Lead Us Not Into Temptation, by Regis Martin

By Regis Martin, Crisis Magazine, March 13, 2024

Regis Martin is Professor of Theology and Faculty Associate with the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.  ….

We are all experts when it comes to temptation, but sadly we are all failures at it as well.

When it comes to temptation, we are all experts. It is a subject we’ve all mastered, a class we could all teach. It is also, quite paradoxically, an area of our lives where failure is all too frequent. The teacher is no better than the pupil; indeed, they are two sides of the same coin.

I mean, who among us has not felt even the least fleeting guilt awakened by the gap between the virtues he professes and the vices he practices? Is there no one out there unmoved by the greatness to which in our best moments we aspire, followed by the misery in which we are so often mired? With the exception of the Blessed Mother—“our nature’s solitary boast,” the poet Wordsworth reminds us—we’ve all got blood on our hands. …