Journeying With The Saints

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims, welcome to another day.

We have another short reading today on temptations and, if you remember, that's what this whole fourth part is about—temptations. So, it's clearly a topic that St. Francis sees as important to discuss from many different angles. Temptations are the path that sin starts on. If we resist the temptations, we've committed no sin. But, if we give into those temptations…well…we've just consisted to sin.

So, it's vitally important that we learn a thing or two about temptations. Today's reading is short and sweet and so let's open our books to Chapter Nine of the Fourth Part.

Welcome, Catholic Pilgrims, to another day where we are learning about resisting temptations. Today, though, St. Francis is talking about resisting small ones.

It's another short reading today. Lately, we've had a few quick and concise readings, so let's go ahead and jump on in and open our books to Chapter Eight of the Fourth Part.

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims, thank you for joining me today.

When I was growing up, most people tried to be pretty quiet about their sins or their temptations. There was a real push to seem perfect or as if you didn't really struggle with anything.

We all know that we struggle, but we just didn't want to appear like we did.

Today, we have almost swung clear over to the other side, where people openly talk about they are tempted to do and, not only do people listen, but they encourage indulging. This is because we live in a hedonistic environment.

Neither one of these are good responses to temptations.

St. Francis is going to discuss with us today remedies for great temptations. So, let's go ahead and open our books to Chapter Seven of the Fourth Part.

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims, welcome back to another great day to learn from St. Francis.

When my girls were little, Taylor Swift broke onto the scene. Taylor's first cd played almost non-stop in our house and my car for months and months. Some songs were fun, some were sad, but all-in-all they were harmless. They were just a teenage girl singing about the ups and downs of teenage life.

The next cd that came out was "Fearless." It was fine. Then "Speak Now," again, pretty much fine. "Red" came out the year my husband came back from his deployment. There was one line in one of the songs, that made me flinch and really start to pay attention to the fact that maybe Taylor was going down a path that had a bad message attached to it.

What was that one line? Well, you'll have to wait until after today's reading to hear it. Let's turn to Chapter Six of the Fourth Part.

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims, and welcome back to another great day.

When I was Protestant, growing in holiness was never really something that was talked about. Just being a believer made you righteous in the eyes of God, so that was really all there was to it.

I didn't grow up learning about how suffering can be redemptive or how we can sacrifice to show love. Jesus' sacrifice was all that was focused on, which is good and important, but what happens when major suffering comes our way, or we are asked to sacrifice in big way, or God permits you to be tempted in difficult ways, like St. Catherine of Siena, who we heard about last reading?

For me, when suffering came my way, I bailed, because I thought God would protect believers from any suffering or difficultly. When, in fact, it's usually the opposite. If you are going to be made into a saint, well, you don't get there by taking the easy path. Saints are forged in trials, temptations, and suffering.

St. Francis is going to give us some encouragement if we are facing temptations, so let's open our books to Chapter Five of the Fourth Part.

Welcome back, Catholic Pilgrims. I'm very glad that you have joined me today.

Last time, we heard St. Francis talk about how feeling tempted is not the same as yielding to temptation.

Today, we are going to get an example of what that looks like through the experiences of St. Catherine of Siena.

So, let's open our books to Chapter Four of the Fourth Part.

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims. Welcome back.

Just to refresh our memory, this Fourth Part of the book is all about remedies to temptations. The first thing we heard about in dealing with temptations is to not really care what the world thinks about us when we try to live a more devout spiritual life. The second thing we have to have is courage—courage to say no to temptations.

Today, St. Francis is going to tell us that it's not a sin to be tempted. The sin lies when we delight and yield to the temptation.

So, let's open our books to Chapter Three of the Fourth Part.

Hello, Catholic Pilgrims. Thank you for pressing play and joining me.

When we start out on the path to become more devoted to Christ and our Faith, we usually have to leave a lot of things behind. We realize that we need to shed certain sins that have become habitual and in our new fervor, we initially find that very easy to do. Then, however, those old temptations may start to creep back up into our minds.

We used to like those sins and those vices that once gripped us and the devil is always whispering that it might not be so bad to go back to them just for a little bit. Just this once.

But, we must have courage to say no.

St. Francis is going to remind us that we must be of good courage, so let's turn in our books to Chapter Two of the Fourth Part.

Welcome, Catholic Pilgrims, to the Fourth Part of our book. I don't know if you've looked at our progress in the book lately, but we've definitely covered a lot of ground.

The Fourth Part is about "needful remedies against ordinary temptations," which is an area where we can all use some guidance.

To kick us off in this area, St. Francis is going to talk to us about not giving heed to what the world says about our spiritual life.

So, with that, let's open our books to Chapter One of the Fourth Part.

Hello, my fellow Pilgrims, welcome back. Today, is our last reading in the Third Part and it's a short one. We've had some pretty long readings lately and, today, you get a bit of a break.

St. Francis is going to be giving a word to the unmarried, so let's open to Chapter Forty-One of the Third Part.