The Way of a Man Series | #110
863 words / Read Time: 5.5 minutes
Make These Thoughts Go Away!
Years ago, a priest whom I and many others considered to be pious and devout, shared something, that at that time, shocked me.
He was counseling me regarding unwanted, unsolicited, sexual thoughts.
He said that it had occurred, more than once, that during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, precisely during the consecration and elevation of the Eucharist that the most terrible, deplorable and tempting sexual thoughts assaulted him.
I say that I was shocked because I had assumed that a man of his spiritual stature would be beyond such challenges.
Only later, after learning about the lives of St. Padre Pio, St. John Vianney, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Josemaria Escriva and others, I realized the greatest of men, the holiest of our Lord’s servants, were often assailed by the most terribly tempting thoughts.
It is told that St. Francis would throw himself in snow or a thorn bush to overcome lustful temptations.
St. Josemaria Escriva recounts how Saint Benedict threw himself into a thorn bush and Saint Bernard plunged into an icy pond to vanquish lustful thoughts.
It is from this holy priest and these preserving saints I have learned several ways to respond to unwanted and unholy thoughts.
- You are the evil one’s target because God has elected you.
A certain sign that the evil one has targeted you, are that you are frequently assailed by terrible, often hellish and tempting thoughts.
The devil has you positioned in his crosshairs because you have been chosen by God to be a vessel of His glorification and manifestation to this world.
The evil one reserves his most heinous temptations for God’s elect for the purpose of deterring them from glorifying Him by accomplishing His Holy Will.
- The thoughts are often not of your own making.
St. Ignatius of Loyola, in his Rules for Discernment, explains that our thoughts are like rivers welling up from within us that have three individual sources: from God and holy spirits, from the evil one and evil spirits and from the individual.
If you don’t want the thought; if you despise the sinful thought; if you wish to reject that evil thought – these are certain signs that the thought is not born from within you but planted within you by the prince and power of the air.
If this is the case, the evil one is attempting to convince you first, that the thoughts are originating from you; second consequently, that you are evil; and third, he lodges these deceptions to sabotage your intimacy with God.
- The most effective way to combat assaulting and assailing thoughts is the boomerang strategy.
When the thought enters, catches you off guard—regardless as to how deplorable, sick, evil, and demented the thought is—do not suppress it or pretend that it does not exist.
The evil one is delighted and empowered when we hide something, anything from God.
Rather, when the evil thought assails you:
First, pause and confess the thought to God the Father.
Second, admit that you do not desire this thought nor wish to commit the act presented to you.
Third, admit your personal poverty and inability to overcome this fiery darts of the devil by your own human nature.
Fourth, fully aware of your personal poverty, call on Jesus Christ to fill you, subdue you with His Spirit of Divine Sonship.
Call out to Him with confidence, thanking Him for the test.
Why should we thank Him for these intense tests?
It is by means of these awful thoughts that God is allowing us to become more fully aware of our weakness, limitedness, sinful inclinations, and personal poverty.
He uses these tests as a means to root out the deeper, more vicious and longstanding vice of pride.
Often God will allow temptations, evil thoughts, and “lesser” sins to remain for the purpose of awakening us to our need for Him.
By thanking Him for these tests, while having confidence that He will deliver you from them, the boomerang of temptation that the evil one has thrown at you, misses and returns to slap him in his sinister face.
The devil is a pitiful and sore loser.
He hates losing.
He despises being humiliated.
By confessing the evil thought to God, thanking God for the test, while asking and trusting God to grant you the strength to overcome the temptation, utterly humiliate him.
By surrendering the malicious thought to God, you embrace the humiliation, yet also, by acknowledging and professing your weakness, become capable of receiving the virtue of humility; and with humility of heart you are now capable of rising with newfound fortitude…and pressing forward with divine courage, you become like Padre Pio, Francis of Assisi, St. Jose Maria Escriva and the like.
For a saint is not one who did not face temptations, but a sinner who learned to overcome them by depending on God.
Devin Schadt | Executive Director of the Fathers of St. Joseph
Ite ad Joseph