Chapter 5.1 - Help to avoid sin and to conquer temptations - Purgative way

  Extracts from the Dux Spiritualis by the Venerable Louis de Ponte SJ

Chapter 5.1 - Help to avoid sin and to conquer temptations - Purgative way 

Beginning with the footsteps of the purgative way, in which the impediments to prayer are removed, it is certain that if we walk in the presence of God He will so guide them that we will never lose the direct path. 

1. The memory of His presence is a powerful means of restraining the propensities of our lower nature, and of making us flee from sin as we would from a basilisk. For who would dare to sin were he mindful that God is present and is watching him? 

How shall I dare to sin in the sight of my God, who is my Judge and can condemn me to punishment, temporal or eternal? 

Hence Saint Thomas says: If we continually regarded God as present, seeing and judging all things, we should seldom or never sin [Opusc. 58] 

For if we sin, it is because we forget this presence; our deed itself protests this oblivion and error and seems to say with those hardened sinners in the Scriptures: 

        "The Lord seeth us not; the Lord has foresaken the earth" [Ezech. viii, 12]

For this reason Tobias said to his son:

        "All the days of thy life, he said, have God in thy mind; and take heed thou never consent to sin, nor transgress the commandments of the Lord our God." [iv, 6]