The Art of Distraction

As I sit down to pray the Liturgy of the Hours my mind is flooded with things of a critical nature that need my immediate attention. There is this great, incredible urge to put down my breviary and attend to those things first. I try to focus and press on, trying not to speed up my reading as to get done hastily.

About a half of the way through I start to get some peace of mind. The words start to flow and I become engrossed in the prayers. As I begin the concluding prayer I am awash in contentment, as if I had just finished running a marathon or have just finished a really good meal.

Now, on to those things that just couldn’t wait. I sit and think and for the life of me I can’t remember what they were. They were so important just fifteen minutes ago and now I have no clue.

This is the game I play with the devil several times a day. He doesn’t want me to pray so he fills my head with every excuse he can think of to keep me from doing it. Sadly, some days he is successful. Some days I get to the end of the day and realize that I have not spent this time with the Lord and I instantly feel like that fat kid who decides to eat an entire banana cream pie instead of going to the gym.

Then there is the guilt, which comes from him as well. It is not bad to feel guilt when we have done something wrong as long as we know that Jesus is always ready to forgive us if only we ask with an honest heart.

“Lord, I let the devil beat me today. Please forgive me and fill me with your strength as not to do the same thing tomorrow.”

That is the way the devil works. God speaks to us in a still, small voice that we have to listen for to hear. Knowing this, the devil will fill our day with as many distractions as he possibly can so we will miss God’s voice when it comes to us. I find no coincidence that as we have become more connected through our computers and cell phones that we have also become a less godly society. God is no longer in our government, schools, and places of work. He is barely in our families or our churches.

The more connected we become through social media the less connected we actually are with our neighbor. The things that used to bring us together in celebration now are experienced as likes on a webpage. We are losing touch with each other.

God created the world in six days. On the seventh day he rested. Did he have to rest because he was tired? Absolutely not. God rested to teach us the importance of rest. He set one day aside so that we could set everything aside for one day and enter into his rest. It is the day that we are called to worship him and spend time communing with one another. Of course, these days that day looks just like the rest. The devil fills that day with as much distraction as the others to keep us away from God.

Only you can put down the cell phone, the TV, the sports, or anything else occupying your time on that day. The devil surely won’t stop the distractions for you. It has to be a conscious action on your part to ignore him.  Take the time to listen for that still, small voice. God has something very important for you to hear.

To Lead or not to Lead?

It is not my place to disagree with any Pope when it comes to faith or morals so what follows is a theological disagreement with the recent change that has been made to “Lord’s Prayer”.

Pope Francis has recently approved a change to a phrase in the “Lord’s Prayer”. He changed the phrase, “do not lead us into temptation” to “do not let us fall into temptation”. His reasoning behind that is that God would never lead us into to temptation and he would never tempt us himself. The problem here, it seems, is that scripture does not seem to support that idea.

The first place to start is by looking at the prayer itself in the language it was written. Did we misinterpret the words as we have done in other places? In this case the answer is no. The original Greek does say, “do not lead us into temptation”. So we do have the right translation.

So, the next question we have to answer is if the Pope is correct in stating that God would never lead us into temptation. Does scripture support this idea? Again, the answer is no. Let us remember that the word temptation is synonymous with the word trial. A trial and a temptation are the same thing, at least scripturally.

The three synoptic gospels are very clear when they describe the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry.    

“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”

– Matthew 4:1

                “Immediately the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness.” – Mark 1:12

“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led around by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil.” – Luke 4:1

The spirit in these passages is the Holy Spirit, or God. So it is very clear that God does lead us into temptation. He is not the one doing the tempting. If God did the tempting it would be entrapment for he knows exactly where we would fail.

In fact scripture is full of references of God testing man. God tested the Israelites for forty years in the desert –

“Then the LORD said to Moses, “Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether or not they will walk in My instruction.” – Exodus 16: 4

“You shall remember all the ways which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.” – Deuteronomy 8:2

Why would God lead us to temptation? It isn’t for his sake. God knows our weaknesses. He knows where we will sin if tried. God allows us to be tested so that we know where we are weak. We cannot grow in holiness if we do not know where we need help. When you purify gold you heat the metal until it melts and then the impurities can be removed. Temptation and trial do much the same thing to us. It allows our impurities to surface so we can ask God to help us purge them from ourselves. When we say no to temptation we strengthen our free will and it becomes easier to resist the devil. Temptation is only a bad thing for those of weak wills who cannot resist. Resisting a temptation is the spiritual equivalent of going to the gym and running on the treadmill. The more you do it the easier it becomes. This is also the same reason we fast.

My real rub to this change is that the Pope has changed the words of Jesus. As stated at the beginning of this harangue, three of the four Gospel writers give us the text of this prayer as handed down by Jesus himself. In the original language used, Greek, they use the words, “lead us not into temptation”.  In fact every translation used by the early Church, to my knowledge, wrote the words that way. If Jesus wanted us to say, “let us not fall into temptation” I think he would have used those words somewhere.

For any Pope to change the words Jesus gave us to teach a theological opinion that is not scriptural I believe to be in error. Now, Pope Francis did not do this on his own. He only approved what has been in the works for almost twenty years. I cannot claim to know the mind of the Magisterium so I look forward to reading the commentaries that are sure to come.