Once in awhile I really feel attacked by the evil one and the attacks are strong. It is happening again in just the past 24 hours. A great temptation is there and I am fighting it as best I can but yet it is still there. I know we have great help from heaven when we ask for it and I know we can have great help from prayers from all our brothers and sisters here on earth. I am asking for you all to pray for me to help overcome a great, old temptation that I am fighting very hard right now. Ironically enough though, as I am in the middle of my 33 day consecration to the sacred heart through Mary this was the reading today and I am completely wowed by it given the current situation I find myself in. Thank you God for this reading and reflection. Thank you for your help. Thank you all who can help me overcome and fight this temptation through your generaous prayers! Imitation of Christ: Book 1, Chapter 13 Of Resisting Temptations As long as we live in this world, we cannot be without temptations and tribulations. Hence it is written in Job "Man's life on earth is a temptation." Everyone therefore should be solicitous about his temptations and watch in prayer lest the devil find an opportunity to catch him: who never sleeps, but goes about, seeking whom he can devour. No one is so perfect and holy as sometimes not to have temptations and we can never be wholly free from them. Nevertheless, temptations are very profitable to man, troublesome and grievous though they may be, for in them, a man is humbled, purified and instructed. All the Saints passed through many tribulations and temptations and were purified by them. And they that could not support temptations, became reprobate, and fell away. Many seek to flee temptations, and fall worse into them. We cannot conquer by flight alone, but by patience and true humility we become stronger than all our enemies. He who only declines them outwardly, and does not pluck out their root, will profit little; nay, temptations will sooner return and he will find himself in a worse condition. By degrees and by patience you will, by God's grace, better overcome them than by harshness and your own importunity. Take council the oftener in temptation, and do not deal harshly with one who is tempted; but pour in consolation, as thou wouldst wish to be done unto yourself. Inconstancy of mind and little confidence in God, is the beginning of all temptations. For as a ship without a helm is driven to and fro by the waves, so the man who neglects and gives up his resolutions is tempted in many ways.
You should take it as a compliment that satan has to go out of his way to torture you. You must be on the right path to make him do this. Keep it up Prayers offered God Bless.
Me too, been there done that. Temptation does bring us to our knees because we realize we cant do it on our own. I will pray to St Michael and to St Therese, the Little Flower for you. Keep up the good fight. Mary
