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: I really–
Fr. Gregory: It’s been done.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: During the summer months when it’s super humid, like those are the months where I’m like, I should get a dry fit habit.
Fr. Gregory: Right.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Moisture wicking, Under Armour sponsored habit. So that would be awesome.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, if you could find moisture, wicking, and odor suppressing. –
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yes!
Fr. Gregory: I’d be interested. Yeah. Just keep me posted.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: For our listeners, if you know anybody that is on the cutting edge of a material sourcing in that, yeah, hook a brother up. Yeah, I don’t know, I don’t really think about how the seasons, they’re like magnets. I don’t know how they work.
Fr. Gregory: Right.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: But they do.
Fr. Gregory: Great Father Bonaventure instance.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Exactly. Yes, I just go with it.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, that’s good. I think I think about seasons, like when I feel fall approaching, I get pumped about fall, but then I already begin lamenting the loss of fall. It’s like you’re gonna betray me. Like, remember, fourth is gonna roll around. There’s going to be a cold snap. Why we call it a cold snap, I know not, but it’s going to be brutal. There’s going to be frost on the ground and all hope future joy will immediately be evacuated from my body by an alien, never mind.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: But, but I also think like when it comes to the seasons, I depend on fast food chains and capitalism to mark the change of seasons for me. Because they always change seasons before the seasons actually change, which then messes me up. Because then the actual season I’m in gets truncated because I’m like, oh, it’s still 80 degrees in humid, but you know what? It is pumpkin spice latte time. And so now I start drinking the pumpkin spice lattes. Or actually pumpkin cream cold brew, that’s where I go.
Fr. Gregory: There it is. I was gonna say, you don’t strike me as a pumpkin spice latte kind of guy.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: No, no, no, no, but many people are. I’m more of a pumpkin cream cold brew. That’s where it’s at. Or, you know, the winter time is like the Chick-fil-A peppermint milkshake.
Fr. Gregory: Exactly.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah.
Fr. Gregory: Peppermint chocolate chip.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: But like that starts in November.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah it does.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: But that’s not winter.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: So it just messes me.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah no. That’s, it’s funny because with Chick-fil-A I’m like kind of on again off again with their seasonal shakes because the problem with the peach shake is that the peaches are too big. And so you need to bring your own straw from Panera in order to have a sufficiently wide gauge.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Is it paper or plastic straw?
Fr. Gregory: It’s a plastic straw. I mean, you have to have saved this straw from like 11 years ago.
Exactly.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Fr. Gregory: Remember when they had like the icy, what were they called? The icy caramel and the icy mocha or whatever, but they had these awesome like frappuccino things. And they were delicious and they gave you these really thick straws so you can devour them in less than two minutes. So as to be on your merry way. But those straws are clutch, especially when you go to like Culver’s and get one of their milkshakes and here in the middle west, or if you go to Chick-fil-A…
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Middle west, way to pull that out of the bag.
Fr. Gregory: Thank you.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Just the full middle west.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so people need to know that mid is short in whatever mine. (laughing) Yeah, think about it. So, but the thing about seasons is that they can sometimes pose certain temptations. That is to say yeah, when a season rolls around, you’re tempted to skip the season, in the case of winter, you’re tempted to abandon yourself entirely to the season like summer or you’re tempted to I think we’re going to talk about temptation on the basis of these observations.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: I think so.
Fr. Gregory: It wasn’t necessarily a foregone conclusion when we pushed record. We said, “Let the Spirit lead and the spirit seems to be leading in the direction of temptation.” Which is paradoxical because the spirit doesn’t tempt.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: No.
Fr. Gregory: No, it’s not.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Other spirits do.
Fr. Gregory: So people have a lot of questions about temptation.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: True.
Fr. Gregory: About the philosophy of temptation, the theology of temptation, the phenomenology of temptation. Not really. No. They’re trying to make sense of their experience of temptation, the phenomenology of temptation, not really. They’re just really like, they’re trying to make sense of their experience of temptation.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: 1,000%.
Fr. Gregory: So when they do, where do you go first?
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah, when we start talking about temptations, I don’t wanna say one of my common experiences with temptations is actually in the confessional, and that tends to be where I kinda get a little perturbed, if you will, but I understand. There’s not a lot of good Catechesis in education in it, so I understand why it gets confused. So I hear it a lot in the confessional that people are confessing their temptations. And that’s where I get kind of a little perturbed and frustrated with it because I think we, from the very, very outset, we have to make very clear right now, temptations are not sins. Full stop. And you can experience the temptation and not sin. And it can be very disturbing, temptation can be very discouraging, temptation. It can be something that like really rattles you and shakes you to the core. But to always remember that a temptation is just a temptation. And a sin is an act of will, right? It’s an act of will and disobedience to love of God or love of neighbor. Like this is what we’re talking about. So when I’m sitting there and hearing confessions and I hear somebody come in and they say like, oh, you know, and the, since my last confession, you know, I want to confess that I was tempted to anger. I was tempted to lust or I was tempted to any number of sins. It’s like, okay, did you do them? No, no, no, I would never. Well, then not a sin, you know? And so I think that really from the outset, we want to be able to address and acknowledge the reality that temptations happen, they’re real, and we can talk a little bit about why we shouldn’t be scandalized by them, but I want to make us absurdly clear right now that our temptations are not sins. They’re just temptations until we begin to act on them.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah. So in light of that fact, I think people are gonna naturally follow up and say, well, how do I tell the difference?
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: True.
Fr. Gregory: Right? Because you can affirm that metaphysically.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah.
Fr. Gregory: But then how do I experience that phenomenologically? And I think one thing that we should say from the outset is we’re not going to be able to do it in such a way that you no longer have uncertainties or you no longer have doubts. But the point isn’t to have perfect conceptual clarity as to what’s going on in your interior life. The point is to give yourself to God with the confidence that God who is good and provident is going to conduct us further up and further into his Divine Life of the course of our human existence. Okay, so one of the images that like St. Francis DeSales uses is the image of seduction. So we’ll talk about like a damsel and then I’ll talk about a suitor, maybe an unwelcome suitor or a kind of nefarious suitor. He makes his approach, right? He proposes his intent and then the damsel ponders it in her heart and then she consents to it. And typically we have this proposal, this pondering and then this consent. And we would say like the pondering is kind of the level of temptation and the consenting is the level of sin. But again, fine shades within the pondering. How long? How seriously? How engaged? Do you have like criteria for that? Or do you have ways to help people think through that? Because I think that like they get to the sacrament of confession. They’re like, I probably should confess to be safe, which I think is a good. But then that will kind of feed back into a practice where they’re like, ah, you know, so then they begin to think, inordinately about how much pondering is going on or what type of pondering is going on. And then there’s a cycle of self-acusation on the basis of the pondering and then there’s pondering about the self-acusation and it just kind of gets out of control. So, how do you help people to think through that? Or how do you help people to break out of that? Are there kind of principles?
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: I use a similar but a different image and maybe this is helpful or not. But I use the image of somebody who, ’cause I get a lot of people like all of the experiences and temptation for a long time or whatever and I don’t know where my act of will was. Where did I consent in that? And one of the images I’ll use is that of sleepwalking. And I imagine you’re staying at a cabin on a lake somewhere, and you sleepwalk on a regular basis, right? And so you get up in the middle of night, you start sleepwalking, and you sleepwalk on the shore of the lake, and you end up getting into the water. You start walking into the water. And I don’t know if you’ve ever had those dreams where it seems like it’s real, and what’s happening in your dream, you actually think is actually happening. And so there’s this confusion about what that looks like. And so the hope in prayer is once your toes touch the water, you’ll snap out of the dream and into reality and realize what’s happening. But sometimes you walk into the water, sometimes it goes ankle deep and sometimes knee deeper up to your waist. But there’s going to become a point where you recognize I’m no longer dreaming and I’m in the water. So the question is, what do you do from that point? Do you then dive into the water and say, “Oh, I’m already wet up to my knees. I’ll just dive all the way in.” Or do you say, “I can’t believe I got all to my knees, I gotta get out.” You know, and I think that’s where the act of will is. That’s where the consent is. It’s like sometimes you can not realize how deep into the water you’re getting, but once you kinda realize, like, “Oh my gosh, how’d I get here?” Then you make that act of will. And you either kinda retreat and get out of it, or you dive into that and submerge yourself into it. And so I think that’s one of those things where it’s like, I’m not really concerned. I know this sounds weird, but it’s like, I’m not really concerned of like how deep into it that you got, but once you realize where you are, what do you do from that point?
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, yeah, ’cause I think a lot of people approach it from a position of compromised freedom. You got the fact that the attack is seemingly stronger and stronger with each passing minute. But then you also got the fact that we ourselves have habits of mind and heart, which incline us in the direction of sin and vice, because we haven’t resisted and then maybe you resist for a hot second, but then you capitulate or you give into that temptation. And then that begets a new, a kind of next level of habits of mind and heart, which is like, I would struggle, but it doesn’t amount to much. And I’m stuck in this pattern where it becomes like, this is now just part of the moral furniture of my interior life. And I could do a little spruce up or even an overhaul or like a wholesale renovation, but think of all the money, think of all the time, think of HGTV coming in and invading my personal space and promoting me as like a kind of hoarder, gone a wry, you know, like I just can’t, yeah, I can’t. So I think that people just kind of content themselves with where they are at present. So then maybe let’s think about like, how do we, how do we begin to resist more fruitfully without just leaning on our wills, which have already proven themselves weak, and wounded. So maybe we could talk about like where the temptations come from, how we are kind of equipped to deal with those temptations in subtle ways, but nonetheless human ways, and maybe where we can kind of project that out into the future. So thinking about where temptations come from, we talk about the world, the flesh, and the Devil, and I think sometimes people get really concerned about the Devil piece, but I don’t know that we can know that too terribly well, unless like things are moving on the walls, and we’re currently using a Ouija board.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Which, for the record, we’re not encouraging any of those things.
Fr. Gregory: Exactly. We don’t want to use that. We don’t want to do anything new agey that would invite that type of new mischief or that type of infestation. So when it comes to like the source of temptations, what are some of the prudent things? Like had you kind of raise awareness, how do you heighten our sensibilities as to be in on the lookout for and avoiding the contact with?
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: A lot of it is just kind of growth in self-knowledge. You have to know what your weaknesses are and what you are tempted to. There is this concept that we will be tempted to things that we have certain attractions to, you know, whether it is power, whether it is greed and money, whether it is lust and physical pleasures. Like, there’s something that we can take an honest look at ourselves and say, “Oh, actually, I have a greater temptation towards a certain sin than maybe other sins.” And to be honest with that recollection and knowing that, okay, these types of temptations may have a little more potency for me where they may not have them for somebody else. You know, and I think part of it is to recognize that I’m a little more susceptible to certain temptations because of my own personality and physical composition and spiritual growth, than maybe I am to other sins. And that’s okay. And part of it is just to be able to take the time and prayer and really truly ask the Holy Spirit to reveal this reality to you. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit is to guide us, to prepare us, to be our advocate in the consular in our life, but He reveals the truth and the realities. So to not be afraid of our humanity and our weaknesses that make us prone to certain temptations, but also our humanity that is maybe steeled up in our areas that we’re not prone to other temptations. And I think we really have to do that. And that takes a lot of humility, right? That takes a lot of prayer in the Holy Spirit. But it’s the first thing to recognize that maybe I am a little more prone to the sins of the flesh or to the pride of life or to those types of things. And to be aware of that. And the reason why I think that’s so important is because it takes away the scandal of temptation. And that’s the one thing that I see so many times is people are scandalized by the fact that they are tempted. And we should never, ever, ever be scandalized by the fact that we get tempted. You know, something we’ll talk about in a little bit, but reality is our Lord Jesus was tempted. He who never sinned, you know, experienced temptations. And if He was tempted, then why should we think that we would never experience that reality? So this is actually a fact of life, you will be tempted. I will be tempted. Everybody will be tempted. So take away the scandal of that will be tempted, everybody will be tempted. So take away the scandal of that and just understand how we will be tempted. And yours is our little, little more unique than mine, but we have to be humble in that reality.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah. I think that’s like, okay, so then thinking through the world of flesh in the Devil, we can come to an appreciation of how we ourselves might be susceptible or how we ourselves might be vulnerable. Yeah, in peculiar ways. So it’s like, all right, the world, think about your environment. Let’s say that you work in digital marketing. You’re gonna be tempted in a particular way to think about life in terms of analytics. Or you’re gonna be tempted in a particular way because you’re in there with the advertisers. So your humanity is subject to these kind of lethal assaults as people want you to buy this product or frequent this site or whatever else. Okay. But let’s say that you work for the Church, I think that you’re probably going to be more exposed to the sin of scandal because you’re going to be like in close proximity with, you know, like priests and deacons and folks who work for the church and profess this faith, but then do things that are ugly. And that’s going to probably cause you some difficulty in life. So it’s like, note like the world. Just know that the environment is going to leave you more susceptible or more vulnerable. But then the flesh and you like to talk about temperament or constitution, like if you’re a big lunk, you know, you’re probably going to be more likely to events courage or fortitude. But if you’re like a kind of gentle soul, you might be tempted to a kind of pucile animity or to a kind of fear before life’s realities. So just as constitution and temperament might suit you to certain virtues, acquired virtues. So constitution and temperament might leave you exposed to certain vices or to certain whatever. And then when it comes to like the Devil, you just need to know that like if you’ve touched new age stuff in the past, that there’s going to be some of that in your life for some time. You know like, can you be healed? Yes, can you be made clean? Yes, but like when you kind of open up or make more porous the wall between or the barrier between the natural and the preter-natural or the supernatural, then that’s going to probably prove a little more porous throughout the rest of your life. Like so if you experimented with kind of like wild stuff, which touched on those realms, right? Then just know that this is probably part of your life, you know, in the sense that like you’re going to have to contend with that. Like you might have visitors in your room that you wouldn’t otherwise court, you know, but here we are, cover yourself in the Lord’s Precious Blood and bind and send them to the foot of the cross. Okay. So it’s like just know the scene, know the ways in which you are open or vulnerable to temptation by virtue of your environment, your nature, and then your past as it were. All right, let’s think then, I don’t know, you have any further thoughts on that before we move on a little bit?
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: And I think that’s part of it is that, like, yeah, we do have to recognize that the devil’s desire is our destruction. Like that’s what he wants. And so will he kind of slightly manipulate and weasel his way into all the other areas of our life? Yes, absolutely. But we don’t have to really kind of fear this constant assault of like everything that I, you know, I’m attracted to everything. Anything, the things that I’m attracted to, that are not of God are this destructive elements that I’m being prayed upon. It’s like, no, this is part of the effects of sin, both original and actual sin, that we are now prone to these types of things. And, you know, both the world, the flesh and the devil kind of all work together. And so it’s good to be able to make those distinctions, but at the same time, it’s like they’re all temptation. And so like, at the end of the day, we kind of end up treating them all the same, you know? And so I don’t want people to kind of almost get paralyzed by the fact of, is this a temptation from the world? Is this a temptation from the devil? It’s like, actually, they’re all just temptations. So let’s just take away the dramatic and the sexiness of the temptations and just treat them as temptations.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah. All right. Then maybe let’s think about tips and tricks. I mean tips and tricks sounds cheap, but you know, temptations come. What are things that we can do before? What are things that we can do during, sorry, and then what are things that we can do afterwards? So thinking about before, it’s kind of like, you know, near occasion of sin is the rubric under which we typically process this type of information. What can we do during? You know, often enough, this is like by way of evasion or by way of reframing. Because a lot of us just think in terms of willpower. And then what can we do after? Obviously we’re gonna talk about the Sacrament of Confession just to touch, but what are other ways in which we can prevent this cycle of sin from laying hold and rendering us slaves or addicts or whatever else. So I don’t know if you have particular thought you can talk about whichever one you want. Before, during or after things that kind of come up on your radar, things that you counsel when it comes to your students or your pastoral ministry.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: I love meditating on the temptations of Jesus. Like I think if looking at how Christ handled temptations and looking at that is really important. We start to pick up a number of things. And one is like the location. Aquinas says it’s a beautiful thing, but like where did it happen? Like was it appropriate that, the location of it? And it happens in the desert where he’s alone. You know, and even let’s go even one step further. It happens, you know, post-baptism. And so like these reveal things in the Lord’s life that are important for our lives, like to not be scandalized by the fact that even after our baptism, even after our, you know, growth in the faith that we’re still going to be tempted, but it’s precisely in the desert where He’s alone. You know, and I think that’s one of the really important things is like, yes, the devil does want to tempt us to sin in our isolation. And so then this understanding of how temptations work, Aquinas ever goes one step further and says, temptations are only suggestions. So like the nature of a temptation is just a suggestion. It’s not, he’s not like forcing us into anything or the world’s not forcing us to do things. It’s just simply making a suggestion. And we have the ability to either a seat to that suggestion or to refuse it. And so when you see the Lord in that isolation, one of the things that we have to make sure is that we don’t live a life of isolation. So are we doing habits and practices that then kind of close the world from us or are we able to be open to it? Do we have a good social life with good, virtuous friends? Do we have regular ability to have a prayer life where we’re in constant union with God? Because when we start to become isolated from God and we become isolated from our peers and each other. Then we are very, very, very much more prone to temptations being victorious in our life. And so when we talk about the lead up to it is to kind of start to make sure that we’re taking kind of a pulse check on our life. Like, am I living a relatively isolated life? I go to work and I eat my meals, and I come home, and then I turn into a vegetable while I binge Netflix. Probably a problem. And if not, do I have a good rhythm of social life and a good rhythm of prayer in these things so that I don’t live in a life of isolation? And then that gives us the ability to understand, okay, now how do I act in this? If I am recognizing that I’m being currently, let’s say, besieged by temptations, then I need to remove myself from that isolation and put myself into a context where I’m actually engaging with people and breaking open my life. I think one of the really good things is I call them perennial temptations for a lot of students that I work with or others, you know, habitual sins or like I think already throw you into a defeatist. You’re just like, well, this is part of my life. This is my habitual sin. It’s like, no, it doesn’t have to be. You have the control of whether or not that becomes your habitual sin. You know, you do not have control if this is a perennial temptation, right? And to say this is my perennial temptation, gives you a certain authority over how to handle that. And I think part of it is looking at the patterns of that. Temptations tend to be very, very patterned. You know, they happen at a certain time of day. Do they happen in a certain location? Do they happen through a certain relationship or a context of my life? And if so, knowing how I need to change those realities so that I’m not prone to that temptation. So I mean, it’s super kind of masculine in a lot of ways, but put a freaking game plan together. Like, and so that when that temptation comes up, one you’re not surprised by, but you also know how to remove yourself from that temptation. And in the moment, you don’t have to do the work of, “How do I get out of this? How do I do this? How do I fight this?” Whatever. It’s like, “Oh no, I’ve already put that game plan.” It’s like a pilot when something goes wrong in flight, they have a checklist. They just pull out the book and flip to the page where it says, “Oh, you know, engine light has failed.” Okay, this is my checklist. This is how I get out of this safely. And so do that work ahead of time once again with the Holy Spirit and so that when the temptations happen, you know how to act.
Fr. Gregory: Yeah, nice. Okay, so then I, in my consummate fashion, I like to schematize things. So thinking about preparation. So like before, during and after preparation, you’ve got the positive things and the negative things. In the sense of like, you know, a life of prayer, we’re going to crowd it out. We’re not going to root it out. You know, so like we have to have our interior lives so filled with the glory of God as to leave no space and effect for the type of sin and vice, which might otherwise take root. So prayer sacraments, you know, you’re making good use of the sacrament of confession. You’re receiving holy communion in a worthy state, at least on Sundays and holidays, but maybe beyond. I mean, that’s not your obligation. That’s beyond your obligation. You’re only required to receive once a year, but nevertheless, we should profit from. And then these Christian friendships are a huge part insofar as that’s the setting in which we’re made strong because left to ourselves, we are weak. And then, you know, you’re studying the faith and you’re introducing some penance. You know you’re doing various things of that sort.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Yeah! I mean I think you mentioned penance, fasting’s really important. Like fasting is so important but also reading Scripture. Like looking at Christ, Christ like went back at the devil with scripture because it’s in that engagement with Scripture that we are actually really engaging with the living Word of God. And the more we are kind of imbued by that, the more we start to recognize what is not of God. And we’re prepared for that. So like I highly suggest like, yeah, being familiar with Scripture, reading Scripture just having a very comfortable, comfortable engagement with it is so super important.
Fr. Gregory: And you see, like, in the temptation of Christ, it’s not that Christ is tempted in the way that we are because Christ as God is not going to be deflected from the Divine Purpose, but nevertheless, like genuine temptations kind of crash up against His humanity and are conquered by that. And so the Lord has passed through temptation in our flesh so as to afford us an entry into his conquest. Right, so it’s causal, right? It’s not just suggestive, it’s cau-, like it’s of a different sort, it’s a different kind of causality than that of temptation. All right, so we got that on the positive side. On the negative side, we’re talking about self-knowledge, we need to know when we’re hungry, when we’re angry, when we’re lonely, when we’re thirsty, when we’re tired, when we’re more susceptible, and be more careful in those instances. But also like we said, the world of flesh and the devil means you need to be cognizant of our environment to be cognizant of our own strengths and weaknesses and to be cognizant of our, the company we keep, like in our history I should say. So then, okay, those all being kind of preparation for, but that’s to say, live the Christian life. You know? But then in the moment, there are going to be certain ones that we push back against and there are going to be certain ones that we flee. There are different strategies with different temptations. Any thoughts on that or any kind of tips and tricks?
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: I think the virtue of courage is extremely important. And the fact that it’s also a gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift of fortitude, right? And the primary disposition of that virtue and that gift is to endure evil, right? So that doesn’t mean that we throw our hands up and like, oh, just sit here and watch my clock and wait for it to pass, but it’s like there has to be an active engagement that maybe there are times that we just have to endure this evil, you know? And we can’t necessarily think that we’re gonna overcome it. But I think then to endure this evil, you know, is to when to retreat is, you know, there are certain situations where, you know, we don’t have the ability to retreat from it. We don’t have the ability to distance ourselves from that temptation, thus we have to endure it. But if we can eliminate the means of that temptation in our life, we have to then change those things. Like I said, remove ourselves from isolation or remove ourselves from a toxic relationship that can persistently push those into temptations. Whatever those may be, we have to remove ourselves from that. We have to retreat from that. You may have some better suggestions. I know that’s kind of, you know, 30,000 feet nebulous, but like some of your suggestions.
Fr. Gregory: I think there are certain temptations that want to get you involved. Like they want to implicate you in their logic. They want you to live in their unreality in their lives, in their falsehood. And it’s those ones that we have to flee. You know, like, you know, like temptations of lust. It’s like you’re just your body and you need satisfaction. It’s like those have to be flown. Or like the type of ideation where you begin going over how you’re gonna get vindication or visit vengeance upon another person, those temptations have to be flown. But like temptations to unforgiveness and to resentment, you like have to engage with their logic in a certain sense and speak truth into them or like speak love into them and say like I choose to forgive again. I know that I forgiven and I choose to forgive again. You know like there are certain kind of temptations that go by way of lies or deception that just need to be, then they need the truth spoken into them. So I think it’s just, it’s gonna depend like the temptation is gonna either push you away or pull you in. If it’s trying to pull you in, you’re going to try to absent yourself from it. But if it’s trying to push you away into isolation, right, into a kind of sullen resentment, then those are the ones where you need to lean in. Right? So it’s like that the temptation is going to try to mess with you in such a way as to keep you at a distance from or too close to something that ultimately undermines your humanity, your relationships, and your love of God. And it’s just like in identifying that with some modicum of self-knowledge and self-acceptance that you can then formulate a plan.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: That’s such a good distinction. The difference in certain temptations that are trying to draw you in in certain ones are trying to push you out. Like I think that’s a super good distinction to make. And thus you know how to act within that. But I think once again, we just keep coming back to the fact that temptations are suggestions. They’re not a fit of complete, and they don’t represent your moral goodness or badness or your own dignity. The fact that you have a temptation doesn’t mean you’re automatically a bad person. And I always want to affirm for our listeners is the fact that in your free will, you have the ability to either choose this or not. And we think that the temptations are like higher than us and that they’re imposing down into us, but the reality is they’re from below. And we have the authority and the control over them. And to never lose that kind of freedom within us. To say, yes, I’m going to engage or no, I’m not.
Fr. Gregory: And like a baptismal authority. In the sense that you have baptismal authority over your interior life to a certain degree or extent. And so you can claim the Precious Blood of Jesus for your own and send or drive things forth from you. And also baptism is the gateway to all the sacraments. So it’s on, by virtue of the fact that you are baptized, you can go to the sacrament of confession when you do capitulate, when you do give into a temptation. And you can go to the sacrament of, you know, the Holy Mass of the Most Holy Eucharist as a way by which to feed, to grow your desire for God and by way of contrast, like kind of diminish your desire for things not God or things contrary to.
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: We talk about the isolation side of it all, like the frequent Holy Communion is a beautiful way to reaffirm and to strengthen that union you have with God so that you are not left in isolation. Left orphan in such a way that you are vulnerable to that. But a frequent Holy Communion is growing us in union with Christ. Our baptism is the grafting us into Jesus Christ so that we are not alone. Right? And it takes away all those sins and it takes away so that we have that union so that we have a strength to endure or overcome the temptations. Right? It doesn’t take away the temptations. Right? Even Christ after His baptism experienced the temptations. So I think once again, to not be scandalized by our temptations, but to know that in our baptismal unity and our sacramental life, that we have the ability to kind of endure these temptations that are going to be real for every single one of us.
Fr. Gregory: Boom. All right, man. That’s the end. Final thoughts, any exclamation points?
Fr. Joseph-Anthony: Final thoughts. Yeah, like once again, even the temptations, the interior temptations, I find a lot of people get really distraught over their interior temptations, whether it’s to blasphemies or other things, and to recognize, like, no, no, no, that’s not from me. I don’t want that, I’ve never thought that. I don’t want that, that’s a temptation, right? And to have the freedom to even, even with interior temptations to say, that’s not from me. And I have an authority to, like you said, speak truth into that or reject that. And you may have to be very, very persistent in doing that, but that doesn’t mean that you are sinning.
Fr. Gregory: And that might be a nice, like kind of after the fact thing with which to conclude is to say that don’t attribute an ordinate importance to temptations. There’s a place. There’s a time. There’s whatever. There are pertinent considerations, but at the end of the day, it’s not. It’s not the most important thing to be said over you. The most important thing to be said over you is that you’re a Child of God. And in clinging to that, right, we learn other things that we need to relinquish that we need to let go of. All right, squad. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Godsplaining. Be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, unless those things are a source of temptation for you that you’d rather not deal with and then just don’t bother actually flee, actually stop listening to this podcast, just kidding. Maybe I’m serious. Like, subscribe and leave a five star review on the aforementioned platforms as a way by which to get the word out so other people can, hopefully, please God, conquer temptation and, uh, lay claim to the Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Um, if you’d like to donate to the podcast through Patreon, you can do so by following the link in the description and/or show notes by following said links. You can shop merchandise as well and then follow up on upcoming Godsplaining events. So we’ve got a Day of Recollection. A few of us will be in New York City at our parish of St. Joseph’s in Greenwich Village. That’s October 19th. And you can check out Godsplaining.org to register and get more details. So we look forward to seeing you there. And uh, oh, yeah, know of our prayers for you. Please pray for us and we’ll look forward to chatting with you next time on Godsplaining.