Remedies for Lust

 

1. Natural & Physical:

a) Proper food needs to be taken, with not too much flesh meat or sweets. Thus light foods should be eaten, which are easily digested. Avoidance of foods which you like a lot and get great satisfaction from eating. Thus avoid alcohol, especially at night.

b) Not too soft a bed, nor too many blankets causing you to get too hot, nor too tight clothing, or too soft like satin and such like materials. Try not to sleep on the back but on the right side.

c) Order your life with set hour of rising and sleeping. Work the body or the mind hard with physical labour, exercise and study. Go to the toilet just before you retire for bed. Rise immediately in the morning.

d) When washing, use as cold a shower as you can take, in order to keep the body temperature low and mortified.

e) Play games or sport until you are really tired, thus when it is time to sleep you are not troubled by the imagination.

f) Mortify the senses by less food and sleep.

2. Psychological Remedies : That is, the interior senses.

a) Distract the mind by nourishing better and higher ideas.

b) Fight against the passions and bind the imagination with good images.

c) Don't confuse happiness with pleasure.

d) Avoid solitude and bad companions.

e) Do lots of good reading.

3. Moral remedies : That is the soul

a) Remote:

i) Think less of self but of others and how you can help them.

ii) Cultivate sincerity.

iii) Have confidence in your parents, your confessor, your superiors.

iv) Be high-minded and have a high aim in life.

v) Be modest in looks and touches.

vi) Have a great humility and piety towards:

a) God and His presence

b) Christ's sufferings

c) The Blessed Virgin Mary

d) Your Guardian Angel

vii) Frequent the Sacraments regularly especially go to confession immediately after a fall.

viii) Foster a high regard for purity and a horror of vice.

ix) Think of the great power of chastity and the sorrow of the unchaste.

b) Proximate; Negative:

i) Fly from all possible occasions, keeping great custody of the eyes.

ii) Avoid useless reading of magazines, newspapers.

iii) Abstain from television and videos.

iv) Avoid too much familiarity with the opposite sex.

c) Positive things to do:

i) Strengthen the will to apply the remedies, by little acts of self-denial.

ii) Frequently renew the resolution to live a chaste life.

iii) Keep the soul firm and calm in the face of temptations in order to resist and flee the occasion, and possibility of a relapse.

iv) Have confidence in the Divine help. Pray for light as to your vocation, and give yourself totally to God.

v) Immediately and strongly resis, even ask for the love of the cross.

vi) Seek out a partner for marriage, not as a means of having unlimited satisfaction, but as one to whom you can give yourself selflessly and with a desire to fruitful life-giving love.