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Text Box: who seek so to do will overcome this problem. To the extent one openly pursues operating divinely, to that extent one plants seeds of attempting to attain holiness in others and cultivate holiness in one’s self. For those for whom this is the situation, don’t break your arms patting yourselves on your backs. Persistence in seeking holiness is not as desirable as actually attaining holiness. Ref: 1 Thes. 1:2-10, Mat. 13:31-35 +

Text Box: existence, His having created us, His maintaining us in existence, and His enabling every one of our thoughts and deeds, holy or sinful. This awareness will greatly facilitate our overcoming sinful inclinations and temptations. It will also facilitated the inducement to our becoming and being holy, maintaining a state of holiness, and our increasing in holiness. In part, we establish and strengthen our love for God in the desire to overcome temptation because of that love for God. Even if the desire to overcome sinful temptation has its initial foundation in the desire to avoid eternal damnation, reason clearly establishes the desirability that we strengthen that foundation with the desire to love God, and attempt to make that foundation indestructible with actual, active love for and of God. What is nice is that God provides us with the very love we need for this purpose. He provides us with Charity, His own Divine Love. Every time we overcome a temptation to sin we strengthen our love for God and our ability to overcome sinful temptations in the future. And if we are able to increase our awareness of God so that we are more and more aware of

Text Box: God, and ever increasingly more and more aware of God, eventually we will attain a level of awareness of God, and a level of appreciation of and love for God, which will assist us in overcoming those more “spontaneous” sins which we wish we could simply pluck out of our lives like a piece of lint on our clothing. With each advance in this process comes an attack against the very process itself. That attack against attaining holiness comes in part from the devil and those who oppose God. It also comes from ourselves, from our fallen nature which desires to have its own way, from our own sinful desires, inclinations, and concupiscences, which, as it were, seem to take on a life and will of their own. Actually, they come from that aspect of our selves which we have failed to bring under control and which attempt to reassert themselves in predominance in our lives. Many of the properties and abilities associated with these aspects of our lives are integral in our personalities. They therefore serve a useful purpose each having the potential for good or evil. Without these properties and abilities we would think and act as mindless robots. It is very difficult to segregate the “useful to holiness” aspects of these inclinations from the “damnation to hell” aspects of these inclinations, so that we can encourage the good ones and control or even, possibly, eliminate the evil ones. But to the extent that we are able so-to-do, to that extent we will strengthen our souls without turning ourselves into mindless robots.

Text Box: A “THOUGHT” ON CONTEMPLATING GOD IN AN UNOBTRUSIVE MANNER Part of the reason we are tempted to sin, whether it be temptation from our own inclinations, our own concupiscences, or from exterior sources such as the devil, is to continually test our love of and for God and our focus on God. There are a multitude of sins which we commit which we would not commit or would be less likely to commit if we had a better focus on God. That does not mean that if you are engaged in an extremely dangerous activity, such as operating dangerous equipment as part of your employment, that you should be contemplating the mystery of The Blessed Trinity, and prayerfully singing the Twenty-Sixth Psalm, while operating that equipment. But at the very least, when the dangerous activity is completed, you should have enough focus on God to thank God for your safety, the employment, and for assisting you in doing good work. You might include your guardian angel in that thanks, as well as your patron saint. Our focus on God should at the very least be constantly, in a sense, shadowing, in our minds, in our thoughts. We should be at the very least, constantly and continually aware of God, aware of His

Text Box: Part of the reason we are tempted to sin, whether it be temptation from our own inclinations, our own concupiscences, or from exterior sources such as the devil, is to continually test our love of and for God and our

Text Box: Every time we overcome a temptation to sin we strengthen our love for God and our ability to overcome sinful temptations in the future. And if we are able to increase our awareness of God so that we are more and more aware of God, and ever increasingly more and more aware of God, eventually we will attain a level of awareness of God, and a level of appreciation of and love for God, which will assist us in overcoming those more “spontaneous” sins which we wish we could simply pluck out of our lives like a piece

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