THROUGH UNTRUE By FR. ROLANDO DELA ROSA Fr. Rolando V. Dela Rosa, O.P. Today’s Gospel reading makes us think of temptation as the devil whispering in our ear, luring us to disobey God. It reinforces our mistaken idea that every time we sin, the devil made us do it. Or worse, after giving in to temptation every so often, we begin to say: “I can’t help it. The devil is too strong for me.” In truth, we don’t need the devil to tempt us to sin. We read in the Bible: “Each person is tempted and seduced by his desire. Desire conceives and brings forth sin, and when sin becomes second nature, it brings forth death.” (James 1:14) Desire is an essential part of our makeup. Jesusencourages and impels us to get in touch with our deepest longings because, by an ironic twist, only in this way will we realize that nothing in this world can fully satisfy us. As St. Augustine confesses: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.” Desire impels us to go beyond ourselves. Sadly, the devil also knows this. Just as human desire can propel us to God; it can also become the workshop of the devil. The devil capitalizes on the fact that we are born with a defective appetite and fallible reason, so even if our desire is oriented towards what is good, there are times when we choose evil because it appears to us as “good.” This is why St. Paul writes: “I do not understand what I do. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out” (Romans 7:18-20). We tend to subvert or supplant our legitimate desire by our passion for cheap thrills and vicarious excitement that satisfy for a while, but leave us more empty than before. So the longing for transcendence takes a back seat, and desire becomes a frantic clawing at anything that will medicate the painful emptiness within us. Take for instance the rampant desire for “sugar-coated” pleasures. These tempt us to believe that they will bring us happiness with just one sip, one glance, one shot, one visit, or one view. Then the “one” becomes two, then three, and so on. As one young man admits: “First, I happened to visit a pornographic site on the Internet. That visit was repeated until it became a habit. What seemed easy to resist in the beginning became a very powerful and consuming obsession. It led me to do things that made me regret, ashamed, and guilty.” The same fate awaits those who are hooked on drugs, crime, gambling, inveterate drinking, graft and corruption, money, power, fame, or extramarital liaisons. Everything began with harmless-looking and short-lived pleasures that later became addictions. Temptation is falsehood masquerading as truth. Nowhere is this better shown than the craving for junk food that afflicts many. As John Eldredge writes: “I look at what my friends eat—not one-tenth of it is real food. It is all impostors—canned this, microwaved that, fruit juice that boasts of ‘10 percent real juice.’ They slowly starve themselves while feeling full. When we are in the habit of eating poorly, truly nourishing foods don’t appeal to us. So it is with our desire. The truly healthy desire knows what it wants.” Today, we no longer know what we truly want. St. Thomas Aquinas gives us very good advice against temptations that are products of our twisted desires. He said: The best way to destroy an attraction is to develop ANOTHER ATTRACTION. If we want to conquer the desires that lead us astray, we must divert our attention to the desire for what is really good, what truly fulfills, and what makes us feel truly happy. But this is difficult especially if we have immersed ourselves in our sinful passions.When we have become so habituated to what is bad, a time will come when we consider it as our new normal.