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From the beginning of time, the devil has tried to mislead us.  He often   succeeded.  Adam is the best example, but he seems to be particularly successful in our day and age.  Our permissive age and our consumer society seem to have given into the temptation that it is by bread alone that a human being lives – bread signifying food, pleasure and all that is material.  Many seem to believe that economic well-being is all that matters.  There are many Christians who are more excited by Paradise on Earth than by the Lord’s Kingdom of Heaven.  We often fault Sigmund Freud for his teachings, but many are daily trying to prove him right by their belief that the sexual urge is the ultimate and determining urge of us human beings.  There are many Christians who prefer earthly delights to the joys of heaven.  All indications are that our generation has firmly accepted the devil’s thesis that man lives by bread alone.  The implication of this acceptance is that we feel we must be left severely alone – by God, the Church and the state – to pursue pleasure, affluence and ambition without any hinderance.  Morality then becomes a mere word in the dictionary; sin and temptation become taboo words in ‘decent’ society; license takes the place of freedom; food, sex and money become our new gods.  We as a society will then be building the foundations of a new paganism.  And this is not necessarily the attitude of atheists, agnostics, or the anti-God crowd.  I fear that many Christians are just as guilty.

Temptations are a fact of life; we are surrounded and assaulted by evil in all its forms: sin, occasion of sin, temptation, and the father of evil himself, the devil.  But Jesus in His forty days in the desert led our struggle against those forces of evil.  Through His victory, He opened for us a sure  pathway out of this desert of evil.

How about us?  We have all the help and grace we need to resist temptation and the devil.  But a conversion is called for.  And this is what this new year is all about – a time to think, a time to change, a time to repent, a time to pray and a time to ask for help.  Please make 2021 a time for God.