Temptation

Believe it or not, the long form of today’s first reading – which seems incredibly long – actually skips over a few verses, giving us the main part of the narrative- more or less – in Daniel 13:1-9, 15-17, 19-30, 33-62.

The main part of the narrative concerns a woman who is unjustly accused by corrupt and lustful judges and who is saved after “God stirred up the holy spirit of a young boy named Daniel”.

There are many issues in this long narrative, from violence against women to the easy corruption of human justice by false accusations.

But there is also an important lesson, by way of a very negative example, in one of the skipped-over verses (v. 9), in describing how the judges failed to control their lust.

They suppressed their consciences;
they would not allow their eyes to look to heaven,
and did not keep in mind just judgments.

All of us face temptations everyday: sometimes they are temptations of lust, sometimes greed, sometimes anger or hatred, and sometimes all of them at once.

When we let temptations get hold of us, we generally follow the same path as the elders in today’s reading.

We suppress our consciences.

The suppression of conscience is not usually something that happens simply in reaction to the circumstances of a single moment. Sadly, suppression of conscience is often the work of a lifetime, as we desensitize ourselves to evil through frequent occasions of sin, false teachings about morality, and a long chain of compromises.

Most dangerously, we do not focus on building up our consciences. Too many of us try to handle the pressures and complexities of life in a changing world with the moral education of a schoolchild.

We need to build up our consciences through continual prayer and the study of God’s truth and to make better efforts at avoiding the near occasions of sin in which we sometimes wallow.

The elders also “did not keep in mind just judgments.”

This is a key point, because temptation essentially involves a distortion of reality: a human being made in the image of God is seen simply as a tool for pleasure, freedom is confused with whim, and I myself am the center of the universe.

Indeed, oftentimes, when we really think about it, temptations are laughably unreal.

This is tied together with the previous point, of course, because conscience is itself a critical reality check.

The elders’ most critical failure was this: “they would not allow their eyes to look to heaven”.

The most important thing we can do, whenever we are faced by temptation or any trouble, is to put ourselves immediately and fully before God in prayer, to raise our eyes to heaven and open ourselves to the cleansing light of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.