What do the Desert Fathers tell us to guide our spiritual life, in the very concrete circumstances of our lives? Today, Abba Poemen, a holy monk born around 340, speaks about impure thoughts and desires. How to keep temptation away without believing the game is lost?
Abba Poemen, whose name means “pastor”, was for years a much-listened spiritual guide in the desert of Scete where many monks had retreated and lived a partially eremitical life (with a time of community life on Saturdays and on Sunday). It is said that when he arrived in Scete, there lived an elder who came to consult. But as soon as Poemen established himself there, people only came to see him and the former was saddened to be neglected. Poemen immediately came to find him and did everything possible to win his friendship. He gives us valuable advice to fight against impure thoughts.
Active endurance
Several monks shared with Poemen their struggle against impure thoughts and desires. He answered them: “If someone manages to lock a snake or a scorpion in a bag, in time it will die. So it is with the evil thoughts suggested by demons, they disappear through endurance” (Poemen, 21). We cannot always defend the access of our thoughts to images or memories that arise unexpectedly. It is already a ruse of the Devil to make us believe that these suggestions come from us, when they are incursions of the Evil One. Already feeling compromised, we believe the game is lost and we become accessible to the sadness that prevents us from defending ourselves. We are not far from giving way and giving space to unhealthy complicity.
Poemen, with his usual realism, suggests that we put the venomous beast under a bushel and let it die there. But beware ! It’s not about letting it happen and just waiting for it to pass. Poemen speaks of “endurance”. This is an active defense, a clear and clear refusal that has been communicated to the Adversary. And not just once, as many times as the possibility presents itself: “No, I don’t want to, at no cost do I want to turn my back on my Lord!” Go away, Perverted Spirit! »
Patience and pride put to the test
All curiosity is bad: it is already playing with fire to imagine the satisfactions of which we deprive ourselves. What is put to the test is first of all our patience (“again!”), it is sometimes also pride (“such things happen to me too!” “what an attack on my image mark of a little Catholic who is good in all respects!”). Let’s bounce back and we will see at the end of the course that the demon will have lost the game at least for this time!
