Temptation

The good news is that our temptations, struggles, and “wilderness experiences” offer an opportunity for us to become more whole, more integrated, more fully ourselves, because they teach us about ourselves, they gradually form our self-understanding, and they even return us to ourselves. That is what they did for Jesus, and that is what they can do for us. The desert monks certainly saw it this way. Saint Antony the Great, the father of monasticism, goes so far as to say: “Without temptation no one can be saved.”
Photograph by Brother Brian. Meditation by Father Dominic.