A short sermon of a Benedictine monk!

Augustine Wirth O.S.B.

"Now, my dear Christians, I would have you remember that in dealing with the world, we are fighting as it were in the very camp of the enemy. We are like sailors in a naval battle, forced to board the enemy's ship, and fight it out with the foe upon his own timbers. We are in the midst of the world, breathing a worldly atmosphere, afected by its maxims, influenced by its fashions, constantly arrayed by its customs against the law of God, against the Church, against conscience. Here, indeed, must we valiently show fight, here must we battle manfully, if we would not be dragged into the snares of our treacherous enemy, or compromise our colors, lower the banner of the Cross, to some artful insidious plea of necessity or wider uselfulness. It is the age of so-called "liberal Catholics;" and we have every danger to fear from those champions of human respect who would pit the good opinion of a corrupt world against the grand old unworldly, immutable Church, whose glory is the Cross, the humiliations, the abject poverty of her Crucified Spouse.
                  If God has not given us the grace of a religious vocation, my brethren, we cannot help coming in contact with these omnipresent foes, with men who are perverse, (as the apostle says,) whose principles are not of God, bit of the world, and of a world which is "placed" in "iniquity." Is it any wonder, dear Christians, under these circumstances, that it is impossible to avoid all temptations? O beware of the spirit of the world! Fast and pray; watch day and night, for crafty and cruel annd mighty is the enemy who lingers at your door. Yes, should you even withdraw from the world and all worldy pursuit, - should you, like the anchorites of old, flee even into the monasteries of the desert, Satan will follow you there, and your body, with its corrupt tendencies and evil inclinations, will open a hand-to-hand combat with the soldier of our Lord Jesus Christ. The enemy within the walls - ah! is not that a foe to be, perhaps, more dreaded than any other exterior enemy. Pride and self-love have blinded many, and have sent more souls to destructions than Satan and the world combined. Were it not for the concupiscence of the flesh and the desires of corrupt nature, neither the devil nor the world would so easily succeed in drawing man from the service of God, - from the sweet yoke of the Gospel, - into the infernal slavery of hell.
               Christians, especially you who are in earnest and wish to save your immortal souls, be not astonished if temptations, even the most violent, dreadful and obscene, assail you. We read in the Gospel of today, that our dear Lord permitted himself, for our instruction, to be tempted even to the degrading sin of idolatry; thus showing us, for our encouragement, that involuntary temptations are not sinful, and that the soul which resists evil has no cause to fear. But if you would be secure against all the assaults of your spiritual foes, my brethren, you must faithfully and perseveringly make use of the means to overcome them."