5 Steps to Conquer Sin and Temptation

The following are four steps which can help conquer sin and temptation. These steps synthesize the insights of Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism in order to create a clear and concise method for inviting Christ's healing and transformation. In addition, some contemporary language is used from Mindfulness Psychology, but only as a means of accentuating Christian practices.

We ask you, humbly: don't scroll away.

Hi readers, it seems you use Catholic Online a lot; that's great! It's a little awkward to ask, but we need your help. If you have already donated, we sincerely thank you. We're not salespeople, but we depend on donations averaging $14.76 and fewer than 1% of readers give. If you donate just $5.00, the price of your coffee, Catholic Online School could keep thriving. Thank you.

Help Now >

strong>1) Observe...
We must learn to observe our interior life and its connection with our bodies with non-judgmental awareness. The Desert Fathers often saw sin as originating in the mysterious connection between the heart and the body. For them, learning to fight sin involved paying attention to the deep roots of disordered thinking, feeling, and desiring before they developed to more significant attachments and illusions. In this way, as we learn to see patterns of sin and temptation in their earliest stages, we gently learn to see and process them before they develop into sin.
 
The first step is to observe them without attaching labels or trying to repress them. Such observation is not giving into temptation, but allowing it to surface under the work of the Holy Spirit.

2) Relate the Experience to Jesus...
This need not be completely analytical and precise. In many ways, we can use our imagination, our intuition, and our emotions to present our experience to the Lord with complete openness. In this way, we must learn to bring everything to the Lord and learn to hear what he wants to say.

3) Receive...
Having presented our experience to the Lord, we now need to give space for the Holy Spirit to inspire within us different movements of the heart. Through an intuition nourished and grounded in the Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium, we can develop an awareness of how the Lord speaks to each one of us.

4) Respond...
Having received, we now respond in whatever way the Holy Spirit engenders in us.

5) Let go...
In time, the more we observe and process our experience, there comes a time when we must learn to reject those patterns of thinking, feeling, and desiring which lead us into sin and toxic rhythms of unhealthy introspection.

The goal in all of this is to cultivate what the Ignatian tradition calls spiritual freedom. Such freedom means that we come to a place in which we are no longer ruled by our surface emotions and our limited perspectives. Rather as we are opened to the infinite love of Jesus Christ, we allow his presence to inform and guide our actions.

Fr. Ian VanHeusen is a Catholic Priest of the Diocese of Raleigh, N.C. He is currently the Parochial Vicar at St. Bernadette Catholic Church in Fuquay-Varina, N.C. He specializes in the intersection between Christian Spirituality and Moral Theology, and writes regularly on prayer and meditation at www.contemplatio.us 

Embrace your Faith