The things wasted by lust are uncountable. It
destroys a good reputation won over many years or decades in a single day! It
destroys trust and loyalty sometimes permanently! Lust wastes money. It quickly
reduces the beauty of a person to ugliness! It wastes precious time in no small
way; sometimes at the end of mistakes it wastes many years of a person’s life.
Lust promises pleasure but wastes away a persons youth. Lust has prevents young
people from graduating, graduating, completing their studies, or gives them bad
grades! Lust is responsible for many dropouts and irresponsible people.
In the combat against the “queen of vices”,
weapons and human strength are simultaneously useless. Prayer and flight alone
are the weapons. Let us not be deceived, the saints teach us that even if God
gave us the chastity of angels, if we fly from temptation, we shall not fail to
fall. We must pray tirelessly and relentlessly no matter where we find
ourselves, even if we have become as vicious as prostitutes because Jesus came
for sinners. And so the Wise Man said: And I knew that I could not be chaste
unless God gave it, therefore, I went to the Lord and besought Him (cf Wisd
8:3).
As
is the case with the other vices, without a firm resolution (decision) not to
return to sin, we will be wasting time, grace and energy. Unless we arm our
prayer with a firm resolution we may be like a strong man fetching water from a
deep well with a broken bucket. What a waste. The only result is that our
efforts will only lead us down “frustration street!” Prayer is like the rifle
and the resolution the bullet which we must fire tirelessly.
2
Without humility no one can conquer. Unless we admit that all our strength
belongs to God we will surely fall. We must not presume, telling ourselves that
we will enter a place or situation of temptation and come out safely.
Presumption is a sin against the Holy Spirit. We must humbly admit that if God
does not sustain us we will surely fall. Armed with humility, we shall avoid
the devil’s “death dance”.
3 Do you not know that in attacking
our confidence in the mercy of God, the devil is trying to convince us that
hope is a lie? To believe that hope is a lie is to offend the Holy Spirit.
4
Never forget that the pleasure offered by the devil is never free. According to
Fr Nicolas Okeke, OP., to take the pleasure is the same as to pay with your
immortal soul—the only coin with which you pay for such pleasure is your soul!
