The Two Great Temptations

The Two Great Temptations: Feeling Overwhelmed and Being Distracted

"We should not want to practice many exercises [or changes] at the same time and all of a sudden .. The enemy often tries to make us attempt and start many projects so that we will be overwhelmed with too many tasks and therefore achieve nothing and leave everything unfinished... Sometimes he even suggests the wish to undertake some excellent work that he foresees we will never accomplish. He does not care how many plans and beginnings we make, provided nothing is finished. Very often, the evil one deludes us, and to distract us from achieving some good, he proposes another that seems better. After we have started the second one, to divert us from completing it, he presents us with a third.Among Christians, it is not so much the beginning as the ends that counts. As soon as we have deliberated and resolved [upon something]- in this and every other matter which concerns God's service - we must be firm and unchanging - we must never let ourselves be shaken by any show whatsoever of a greater good.

St Francis de Sales in Finding God's Will For You, Sophia Institute Press, Manchester, NH, 1998, selections pp52-54