To protect ourselves from Lust, we must guard our hearts, eyes, ears, and tongue from Lustful objects
3 min • Digitized on November 12, 2021
From The Sinner’s Guide, page 349
By Venerable Louis of Granada
Section II.
Particular Remedies.
Besides these general remedies there are others more special, and perhaps more efficacious.
The first of these is vigorously to resist the first attacks of this vice. If we do not resist it in the beginning it rapidly acquires strength and gains an entrance to our souls.
“When a taste for sinful pleasures,” says St. Gregory, “takes possession of a heart, it thinks of nothing but how to gratify its inordinate desires.” [“Moral.,” xxi. 7.]
We must, then, struggle against it from the beginning by repelling every bad thought, for by such fuel is the flame of impurity fed. As wood nourishes fire, so our thoughts nourish our desires; and, consequently, if the former be good, charity will burn in our breast, but if they are bad, the fire of lust will certainly be kindled.
In the second place, we must carefully guard our senses, particularly the eyes, that they may not rest upon anything capable of exciting sinful desires.
A man may inflict a deep wound upon his soul by inconsiderately turning his eyes upon a dangerous object. Prudently guard your eyes in your intercourse with the other sex, for such glances weaken virtue.
Hence we are told by the Holy Ghost: “Look not round about thee in the ways of the city. Turn away thy face from a woman dressed up, and gaze not upon another’s beauty.” [Ecclus. ix. 7, 8.]
Think of Job, that great servant of God, of such tried virtue, who kept so vigilant a guard over his senses that, in the expressive language of Scripture, he made a covenant with his eyes not so much as to think upon a virgin. [Job xxxi. 1.]
Behold also the example of David, who, though declared by God to have been a man after His own Heart, yet fell into three grievous crimes by inconsiderately looking upon a woman.
Be no less watchful in protecting your ears from impure discourses. If unbecoming words are uttered in your presence testify your displeasure by at least a grave and serious countenance; for, what we hear with pleasure we learn to do with complacency.
Guard with equal care your tongue. Let no immodest words escape you; for “evil communications,” says the Apostle, “corrupt good morals.” [1 Cor. xv. 33.] A man’s conversation discovers his inclination, for, to quote the words of the Gospel, from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.
Endeavor to keep your mind occupied with good thoughts and your body employed in some profitable exercise, “for the devil,” says St. Bernard, “fills idle souls with bad thoughts, so that they may be thinking of evil if they do not actually commit it.”