Part 4, Chapter 6
Buffets taste really good. When we go to them we can pick the kind of food we want and eat as much as we want. What are buffets; they are indulgence, intemperance and pleasure seeking at its worst. So if we have a friend who likes to go buffets and we like to go to buffets and every time we do this we both over indulge, are we leading ourselves into sin? Yes, since we know that the situation is not good for us and we keep leading ourselves into temptation. It would be like the alcoholic going into the bar where they used to over indulge in beer. “Thus it sometimes happens that temptation in itself is sin to us, because we have ourselves brought it upon us” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 166). Thus I am not to lead myself into temptation, or put the Lord thy God to the test by seeing how long I can withstand a temptation that I bring upon myself. “So again, if I know that certain society involves me in temptation to evil, and yet I voluntarily seek it, I am unquestionably responsible for all that I may encounter in the way of temptation therein” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 166). We need to avoid the buffet lines, the bars or whatever it is if it is going to be a near occasion of sin for us.
If I am thinking about pizza all day long and how wonderful it is, and I don’t do anything to get rid of it, but let it purposely linger there as a temptation that I am finding pleasure in, than I am allowing it to become sinful. “When the pleasure that attends temptation might have been avoided, but has not been avoided, there is always a certain amount of sin according to the degree to which we have lingered over it, and the kind of pleasure we have taken in it” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 167). If we are going to pray the Lord’s Prayer, we need to remember to keep God at the center of our lives and by doing so to ask Him to help us in all temptations.