St. Benedict was tempted by lustful thoughts when he ventured off in the wilderness, hoping that he could dedicate his life to God.
In today's world, both men and women are being tempted nearly every day to commit some sort of sexual sin. Smart phones make it very easy to access images or videos of a person's wildest sexual fantasy, leading to an addiction that is extremely difficult to quit.
While these difficulties may seem like a modern phenomena, the truth is that even many of the saints struggled with such temptations.
Often the main difference between us and the saints is that the saints would take any measure necessary to stop a temptation before it went too far.
St. Benedict and the woman
Early on in St. Benedict's life, probably when he was around 18 or 19 years old, he left his comfortable home and went in search of solitude.
Initially he lived in a cave, and while that may seem like the perfect place to avoid temptation, the devil used his isolation to provoke his imagination.
Here is how St. Gregory the Great describes it in his biography of St. Benedict:
A certain woman there was which some time he had seen, the memory of which the wicked spirit put into his mind, and by the representation of her did so mightily inflame with concupiscence the soul of God's servant, which did so increase that, almost overcome with pleasure, he was of mind to have forsaken the wilderness.
He was ready to give up and go back to the world, thinking that his plan to live in the wilderness was foiled.
Yet, he came to his senses and did something very drastic to get his mind off the woman:
But, suddenly assisted with God's grace, he came to himself; and seeing many thick briers and nettle bushes to grow hard by, off he cast his apparel, and threw himself into the midst of them, and there wallowed so long that, when he rose up, all his flesh was pitifully torn: and so by the wounds of his body, he cured the wounds of his soul, in that he turned pleasure into pain, and by the outward burning of extreme smart, quenched that fire which, being nourished before with the fuel of carnal cogitations, did inwardly burn in his soul: and by this means he overcame the sin, because he made a change of the fire.
Inflicting physical pain upon ourselves may not be the first thing we would think of to stop a sexual temptation, but in St. Benedict's mind, he needed to do something extreme.
The lesson we can learn from this story is that sometimes we need to do something big to cut ourselves off from a frequent temptation that continues to hinder our progress in the spiritual life.
That could even mean getting rid of our phone or laptop for the sake of saving our soul.
Whatever it may be, take your temptation to God and ask him for help to know what you need to do to divorce yourself from a sexual temptation.
