Category: TEMPTATION & LUST & VIRGINITY

  • From The Screwtape Letters—a fictional work written from a senior demon’s perspective, advising a junior tempter.

    As regards the male taste we have varied a good deal. At one time we have directed it to the statuesque and aristocratic type of beauty, mixing men’s vanity with their desires and encouraging the race to breed chiefly from the most arrogant and prodigal women. At another, we have selected an exaggeratedly feminine type, faint and languishing, so that folly and cowardice, and all the general falseness and littleness of mind which go with them, shall be at a premium. At present we are on the opposite tack. The age of jazz has succeeded the age of the waltz, and we now teach men to like women whose bodies are scarcely distinguishable from those of boys. Since this is a kind of beauty even more transitory than most, we thus aggravate the female’s chronic horror of growing old (with many excellent results) and render her less willing and less able to bear children.

    The Screwtape Letters
    C. S. Lewis

  • From The Screwtape Letters—a fictional work written from a senior demon’s perspective, advising a junior tempter.

    I suppose you’ve tried persuading him that chastity is unhealthy?
    …

    for if we can’t use his sexuality to make him unchaste we must try to use it for the promotion of a desirable marriage.

    The Screwtape Letters
    C. S. Lewis

  • From The Screwtape Letters—a fictional work written from a senior demon’s perspective, advising a junior tempter.

    I note with great displeasure that the Enemy has, for the time being, put a forcible end to your direct attacks on the patient’s chastity. You ought to have known that He always does in the end,

    The Screwtape Letters
    C. S. Lewis

  • From The Screwtape Letters—a fictional work written from a senior demon’s perspective, advising a junior tempter.

    Instil into him an overweening asceticism and then, when you have separated his sexuality from all that might human-is it, weigh in on him with it in some much more brutal and cynical form. If, on the other hand, he is an emotional, gullible man, feed him on minor poets and fifth-rate novelists of the old school until you have made him believe that ‘Love’ is both irresistible and somehow intrinsically meritorious. This belief is not much help, I grant you, in producing casual unchastity; but it is an incomparable recipe for prolonged, ‘noble’, romantic, tragic adulteries, ending, if all goes well, in murders and suicides.

    The Screwtape Letters
    C. S. Lewis

  • From The Screwtape Letters—a fictional work written from a senior demon’s perspective, advising a junior tempter.

    When the present pleasure arrives, the sin (which alone interests us) is already over.

    The Screwtape Letters
    C. S. Lewis

  • From The Screwtape Letters—a fictional work written from a senior demon’s perspective, advising a junior tempter.

    In the first place I have always found that the trough periods of the human undulation provide excellent opportunity for all sensual temptations, particularly those of sex. This may surprise you, because, of course, there is more physical energy, and therefore more potential appetite, at the peak periods;

    The Screwtape Letters
    C. S. Lewis

  • From The Screwtape Letters—a fictional work written from a senior demon’s perspective, advising a junior tempter.

    The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather. You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it—all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition. If, on the other hand, the middle years prove prosperous, our position is even stronger. Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is ‘finding his place in it’, while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home in earth, which is just what we want.

    The Screwtape Letters
    C. S. Lewis

  • Inasmuch then as our Master knew that if He carved out only one road for us, many must shrink from it, He carved out various roads. It may be you cannot enter the Kingdom by the way of virginity. Enter it then by the way of single marriage.

    Can you not enter it by one marriage? Perchance you may by means of a second marriage. You cannot enter by the way of continence? Enter then by the way of almsgiving. Or you cannot enter by the way of almsgiving? Then try the way of fasting. If you cannot use this way, take that—or if not that, then take this. Therefore the prophet spoke not of a garment of gold, but of one woven with gold. It is of silk, or purple, or gold. You cannot be a golden part? Then be a silken one. I accept you, if only you are clothed in My raiment. Therefore also Paul says, “If any man builds upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones” (1 Cor. 3:12). You cannot be the precious stone? Then be the gold. You cannot be the gold? Then be the silver, if only you are resting upon the foundation. And again elsewhere, “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars” (1 Cor. 15:41). You cannot be a sun? Then be a moon. You cannot be a moon? Then be a star. You cannot be a large star? Be content to be a little one if only you are in the Heaven. You cannot be a virgin? Then live continently in the married state, only abiding in the Church. You cannot be without possessions? Then give alms, only abiding in the Church, only wearing the proper raiment, only submitting to the queen. The raiment is woven with gold; it is manifold in texture.

    I do not bar the way against you, for the abundance of virtues has rendered the dispensation of the King easy in operation. Clothed in a vesture woven with gold, manifold in texture. Her vesture is manifold: unfold, if you please, the deep meaning of the expression here used, and fix your eyes upon this garment woven with gold. For here indeed some live celibate, others live in an honorable estate of matrimony being not much inferior to them; some have married once, others are widows in the flower of their age. For what purpose is a paradise? And wherefore its variety? Having various flowers and trees and many pearls. There are many stars, but only one sun; there are many ways of living, but only one Paradise; there are many temples, but only one mother of them all.

    There is the body, the eye, the finger, but all these make but one man. There is the same distinction between the small, the great, and the less. The virgin has need of the married woman; for the virgin also is the product of marriage, that marriage may not be despised by her. The virgin is the root of marriage. Thus all things have been linked together, the small with the great, and the great with the small. The queen stood on your right hand clothed in a vesture wrought with gold, manifold in texture.

    Saint John Chrysostom
    HOMILY TWO, After Eutropios, having been found outside the church, was taken captive
    On the Vanity of Riches

  • He remained constantly with God in silence, ever ready to repel the surges of both sensuality and anger.

    The Life of Saint John Chrysostom
    On the Vanity of Riches

  • For whithersoever the soul of man turns itself, unless toward Thee, it is riveted upon sorrows, yea though it is riveted on things beautiful. 

    Confessions
    St. Augustine