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For Advent -- 24 Quotes About Purity That Every Young (& Old) Catholic Should Know
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For Advent: Answering the New Atheism, Dawkins Dismantled
For Advent: The Sunday Propers: Advent and Penance
It’s actually the Seven Deadly Sins. The ones that are supposed to condemn you to hell.
Lust: being addicted to sex the way some people are addicted to drugs.
Greed (avarice): craving more money, possessions and power that you can use in one lifetime.
Wrath (anger): being perpetually pissed off and taking it out on the people around you, especially your family and closest friends. Being mad at the whole world, for no logical reason.
Gluttony: being addicted to food, and building your whole life around the pleasure of eating.
Sloth: Being very, very lazy. Like a 30-year-old man who lives in his parents’ house and has never had a job in his life. Spends his precious days sleeping, smoking weed and playing videogames. Will never have a girlfriend, because women don’t go for losers.
Pride (hubris): thinking that you are better than everybody else. That you are smarter, richer or prettier than everybody else, and therefore you have the right to tell them what to do.
Envy: hating others because they have more than you. Wishing bad luck upon them, because they got over and you didn’t. And this one is a soul-killer. Because your bitter jealousy hurts you much more than it hurts them.
It’s not easy for women, either! What was said above can person to a wife as well as a husband, and even top those who are single.
Each of us is called to chastity according to our state in life. Since this also includes impure thoughts, a person has to really work at keeping ideas, and sometimes people, out of their stream of consciousness.
A sense of humor sometimes helps here. So does having a “buddy” you can talk to who will help you get your mind off things: real friends who are fighting the same battle, and understand. And, no kidding, a couple of friends and I came up with an idea we called “The Toad Tank”: a list of men we would not want to be physically intimate with under any circumstances- public figures, no personal attacks. Hitler was our most-used amphibian, on such a multitude of levels, he could have qualified as a bull frog. Sounds strange, but it worked! We’d laugh, converse, discuss, solve the world’s problems, and it would pass. We helped one another, and God helpled us.
Call a friend; talk about anything that will get your mind off things. Go to Confession, and talk to the priest: tell him you’re trying your best and you need the Grace of the Sacrament to strengthen you. Don’t be embarrassed; the more grace you recieve, the more strength you will have to avoid sins of impurity.
The advice given in the article rings true for anyone trying to maintain chastity, whatever their state in life. Put a link to it and other faith sites in big icons on your desktop. And let us pray one for another!
God bless you and keep you in His care!
The Eucharist fertilizes and nourishes both the will and the garden of virtues and the Sacramental Grace of Confession, like a good weed killer, attacks and weakens the weeds.
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What an excellent analogy!