“What do the saints say about the fight against lust?” — this question touches the most everyday, the most humiliating, and, by the admission of the Fathers, the most persistent of spiritual battles. All the saints have waged it; many have described it; none have considered it won once and for all. From the Desert Fathers to the Doctors of the Church, one conviction runs through the centuries: disordered carnal desire is not an adversary to be overcome by willpower alone, but a fire to be fled from, starved, and entrusted, day after day, into God’s hands.
This article gathers their own voices on this battle: what they said about its nature and violence, the tricks they uncovered, and above all the weapons they forged. It does not retell the praise of the contrary virtue — the beauty of chastity, its martyrs, its Marian crowning — treated in What the Saints Say About Chastity; nor the inner clarity of the heart, the subject of What the Saints Say About Purity of Heart. Here, we look the enemy in the face and listen to the veterans of this war. For methodical practical guidance, see How to Grow in the Fight Against Lust.
A preliminary remark is necessary, so as not to betray the saints. None of them despise the body or marriage: the lust they fight is not sexuality, but its disorder — desire severed from love and gift, folded back on mere pleasure. “Lust,” the Catechism defines, “is disordered desire or disordered enjoyment of sexual pleasure”[1]. It is this disorder, and this alone, that all the combat described here aims at.
Why is this battle so harsh?
"Flee from debauchery": the only battle won by fleeing
The first word of the battle is given by Saint Paul, and it takes the form of an order to retreat. Where the Apostle elsewhere commands to “stand firm” and “resist” (Eph 6:13), here he commands to flee:
“Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.”
— Saint Paul, First Letter to the Corinthians 6:18[2]
The saints have never ceased to dwell on this paradox: chastity is the only virtue, they say, whose victory is won by fleeing, not by confrontation. The reason is that the enemy is not outside but within: it is not a matter of defeating an attacker, but of not feeding a fire one carries inside. “In other battles,” the ascetic tradition summarizes, “the victors are those who resist; in this one, those who flee.”
The “second battle”: the spirit of fornication according to Cassian
It is Saint John Cassian (c. 360–435), who brought to the West the spiritual wisdom of the Egyptian monks, who gave this battle its exact place in the structure of the interior life. In his Institutes and Conferences, he describes eight battles corresponding to the eight evil thoughts. The first is gluttony; the second, immediately after, is “the spirit of fornication” (spiritus fornicationis)[3]. This order is not accidental: Cassian classifies gluttony and fornication among the “natural” vices, because they arise from the body itself, without any external suggestion being necessary—and he establishes a cause-and-effect link between them:
“Through their excess, gluttony produces impurity; […] to combat them, one must follow the same order, and always begin, with those that come first, by destroying those that follow.” — Saint John Cassian, Conferences, 5th Conference, ch. 10[4]
Hence a rule that all the Fathers will repeat: one does not fight lust head-on, but at the root, that is, first through sobriety. Gluttony and lust are two sisters; flattering the first arms the second. This is why this article has a twin brother: What the Saints Say About the Battle Against Gluttony.
A battle that lasts a lifetime
The Desert Fathers, who spared no one, considered this battle the longest of all. Unlike anger or sadness, which can yield relatively quickly, the sting of the flesh, they explain, accompanies man almost to the grave. Cassian even sets the sign of perfect chastity in a fact that no longer depends at all on awakened will: the monk has reached the harbor when he is no longer troubled even in sleep, when reason no longer watches[5]. As long as this involuntary disturbance remains, the battle is not over. The lesson is harsh but liberating: it forbids both presumption (believing one has conquered) and discouragement (believing all is lost because of a fall). Chastity is “a work of long breath”[6], a peace always to be reconquered.
The Voice of the Desert Fathers
Evagrius Ponticus: the second of the eight "thoughts"
Before Cassian, his master Evagrius Ponticus (345–399) had compiled the first list of the eight logismoi, these “thoughts” or suggestions that besiege the monk. Porneia — the thought of fornication — appears in second place, just after gluttony[7]. Evagrius keenly observes that this thought is all the more violent when it is fed by the gaze and memory: the image enters through the senses, lodges in the memory, and returns to assail the soul long after the object has disappeared. Hence the insistence, among all ascetics, on the guarding of the heart and vigilance over the first thoughts, before they become consent.
John Climacus: "extinguish fire with fire"
In the 7th century, Saint John Climacus, abbot of Sinai, devotes the fifteenth step of his Ladder of Divine Ascent to chastity and the struggle against fornication. His definition of the chaste has become famous: victory does not come from a love extinguished, but from a greater love that consumes the other.
“Chaste is he who drives out carnal love by divine love, and who extinguishes the fire of earth by the fire of heaven.”
— Saint John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 15th step[8]
But Climacus knows that this fire of heaven is not kindled by decree. Therefore, he gives the advice that sums up all the Fathers’ wisdom on this point: not to grit one’s teeth, but to confess one’s powerlessness in order to call upon grace.
“Offer to the Lord the weakness of your nature, fully acknowledging your own powerlessness; and, without even realizing it, you will receive the gift of chastity.”
— Saint John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 15th step[9]
These two sentences hold together the whole secret of the struggle: one must desire something higher (the fire of heaven) and confess oneself weaker (the acknowledged powerlessness). The pride of believing one can conquer by oneself is, says Climacus, the door through which the demon returns.
Chastity, a gift from God more than a conquest of man
This is the point on which the Fathers never compromise, and which distinguishes their teaching from mere stoicism. Cassian, in his twelfth Conference (with Abbot Cheremon), teaches that perfect chastity exceeds the powers of nature: it is a “gift of God” that crowns the effort without ever being its mere product[10]. Asceticism — fasting, vigil, work, flight — is necessary, but it only prepares the ground; it is God who gives purity of heart. This doctrine will be taken up word for word by Saint Augustine and will pass into the entire Latin tradition. It has an immense practical consequence: the first act of the struggle is not an effort, but a prayer.
The Great Law of Combat: Flee, Do Not Negotiate
Joseph, the Type of the Righteous Who Flees (Genesis 39)
The Fathers found in Scripture the icon of this law: the patriarch Joseph, a slave in Egypt, tempted day after day by Potiphar’s wife. The text of Genesis emphasizes that he does not argue, does not linger, does not measure his strength: he flees, even leaving his garment in the hands of the temptress.
“She caught him by his garment, saying, ‘Lie with me.’ But he left his garment in her hand and fled outside.”
— Genesis 39:12[11]
For Saint John Chrysostom, as for the entire tradition, Joseph’s wisdom is precisely to lose his cloak rather than his soul: in this battle, a humiliating flight is better than a reckless confrontation. The garment left in the enemy’s hands becomes the emblem of the opportunity one must know how to abandon without regret.
Saint Alphonsus and Saint Philip Neri: “Courage Consists in Fleeing”
This law, Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696–1787), Doctor of the Church and great master of moral life, hammered throughout his life as the surest means of all. Where, in other temptations, one must resist, in those of the flesh true courage is to flee the occasion[12]. It is not cowardice, he insists, but clarity: overestimating one’s strength in this area is already half defeat. Saint Philip Neri (1515–1595) expressed it in a proverb that has remained famous, which Saint Alphonsus himself reports:
“In this war, only cowards, that is, those who flee occasions of falling, shall be victors.” — saying of Saint Philip Neri, reported by Saint Alphonsus Liguori[13]
And Saint Alphonsus adds the second pillar, inseparable from the first: prayer. “He who prays saves himself; he who does not pray is damned,” he writes in The Great Means of Prayer[14] — for in the moment of temptation, a single cry to God, a single invocation of the name of Jesus or Mary, obtains the strength that nature alone does not have.
Why This Battle Is Won by Fleeing: Saint Thomas’s Analysis
Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) gives the theological reason for this strategy. In the Summa Theologica, he explains that carnal pleasure is the most violent of all sensible pleasures; that is why it absorbs reason more than any other and renders it, at the moment, almost incapable of judging rightly. Lust, he says following Saint Gregory the Great, “blinds the mind”[15] — it engenders a lineage of vices, the “daughters of lust,” the first of which is precisely this blindness of judgment. One thus understands why one does not negotiate with such temptation: to dialogue is already to have lost the light. The only sure tactic is to withdraw from the fire before it blinds. This analysis, treated more fully in What the Saints Say About Chastity, underpins the entire pedagogy of flight.
The Weapons of the Saints
If flight is the great rule, the saints have also forged a true arsenal of positive means. These are found, with striking consistency, from the Desert Fathers to modern masters.
The Guarding of the Senses and the Eyes
All tradition makes the guarding of the eyes the first sentinel. Evil enters through the gaze, takes root in the imagination, returns through memory: to cut off the root is to watch the gate. The saints often cite the oath of the righteous Job:
“I made a covenant with my eyes: how then could I gaze at a virgin?”
— Job 31:1[16]
Christ himself carried the battle this far, inwardly, in the gaze and desire:
“Everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
— Jesus, Gospel according to Saint Matthew 5:28[17]
That is why Saint Louis Gonzaga took the guarding of the eyes to heroic lengths, and why the Catechism lists among the means of purity “the purification of the heart” united with “the practice of chastity, purity of intention, purity of gaze” and prayer[18]. Guarding the senses is not despising the world: it is refusing to give place to the image that enslaves.
Mortification of the Body: “I discipline my body harshly”
The second weapon is harsher: mortification. Since fire feeds on a pampered body, the saints starved it. The principle is laid down by Saint Paul, who does not hesitate to use the vocabulary of a boxer:
“I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.”
— Saint Paul, First Letter to the Corinthians 9:27[19]
Two famous scenes from hagiography illustrate how far saints have taken this principle in the heat of violent temptation — less as a model to imitate literally than as a cry of battle.
Saint Benedict (c. 480–547), a young hermit at Subiaco, assailed by the obsessive memory of a woman he had glimpsed, threw himself naked into a thicket of nettles and brambles; and Saint Gregory the Great, who reports the event, concludes that the wound of the body extinguished that of the soul:
“By the wounds of his skin, he turned away the wound of his spirit […] and from then on […] the temptation of lust was so well subdued that he never experienced anything like it again.”
— Saint Gregory the Great, Dialogues, Book II, ch. 2, on Saint Benedict[20]
Saint Francis of Assisi (1182–1226), seized by a violent temptation of the flesh, chose irony as much as rigor: going out into the snow, he fashioned seven little figures and harangued his body to show it the absurdity of its desires.
“The greatest is your wife; these four are your two sons and two daughters; the last two, your servant and maid. Hurry then to clothe them all, for they are dying of cold. And if so many worries weigh on you, apply yourself to serve only one Master.”
— words of Saint Francis of Assisi, reported by Thomas of Celano, Second Life, 117[21]
These heroic excesses are not recipes—the Church advises discretion in bodily penance—but they express the truth of the battle: a body never disciplined becomes a tyrant. The ordinary mortification of the saints remains more sober: moderation at table (the gluttony-lust link of Cassian), fasting, vigils, work, refusal of small indulgences.
Humble Prayer and the Name of Jesus
All the previous weapons would remain vain, say the Fathers, without prayer—and a prayer of humility that asks for purity as a grace. This is the great teaching of Saint Augustine (354–430). No one has better described the heaviness of the battle: habit, he says, becomes a necessity, and the soul finds itself torn between two wills.
“My will, the enemy held it, and he had made a chain of it with which he bound me. For from perverse willing arises passion; in serving passion, one makes it a habit; and in not resisting habit, one makes it a necessity.”
— Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book VIII, ch. 5[22]
From this experience, Augustine draws the conviction that continence is not primarily a matter of willpower, but of a gift to be implored—the most repeated prayer throughout the tradition on this battle:
“You command us to be continent: give what you command, and command what you will.”
— Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book X, ch. 29[23]
The Desert Fathers had already made the continual invocation of the name of Jesus their weapon of choice in sudden temptation: a single cry, “Lord Jesus, have mercy on me,” uttered at the moment the turmoil arises, often suffices to disperse the assault. Saint Alphonsus advises immediately adding the name of Mary: to invoke the names of Jesus and Mary often in temptation, he teaches in substance, is to ensure one will not be overcome.
Recourse to Mary, “Terrible as an Army Drawn Up for Battle”
For the masters of purity, the supreme weapon is the recourse to Mary. Saint Alphonsus, Saint John Bosco, and Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort unanimously teach that Marian devotion is a privileged protection in temptations against purity. The logic is clear: purity is a gift; it is obtained by asking for it; and no one obtains this grace better than through the one who is its masterpiece, the Immaculate—“beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in battle array” (Song 6:4)[24]. Where the demons of impurity show insolence before human strength, they flee, tradition says, at the mere name of the Virgin.
Warnings and Promises of the Saints
The Seriousness of Sin and Its Devastation
The saints did not merely provide means; they also warned, sometimes harshly, about the seriousness of this sin and its power to lose souls. Saint John Vianney, the Curé of Ars, who spent his life in the confessional, contrasted the beauty of the pure soul with the ugliness of the dishonored soul to awaken consciences: “There is nothing so beautiful as a pure soul […] ; there is nothing so ugly as an impure soul.”[25] And the 20th century received through Saint Jacinta Marto, at Lisbon, the famous warning that “the sins that lead the most souls to hell are sins of the flesh” — not because they are the gravest in themselves, but because they are the most widespread and the least resisted[26]. These warnings, treated at length in What the Saints Say About Chastity, are not meant to crush but to awaken: one only flees vigorously from what one has measured as dangerous.
The Promise: Victory Is Possible, and It Is a Liberation
But the last word of the saints is never discouragement. All testify that this battle, fought with patience and grace, can be won — and that its victory is not a mutilation but a freedom. Augustine, the most bound, was also the most freed: on the morning of his conversion, he could write that the pleasures he feared losing, “had become sweet to me to be deprived of.”[27] The fight against lust is not a hopeless war of attrition: it is the path by which a heart regains possession of itself in order finally to give itself. Purity regained is not emptiness but a readiness — what the saints call the freedom of the children of God.
“You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
— Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book I, ch. 1[28]
Table: The Great Voices in the Fight Against Lust
The table below summarizes the main voices gathered in this article, the weapon or image they left behind, and the lesson to be learned.
| Saint or Source | Era | Strong Phrase or Image | Weapon / Lesson of the Fight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Joseph (Gn 39) | Patriarchs | He leaves his cloak and flees | Flee the occasion, lose the garment rather than the soul |
| Saint Paul | 1st century | “Flee from sexual immorality” (1 Cor 6:18) | The only fight won by fleeing |
| Evagrius / Cassian | 4th-5th centuries | The “spirit of fornication”, 2nd battle | Starve the root: sobriety before chastity |
| Saint John Climacus | 7th century | “Extinguish fire with the fire from heaven” | Desire higher things and admit your powerlessness |
| Saint Benedict | 6th century | Throws himself into the brambles | Mortification of the body extinguishes the fire of the soul |
| Saint Francis of Assisi | 13th century | The snowmen | Turn lust into mockery; serve only one Master |
| Saint Thomas Aquinas | 13th century | “Lust blinds the mind” | Do not argue: reason loses its light |
| Saint Augustine | 4th-5th centuries | “Give what you command” | Chastity is a gift to be asked for, not wrested away |
| Saint Philip Neri | 16th century | “Only cowards are victors” | Fleeing is not cowardice but clarity |
| Saint Alphonsus Liguori | 18th century | Fleeing is true courage (paraphrase of his teaching) | Flee occasions + prayer + recourse to Mary |
What Do the Saints Retain? A Common Wisdom
If we gather what the saints repeat about this battle—from the Desert Fathers to Alphonsus Liguori—a small number of convictions recur with striking consistency. They are not developed here: the practical implementation is the subject of How to Grow in the Fight Against Lust. But their convergence deserves to be noted as a common wisdom:
- Flee, do not negotiate: with Joseph, Paul, Alphonsus, and Neri, fleeing is here true courage.
- Starve the root: with Cassian, first restrain gluttony and bodily indulgences.
- Guard the senses, especially the eyes: cut off evil before it enters and takes hold.
- Ask for purity as a grace: with Augustine and Climacus, “give what you command.”
- Invoke without delay the names of Jesus and Mary at the first disturbance.
- Trust in Mary, the Immaculate, the sovereign help of souls in this battle.
- Never presume on one’s strength nor despair of a fall: the fight is long, but victory is given.
These counsels are not a mechanical recipe but the distilled experience of twenty centuries of holiness. They all say the same thing: lust is not overcome by the mere clenched will of a lone man, but by a humility that flees danger and a prayer that calls for grace. In the end, it is not an impoverished heart that emerges, but a heart made free—finally capable of loving without seeking itself.
For Further Reading
- How to Grow in the Fight Against Lust — the practical and methodical path: concrete means, day by day, to wage this battle.
- What the Saints Say About Chastity — the positive side: the beauty of the virtue, its martyrs (Maria Goretti), the Fatima warning, John Paul II’s theology of the body.
- What the Saints Say About Purity of Heart — the clarity of the whole heart, of which bodily chastity is the first step.
- What the Saints Say About the Fight Against Gluttony — the brotherly battle, which Cassian pairs with this one.
- What the Saints Say About Temperance — the cardinal virtue that frames this entire battle.
- The Divine Will — the crowning of purity: living in total transparency before God, like Mary.
Notes and References
Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2351: “Lust is disordered desire or enjoyment of sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from the procreative and unitive purposes.” Official French edition, Mame/Plon, 1992.
1First Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians 6:18, official liturgical translation (AELF): “Flee from fornication. Every sin that a man commits is outside the body; but the man who commits fornication sins against his own body.” Vulgate: “Fugite fornicationem.”
2Saint John Cassian (c. 360–435), Conferences, books V–XII (ed. Sources Chrétiennes no. 109, Cerf), and Conferences V (ed. SC no. 42): exposition of the eight principal vices/thoughts—gluttony (gastrimargia), fornication (fornicatio), avarice, anger, sadness, acedia, vainglory, pride. Fornication is treated in book VI of the Institutions (De spiritu fornicationis) as the second battle.
3Saint John Cassian (c. 360–435), Conferences, 5th Conference (De octo vitiosis cogitationibus, ed. SC no. 42), ch. 10: “These eight sins […] are so linked that each […] is the principle of another. Thus, through their excess, gluttony produces impurity; impurity, avarice…” — hence the rule of combating the vices in the same order, beginning with the root. The same gluttony-lust link underlies the order of the Institutions, books V–VI (ed. SC no. 109): gluttony (1st battle) precedes the spirit of fornication (2nd battle).
4Saint John Cassian, Conferences XII (conversation with Abbot Cheremon, De castitate, ed. SC no. 54): Cassian describes the degrees of chastity and places the sign of perfect purity in the absence of any involuntary disturbance, even in sleep—proof that the flesh is entirely pacified and grace has completed its work.
5Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2342: “Self-mastery is a long-term work. […] It experiences times of progress and times of regression.”
6Evagrius Ponticus (345–399), Practical Treatise (or The Hundred Chapters on the Active Life), chapters 6–14 (ed. SC no. 171, Cerf): first formulation of the eight logismoi (“thoughts”). Porneia (thought of fornication) is second, after gluttony (gastrimargia). Cassian transmitted this list to the West.
7Saint John Climacus (c. 579–649), The Ladder of Divine Ascent (Klimax), 15th step (“On Incorruptible Chastity”), § 2: “He who practices this beautiful virtue drives out and extinguishes within himself the love of creatures by the love of God, and the flames and ardors of his body by the ardors and flames of the Holy Spirit” (trans. Arnauld d’Andilly; PG 88). Wording quoted in the body after trans. P. Placide Deseille, coll. Spiritualité orientale no. 24, Abbey of Bellefontaine, same passage (SO 24 pagination not verified against the copy).
8Saint John Climacus, The Ladder, 15th step, § 24: “What you must do is humbly lay before God the weakness of your nature, acknowledge before Him the powerlessness of your strength, and little by little you will receive from His Goodness […] the priceless gift of chastity” (trans. Arnauld d’Andilly; PG 88). Wording quoted in the body after trans. Deseille, SO 24, same passage (SO 24 pagination not verified against the copy). Chastity is presented as a grace obtained by humble admission of one’s impotence, not as a conquest.
9Saint John Cassian, Conferences XII, 4–7 (De castitate, ed. SC no. 54): perfect chastity surpasses natural strength and constitutes a “gift of God” (donum Dei); asceticism prepares the heart but does not produce purity by itself. Doctrine taken up by Saint Augustine (Pelagian controversy) and by the entire Latin tradition.
10Genesis 39:12, official liturgical translation (AELF): “She caught him by his garment, saying, ‘Lie with me.’ But he left his garment in her hand and fled outside.” Joseph became, among the Fathers, the type of the just man who flees occasion rather than confront temptation.
11Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696–1787), The True Spouse of Jesus Christ (La vera sposa di Gesù Cristo), ch. X, § II: “It is a common maxim of the masters of the spiritual life, that the only remedy is flight and the removal of occasions” (Engl. trans. Grimm, Complete Works, Ascetical Works vol. X–XI, p. 289). Faithful summary of his constant teaching, presented here as paraphrase and not as a literal quotation: in temptations against purity, unlike other battles, true courage is to flee the occasion without presuming on one’s strength.
12Saint Philip Neri (1515–1595), saying reported by Saint Alphonsus Liguori, The True Spouse of Jesus Christ, ch. X, § II: “Saint Philip Neri used to say that in this warfare only cowards, that is, they that fly from the occasions of defeat, shall be conquerors” (Engl. trans. Grimm, Complete Works, Ascetical Works vol. X–XI, p. 289). Traditional attribution consistent with the biographers (Pietro Giacomo Bacci, Life of Saint Philip Neri), whose edition pagination has not been verified against the copy.
13Saint Alphonsus Liguori, On the Great Means of Prayer (Del gran mezzo della preghiera, 1759), Part I, ch. 1, conclusion: “He who prays saves himself; he who does not pray damns himself.” (“He who prays is certainly saved. He who prays not is certainly damned”, English transl. Grimm, Prayer: The Great Means of Salvation and of Perfection, Conclusion - Chapter 1; cf. Del gran mezzo della preghiera, heading 1, last paragraph). A maxim recalled by Benedict XVI, general audience of 30 March 2011 devoted to Saint Alphonsus. Central thesis of the work, applied by Alphonsus primarily to the battle for purity, where prayer obtains the strength that nature alone does not have.
14Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), Summa Theologica, IIa-IIae, q. 153, a. 5, citing Saint Gregory the Great (Moralia on Job, XXXI): because venereal pleasure is the most vehement, it is in lust that the use of reason is most hindered; hence “the blindness of the mind” (caecitas mentis), the first of the “daughters of lust” (filiae luxuriae). Reference edition: French translation by Revue des Jeunes (Cerf).
15Job 31:1, liturgical translation / Jerusalem Bible: “I made a covenant with my eyes: how then could I gaze at a virgin?” Verse classically invoked by the saints to found the “guarding of the eyes.”
16Gospel according to Saint Matthew 5:28, official liturgical translation (AELF): “But I say to you: everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Christ situates the battle for purity within, in the gaze and desire.
17Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2520: the baptized fight “for purity of heart” by “the virtue and gift of chastity […], purity of intention […], purity of gaze […], prayer.” The classical means of the ascetic tradition are gathered here in magisterial form.
18First Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians 9:27, official liturgical translation (AELF): “I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.” Vulgate: “castigo corpus meum et in servitutem redigo.” Scriptural foundation of mortification.
19Saint Gregory the Great, Dialogues, book II, ch. 2 (Life of Saint Benedict, ed. SC no. 260): assailed by the memory of a woman, Benedict stripped himself and rolled in a thicket of nettles and brambles; “by the wounds of his skin, he turned away the wound of his mind,” and the temptation of the flesh was thereafter subdued in him. Source of the iconography of the “Temptation of Saint Benedict.”
20Thomas of Celano, Second Life (Memoriale in desiderio animae, 1247), nos. 116–117: seized by a violent temptation, Francis went out naked into the snow and fashioned seven little figures—“your wife, your two sons and two daughters, your valet and your maid”—to show his body the absurdity of its desires, then exhorted it to serve only one Master. Translation based on Saint Francis of Assisi. Documents (Franciscan editions).
21Saint Augustine (354–430), Confessions, book VIII, ch. 5, § 10: “Velle meum tenebat inimicus, et inde mihi catenam fecerat…” — “My will was held by the enemy, and from it he made a chain for me… ” From perverse will arises passion, from passion served arises habit, from habit not fought arises necessity. Reference edition: The Confessions, Bibliothèque augustinienne (Desclée de Brouwer).
22Saint Augustine, Confessions, book X, ch. 29, § 40: “Da quod iubes et iube quod vis.” (“Give what you command, and command what you will.”) This prayer on continence as a gift of grace was at the heart of the Pelagian controversy (cf. De dono perseverantiae, 20, 53).
23Song of Songs 6:4 (and 6:10), applied by Marian tradition to the Immaculate: “You are beautiful… terrible as an army set in battle array.” Saint Alphonsus Liguori (The Glories of Mary) and Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (Treatise on True Devotion) make recourse to Mary the privileged help in the battle for purity.
24Saint John Vianney (1786–1859). Two distinct sayings, here brought together (the […] marks the junction): “There is nothing so beautiful as a pure soul” (Abbé Monnin, § 1331) and “As I have often told you, there is nothing so ugly as the impure soul” (catechism on impurity, Spirit of the Curé d’Ars, p. 167) — as recorded in Pensées du saint Curé d’Ars, ed. Bernard Nodet, Artège Poche, 2015 (ISBN 978-2-36040-442-1). The saint used deliberately harsh images to awaken consciences. Treated at length in the neighboring article on chastity.
25Words attributed to Our Lady and reported by Saint Jacinta Marto (1910–1920), at Lisbon (1919-1920): “The sins that lead most souls to hell are sins of the flesh.” Sister Lucia of Fatima, fourth Memoir (1941), in Fatima in Lucia's Own Words (ed. Kondor, 2007, transl. by the Dominican Nuns of the Perpetual Rosary), pp. 122-123: Lucia specifies that she knows only from others that Jacinta “mentioned the sin of the flesh at Lisbon”. The same words recorded by Fr John de Marchi, The True Story of Fatima, among Jacinta's confidences to Mother Godinho. Private revelation: it indicates that these sins lose the greatest number of souls (because they are the most widespread), not that they are the gravest in themselves.
26Saint Augustine, Confessions, book IX, ch. 1, § 1: the day after his conversion, Augustine notes that the pleasures he feared losing had become sweet to give up—“it had become sweet to me to deprive myself of the sweetness of these trifles”—a sign that grace had changed his very desire.
27Saint Augustine, Confessions, book I, ch. 1, § 1: “Fecisti nos ad te, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te.” (“You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”) Key to all Augustinian anthropology of desire: only God soothes the heart stirred by covetousness.
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