Don’t dialogue with the devil when there’s temptation. Just pray…
According to Vatican Radio, Pope Francis warned against this during his homily at his morning Mass at Casa Santa Marta today, as he recalled how the devil tempted, in today’s first reading, both Adam and Eve, and in the Gospel, Jesus in the desert.
However, Francis noted that while Adam and Eve were deceived after dialoguing, Jesus knew better and didn’t fall for Satan’s games.
“It ended bad for the devil,” Francis said. Instead, Jesus just answered the “Father of Lies,” but not with His own words, but with the Word of God.
“In temptation,” the Pope said, “you don’t dialogue, you pray: ‘Help me, Lord, I am weak. I don’t want to hide from you.’
“This is courage, this is winning,” Pope said, but “when you start to dialogue, you end up overcome, defeated.”
Acknowledging we all feel the weakness of temptation, Francis reminded those present that if they fall, God gives grace to stop hiding oneself, seek forgiveness and start over.
Even the Seemingly Little Things
Francis also warned that corruption begins in small things, and as we hear much about corruption lately, we should pray for God’s help.
“There are so many corrupt people, corrupt ‘big fish’ in the world, whose lives we read about in the papers. Perhaps they began with a small thing, I don’t know, maybe not adjusting the scales well. What was a kilo… no, let’s make it 900 grams, but that will seem like a kilo.”
Corruption, the Pontiff lamented, begins in small things like this, with dialogue.
“If we are deceived because of our weakness in temptation, may He grant us the courage to get up and go forward, and accompany us in this courage to not respond to the devil’s attempts to deceive us,” Pope Francis prayed.
“It’s for this that Jesus came, for this,” he concluded.
