Post #6238

Never make a deal with the enemy. *THE DEVIL AND THE MONKS* A short story circulates among Catholic groups about the day when the devil appeared to three monks and asked, one by one, what they would change in the past. “If I give you the power to change something from your past, what will you change?” The first monk, with great apostolic zeal, quickly replied: "I would prevent you from causing Adam and Eve to fall into sin, so that mankind could not turn away from God." The second monk, who had a heart full of mercy, replied: "I would prevent you from turning away from God and condemning yourself eternally." The third monk was the simplest of the three. Instead of answering the devil, he knelt down, made the Sign of the Cross and prayed: "Lord, deliver me from the temptation of what could have been and wasn't." The demon then released a high-pitched roar and, writhing in pain, disappeared. Astonished, the other two asked their companion in consecrated life: “Brother, why did you respond this way?” "First: we must never dialogue with the enemy. Second: no one in the world has the power to change the past. Third: the devil is not at all interested in helping us, but in holding us in the past to neglect the present. Because? Because the present is the only time when, by divine grace, we can collaborate with God himself. The devil's ruse that most imprisons people and prevents them from living the present in union with God is the 'could have been and was not'. Let us leave the past in the hands of God's Mercy and the future in the hands of His Providence. The present is already in our hands joined to the hands of God”. Source: Aleteia