From the beginning of time, the devil – who is real by the way – has tried to mislead us. And he often succeeds. 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 person lives – bread signifying food, pleasure and all that is material. Many seem to believe that economic well-being as important as it is, is all that matters. There are many Catholics who are more excited by Paradise on Earth than the Lord’s Kingdom of Heaven. We often fault the Sigmund Freud types for their teachings but many are daily trying to prove them right by their belief that the sexual urge is the ultimate and determining urge of us humans. There are many Catholics who prefer earthly delights to the gospel values. All indications are that our generation has firmly accepted the devil’s thesis that man lives by bread alone. The implication of this acceptance by bread alone is that we feel we must be left alone – by God, the Church, the state and parents – to pursue pleasure, affluence and ambition without any hindrance. 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 Catholics 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 led our struggle against those forces of evil. Through His victory, Jesus opened for us a sure pathway out of this desert of evil.

So how about you? We have all the help and praise we need to resist temptation and the devil. But a conversion is called for. We need 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 the time for God!