Listen to this inspiring talk by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen about the importance of adoration.
After pride, lust is the vice that the devil prefers to use to lure people away from God. Lust blinds the mind of a person, and since it is the mind that enlightens the will, once blinded, it no longer has the ability to lead the will away from the irrational urges of the body. Lust is an undiscerning passion that acts on fantasies, thoughts, and desires. Lust always leads to irrational, reckless, ruinous, and self-destructive behavior.
I have a large library of self-improvement and personal development books, cassette tapes, CDs, DVDs, and digital audio and video computer files that I constantly refer to for inspiration, motivation, and guidance. Among those items are cassette tapes and CDs that were produced by Zig Ziglar, one of the top motivational speakers in America.
If pride is the mother of all sins, anger is the father. While all sins are born from pride, those same sins are often supported by anger. Pride nurtures sin, and anger defends it.
The year was 1969. I was 12 years old, and the boy who delivered the local newspaper to my parents’ home told me that he was going to quit delivering papers. His name was Richie. I asked Richie what I needed to do to take over the job, and he gave me the name and telephone number of his supervisor at the Peoria Journal Star. After talking to my mom about applying for the job, I called the supervisor and set up a time for me and my mom to meet with him.
Last week after Georgette finished talking to a friend on the telephone, she said to me, “When I was talking about the benefits of praying the rosary, my friend (a former Catholic) asked, ‘If God is omnipresent, why would He approve of you praying to someone else, instead of directly to Him – and how do we know the saints can hear our prayers?’” Georgette then asked me, “How would you respond if someone asked you that question?”
We were all born with a strong tendency toward pride, the mother of all sins. Because of our fallen human nature, we were also born with a tendency toward each of the other root passions of lust, anger, avarice, envy, gluttony, and sloth; furthermore, as a result of the individual unique traits that each of us were born with, combined with the environment we grew up in and our life experiences, we each entered adolescence, and later adulthood, with a predominant tendency toward one of the other six root passions.
In her book The Way of Perfection, St. Teresa of Avila wrote, “…but it remains for us to become detached from our own selves and it is a hard thing to withdraw from ourselves and oppose ourselves, because we are very close to ourselves and love ourselves very dearly…It is here that true humility can enter.”
Last month my daughter Maria, her husband, Joe, and their two-year-old daughter, Grace, came into town from Chicago to stay at our home for a weekend. On Sunday morning, while I was in the bathroom getting ready for church, I had my iPad tuned in to iHeartRadio.com. With iHeartRadio, I’m able to play music from different “oldies” radio stations located throughout the United States.
As you know, last week Bishop Jenky issued a directive to all the priests in the Diocese of Peoria to read a letter at each of the weekend Masses. I have some observations about the letter, but first, here’s what Bishop Jenky wrote:
Of the seven root passions or sins – pride, lust, anger, avarice, envy, gluttony, and sloth – the most deadly is pride. It was an appeal to pride that persuaded Eve to defy her Creator: “…you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:6)