>>13725222As long as we live in this world we cannot be fully without temptation, for, as Job says, the life of man upon earth is a warfare. Therefore, every man should be well on guard against his temptations, and watch in prayer so that his spiritual enemy, who never sleeps but always goes about seeking whom he may devour, may find no time or place to deceive him.
There is no man so perfect or so holy in this world that he does not sometimes have temptations, and we cannot be fully without them. Though they be for a time very grievous and painful, yet if they are resisted they are very profitable, for by them a man is made more humble and is purified and instructed in various manners which he would never have known save through the experience of such temptations. All the blessed saints who are now crowned in heaven grew and profited by temptations and tribulations; those that could not well bear temptations and tribulations, but were finally overcome, are held perpetual prisoners in hell.
There is no station so holy or any place so secret that it is fully without temptation, and there is no man fully free from it here in this life, for in our corruptible body we bear the matter whereby we are tempted, that is, our inordinate concupiscence with which we were born. As one temptation goes, another comes; and so we shall always have something to suffer, and the reason is that we have lost our innocence.
