UPON THE SAME SUBJECT.
You ask me why God permits the enemy of our salvation to afflict us with so many temptations, which put us into such great danger of offending God and losing our soul. I might answer you in words from Holy Scripture, but I will give you our Blessed Father's teaching on the subject, which is only an interpretation of what St. Paul and St. James tell us in their epistles: "Do you know," he says, "what God does in temptation?"
He permits the evil one to furbish up his wares and to offer them to us for sale, so that by the contempt with which we look upon them we may show our affection for divine things.
Must you then, my dear sister, my dearest daughter, because of this temptation, fret and disquiet yourself and change your manner of thought?
Oh, no! by no means, it is the devil who prowls round about your soul, peeping and prying to see if he can find an open door. He did this with Job, with St. Anthony, with St. Catherine of Siena, and with an infinity of good souls whom I know, as well as with my own, which is good-for-nothing, and which I do not know. And have you, my good daughter, to distress yourself about what the devil attempts? Let him wait outside and keep all the avenues of your soul fast shut. In the end he will be tired out, or if not God will force him to raise the siege.
Remember what I think I have told you before. It is a good sign when the devil stirs up such a tumult outside the fortress of your will, for it shows he is not inside it.
One cause of our interior trouble and mental disturbance is the difficulty we experience in discerning whether a temptation comes from within or from without, whether it is from our own heart or from the enemy, who takes up his position as a besieger before that heart? You may apply the following test in order to find out.
Does the temptation please or displease you? One of the ancient Fathers says that sins which displease us cannot harm us. How much less then displeasing temptations!
Notice that, as long as the temptation displeases you there is nothing to fear, for why should it displease if not because your will does not consent to it?"
"But," you say, "if I, as it were, dally with the temptation, either from inadvertence or torpor, or slothful unwillingness to reject and repel it, is not that in a way taking pleasure in it?" "The evil of temptation is not measured by its duration: it may be working against us all our life long, but while it displeases us it cannot make us fail into sin; on the contrary, being repulsive to us, this very antipathy not only preserves us from being infected by its venom, but adds strength to our virtue and jewels to our crown."
"But I am so much afraid of taking pleasure in it!"
"That very fear is a proof that it displeases you, for we are not afraid of that which pleases us. We are not terrified except by what displeases us, just as we can only enjoy what is good or has the appearance of being good.
"If you were able all the time to look upon temptation as an evil it cannot have pleased you."
"Still, is it wrong to find pleasure in thinking of what is sinful?" "If this pleasure is felt before we reflect that the thing is evil it is of no consequence, since voluntary malice and consent are needed to make this pleasure a sin."
"How shall we know whether or not we have yielded this consent?" "Assuredly, it is difficult to define the nature of voluntary consent. This difficulty gave rise to the saying of the Psalmist, Who can understand sins?[1]
"This, too, is why he prays to be delivered from his secret faults, that is to say, from sins which he cannot easily discern."
I will, however, on this subject give you another excellent lesson which I learned from our Blessed Father.
"When you are doubtful," he said to me, "whether or not you have consented to evil, always take the doubt for a negative, and for this reason. A true and full consent of the will is necessary to form a real grave sin, there being no sin in what is not voluntary. Now full consent is so clear that there can never be left in the mind a shadow of doubt about its having taken place."
This plain teaching surely cuts the gordian knot of our perplexities.
[Footnote 1: Psalm xviii. 13.]