Category: TEMPTATION & LUST & VIRGINITY

  • It seems that many wicked women were unintentionally a source of blessing and learning to many saints. As the Bible says, “Out of the strong came something sweet” (Judges 14:14). We have learned how St. Antony benefitted spiritually from a word spoken by a woman who did not hesitate from taking off her clothes before him.

    …

    The person who wants to benefit spiritually will use every resource to his advantage — even a sinful woman’s words as the Bible says, “to the pure, all things are pure” (Titus 1:15).

    Contemplations on the Life of St. Antony the Great
    H.H. Pope Shenouda III

  • What are the most common things that mess up our heart in? Sexual desires, lust. That’s why the next verse right away says, for a harlot is a deep pit, and a seductress is a narrow well.

    When I don’t protect my heart and give it to God, I will be stressed, but I also have a lot of desires. How do I deal with this? It turns to lust, and here he’s giving you a metaphor of a deep pit.

    It almost traps people. People who are struggling with lust and sexual sins, it could last for years, and they have a hard time to escape that pit. Why? Because the heart is not fully turned to God.

    So, also interesting, because the deep pit is also referenced to the well where people get water. He’s giving you a beautiful analogy. It says, like people go to that deep pit thinking it’s a well where they can get water and refreshment to satisfy themselves, but then they end up being trapped inside that well.

    Why? Because the heart is not with God.

    And abouna asks you, how is your prayer, your Bible reading? Abouna it’s okay, but help me out to stop the sin. Dude, how is your prayer, your Bible reading?

    That’s what helps you to stop the sin. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, but what other practical ways could it help you stop the sin? Your heart is not with God. That’s the problem. You don’t believe it. You don’t believe that God will transform your heart. You don’t believe the Word of God will change your heart. That’s why you’re asking these stupid questions, because you think it’s something else outside God’s word and spending time with him that will transform you.

    It’s not right.

    It shows a lack of wisdom and understanding.

    …

    What St. Augustine is saying, is that these sins of lust, they not only trap us, they try to destroy us.

    It takes a lot from us. It takes a lot from how we view God, how we view ourself, how we view other people, how we deal with stress, how we deal with our free time. It distorts so many things, she also lies in wait for as for a victim, and increases her unfaithful among men.

    She is depicting her as conspiring to plunder her victims in a cold, calculated, ruthless way.

    And many people have felt a prey to lust, and it has impacted their life.

    So he’s saying, be very careful, give your heart to God.

    What worries you is what makes you run to lust. What makes you not productive in your free time is what makes you run to lust. Give your heart to God.

    —Fr. Mina Dimitri

  • How can I overcome the lust of the flesh? I think the best way to go about it is to focus on how beautiful it is the life of purity. If you really realize its worth, you will fight for it.

    —Fr. Luke Istafanous, MD, Spirit Over Body: Overcoming the Lust of the Flesh

  • Young men who still feel strongly the urge for physical love and pleasure and yet who also want to take on the regime of a monastery must discipline themselves with every form of vigilance and prayer, avoiding all dangerous comfort, so that their last state may not be worse than their first. For those sailing the tides of spirituality know only too well that the religious life can be a harbor of salvation or a haven of destruction, and a pitiable sight indeed is the shipwreck in port of someone who had safely mastered the ocean.

    —St. John Climacus

  • Sin promises the maximum but it never even delivers the minimum.

    —H.G. Bishop Basil

  • “If someone has repented once of a sin, and again does the same sin, this is a sign that he has not been cleansed of the causes of the sin, wherefrom, as from a root, the shoots spring forth again.”

    —St. Basil the Great

  • “Run from places of sin as from the plague. For when fruit is not present, we have no frequent desire to eat it.”

    —St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

  • A famous Christian long ago told us that when he was a young man he prayed constantly for chastity; but years later he realised that while his lips had been saying, “Oh Lord, make me chaste,” his heart had been secretly adding, “But please don’t do it just yet.”

    —C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

  • “As often as you find your way to be peaceful, without variations, be suspicious. For you are deviating from the divine ways trodden by the weary footsteps of the saints. The more you proceed on the way towards the city of the kingdom and approach its neighborhood, this will be the sign: you will meet hard temptations. And the nearer you approach, the more difficulties you will find.”

    —St. Isaac of Syria

  • Some, I know not why (for I have not learned to pry conceitedly into the gifts of God) are by nature, I might say, prone to temperance, or silence, or purity, or modesty, or meekness, or contrition. But others, although almost their own nature itself resists them in this, to the best of their power force themselves; and though they occasionally suffer defeat yet, as men struggling with nature, they are in my opinion higher than the former.

    St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent