Overcoming Temptation: 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time

If we had read the Gospel of Mark for the Sunday, we might’ve taken it literally. I know because I once thought he meant it. Jesus offered these challenging words, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire.” He does use strong language here.

Christ is telling us here to be conscious of our relationship with sin and temptation. Often, temptation precedes sin. He wants us to look deeper into the depths of our souls and face the temptations of our lives and points of vulnerability. We can overcome sin when we acknowledge the temptation of our lives.

C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity: “No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting it, not by giving in. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it.”

We need to grow in faith. One of the ways is to acknowledge God in our presence and let him be our strength. When that happens, we can overcome every temptation the devil will throw at us.