Prologue

Most of the content I wrote down, comes from Christopher West, who took it from St John Paul II.

Most of us, has been exposed to a very dry teaching of the Catholic Church. The sad thing is, it isn’t complete. There’s also another side of it, that it beautiful & heart-melting.

Temptation is part of every human being’s life. If we want to understand it, we have to go back to its root: human desire.

Human desire

I went to eat with 2 co-workers, before watching a movie. One of them raised a concern: “I’ve heard that if you’re a Buddhist, you can become a Christian. But you can’t be a Christian and mix it with Buddhism.” The core of the 2 religions is very different.

Buddhism & Christianity

In Buddhism, the goal is to extinguish our desires.
In Christianity, the goal isn’t to reject our desires, they are good, but we need to perfect them.

Our desires aren’t evil, as much as our body aren’t! They are good, very good (God designed them for a purpose), but they need a daily dose of ‘maintenance’ to really ‘get into shape’! If we hate our body, that’s Gnosticism! If we hate our desire, it can lead to Buddhism!

That’s why we have the notion of “sin”. It literally mean “missing the target“.

If we don’t desire anymore, we can’t love! We can turn robots.

Stoic & Addict

Society suggest to you 2 ways with your desires.

Either you suppress them, and pretend that you don’t have them, and living in despair like a stoic. Or to unleash with your inner beast, indulge it, and become an addict (addiction is when you fulfill your infinite desire toward something finite).

The thing is, none of the 2 are healthy. But, the Church is offering a 3th option.

Mysticism

What if, our desires was made for something more?

Living in 3-D

Christopher West suggests that there’s a Christian version of filling our desire for eternity.
He call that “living in 3-D”.

Our desires are good. But we need to re-direct back towards God.

“The glory of God, is man fully alive!”
Irenaeus of Lyon

The goal of God isn’t to bored us or to repress our desires. But to attract us back to Him so we can find eternal joy. Jesus came to earth to send us invitation for this wonderful wedding feast that will happen in Heaven. He didn’t came to condemn us, but to re-direct our desires back to Heaven.

The pagans, they almost got it! But they never find that ‘destination’. So as being lost, God came down to us to guide us back to what we really crave for: eternal love. The Church has that notion of a husband and wife: Christ and the Church who give each other in a deep love and intimacy.

“I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!”
Luke 12:49

Prayers are needed

“Our heart is restless until it rest in You.”
Augustine of Hippo

I’m not talking about superstitious or wishful thinking. I’m talking about a real re-direction of the heart towards God. Since the hearts gets empty quickly as the stomach that gets hungry, it is necessary for us to have a daily habit of prayer. When the heart is starving, it seeks for food.

The weakening of the spiritual life leads to man’s own destruction. If the soul isn’t properly nourish, it seeks for quick alternative: (7 deadly sins). And the devil is a great seller of those alternatives.

Everyone need a daily dose of prayer.
Just like a man who travel far from home, if he doesn’t stay faithful to his wife, he can be tempted, and be seduced by another one.

A relationship with God is like husband and wife: you live with the ups and downs of that person. If we follow Christ and put our trust in Him, we both die, and live again (resurrection). A bit like the stocks, If we put 100% on a company, if it fails, we fail, but if it rises, we also rise.

Prayer: exercise of desire

As we are hungry for physical food, human being also have spiritual craving. Those who aren’t spiritually mature enough ends up choosing the easy ‘spiritual fast food’, namely temptations toward pride, greed, lust, etc. to fill their empty heart. And you know the results: more sin. And maybe a repentance (start over). The whole journey is filled with ups and downs.

At the end of the day, it’s not enough: they want more! So we go back to the addict, not the mystic!

Don’t let yourself discouraged by your dislike of prayers. It’s just like going to the gym, it requires a good dose of self-discipline & consistency.

Tips

1) Avoid it. If you know it will lead you to sin, just avoid it. Bad habits leads to bad results.
2) Keep commitment.
3) Go to confession often, and keep telling yourself that sin is real.