WORD ALIVE                                                           FR. BEL SAN LUIS, SVD There's an amusing story about a young man who was constantly bedeviled by sensual thoughts. Feeling guilty, he consulted a priest-friend. "Don't worry," the priest assured him, "these thoughts pop out in our minds. They're not sinful but only enticements. But the moment you start entertaining them, they become sinful. Did you entertain them?" The young man paused, then sheepishly replied: "Well, I didn’t entertain them, Father, but I think they entertained me!"

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Temptation is not a sin. Even the Lord in today’s gospel was tempted. Temptation, as the priest in the above story said, is an incitement to do evil.  It's when one yields that sin happens. Contrary to common belief, temptations are not just incitements to commit sins of the flesh, but also of injustice, cheating, murder, graft and corruption; and take note, also the temptation to over-eat!

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One form of temptation is the so-called “occasion of sin.” A man who has been drinking heavily said he wanted to kick the habit. On the way home, he is invited by his barkada  to drink just one bottle of beer. “But after one bottle,” he says, “I feel so weak to refuse a second, then a third and so on.” So instead of  the concluding toast “one for the road!” it becomes “one for the canal!” It requires will power to break away. But if one knows he’s weak, he should avoid the barkada or leave before they do something bad.

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Apart from bad barkada, other occasions of sin are pornographic materials, internets, places of vices, like dubious bars, pot parties, gambling dens. As someone graphically put it: “To pray against temptation but not to avoid the occasion of sin is like putting your hand in the fire and pray that the hand does not get burned.”

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We have just entered the season of Lent. Lent is a time of testing and, as St. Paul puts it,  a “spiritual combat” (Romans 7,15). Are we making the right choices against evil? Let’s pray that the Lord give us the strength to say NO when temptation allures us leading us to commit sin and perdition.

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Today is NATIONAL MIGRANTS’ SUNDAY. It falls on the first Sunday of Lent and fittingly so because the theme of the Gospel is about TEMPTATION. One serious family problem among Filipino migrants is the long separation of married couples. A spouse working abroad, for instance, can succumb to the temptation of infidelity. The spouse left behind can also fall to the same predicament.

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OFWs AS MISSIONARIES. Aside from the enormous help  of million-dollar-euro remittances to the country by Filipino migrant workers, they have helped strengthen the Christian families and parishes where they’re working abroad.

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To cite an example. A cabinet member from our country once related how he met an Italian minister at an international convention in Rome. “So you are Filipinos!” he greeted. “I have a Filipina helper at home.”

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 “I want to tell you that ever since that Filipina started to work in our house, it has become very clean and orderly. “Besides, my children now go to church regularly because she takes them along, and we the parents have to go, too, because our children keep prodding us to go with them. “I tell you, she has done so much good for our family.”

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The above and many similar stories show that our migrant workers, by active religious practices abroad, are also church missionaries.

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THE LIGHTER SIDE. A man approached his priest-friend and bragged, “Father, I got rid of my vices.” “How did you do it?” the priest asked. “I stopped drinking through WILL POWER. Gambling? Will power; Smoking? Will power.” The priest said, “How about womanizing?” “POWER FAILURE,” he said sheepishly. “But I’m trying hard to overcome it, Father.”

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“They say that marriage makes a man dizzy, and it's true,” said a husband. “As soon as I got a wife, I lost my balance at the bank.”

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LENTEN PENANCE. As a penitential sacrifice in this season of Lent, how about chipping in an amount or sponsoring a seminarian's schooling for one year? Please remember: without seminarians we cannot have priests, missionaries and bishops who baptize, say Holy Mass, hear confessions, anoint the sick, bless the dead; in short, their spiritual services are when parishioners are “hatched, matched, dispatched” (to the cemetery).

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For inquiry, e-mail me at: [email protected].