Purifying Our Desires: The Battle for Our Heart
- Mar 6
- 6 min read
Have you ever noticed how something far more serious than hunger or cravings begins to surface within us as Lent deepens?
By now, the novelty of “being Lenten” has worn off. The disciplines we adopted with enthusiasm on Ash Wednesday suddenly feel heavier. The things we surrendered begin calling our name again. Memories of tastes, comforts, distractions, and habits we set aside now start to pull on the edges of our resolve.
And in the middle of this, many of us Catholics take comfort in a quiet thought:
“At least Sundays are our cheat day.”
But are they?
Or is this one of the greatest misunderstandings of Lent?
Lent reveals something profoundly human and spiritually dangerous: how quickly our desires attempt to reclaim lordship over our hearts the moment restraint begins to bite. The Church does not ask us to observe Lent as a test of endurance but as a school of purification. And it is precisely at this point in our Lenten journey that the real work begins.
To understand why it feels harder now, and why this difficulty matters, we must enter into what the Church calls the three concupiscences. These are not merely temptations; they are distortions of desire, the deep interior habits that bend our soul away from God. Lent confronts these not to break us, but to heal us.
When Lent Reveals the Fragility of Our Desires
The Fathers of the Church always taught that Lent is a mirror. And at this time, the mirror becomes uncomfortably clear. At first we imagine we are strong, capable of the sacrifices we impose on ourselves. By this week, that illusion begins to crumble, and we discover the deeper truth: desire governs us far more than we would like to admit.
Saint Augustine writes in his book the Confessions, “My weight is my love; wherever I am carried, it is my love that carries me.” What we love, truly love, not merely think we love, moves our actions. Lent exposes this. When the initial enthusiasm fades, our true loves begin to speak.
It is here, in this week, that the classical Catholic understanding of concupiscence becomes practical. The Church identifies three distortions of desire:
• The lust of the flesh (inordinate attachment to comfort and pleasure)
• The lust of the eyes (the desire to possess, to acquire, to consume)
• The pride of life (the craving for recognition, status, admiration)
Saint John the Apostle presents these not as random failings but as the structure of fallen desire itself (1 John 2:16). And notice how all three begin stirring precisely now, when deprivation becomes real.
The lust of the flesh whispers:
“You’ve done well—surely you deserve a break.”
The lust of the eyes says:
“Just buy it. You’ve earned it. It’s not a big deal.”
The pride of life adds:
“You’ve proven yourself enough. Why keep going?”
These are not external temptations. They are internal habits.
Saint Thomas Aquinas uses the term habitus to describe the stable dispositions we form over time. Desire does not emerge out of nowhere, it is shaped by the patterns we have formed throughout our lives. And because we live in a generation where comfort, quiet consumerism, and understated status all operate silently beneath our daily choices, Lent reveals how deeply these patterns are woven into our hearts.
Lent has a way of unmasking these habits. It is uncomfortable. But it is also a grace, because grace cannot heal a wound we refuse to acknowledge.
Discipline as the Reordering of Desire — Not the Suppression of It
Once we recognise the fragility of our desires, the natural question arises: What is the point of discipline? Why does the Church insist on fasting, prayer, and almsgiving? Are these merely Catholic customs, or is something deeper at play?
The modern world often views discipline as a denial of self. The Catholic Church sees it very differently. Discipline is not the rejection of desire but the reordering of desire. It is the deliberate shaping of our soul so that our heart points toward what is truly good.
Saint John of the Cross is uncompromising: “The appetites darken and blind the soul.”
He does not say they destroy the soul; he says they blind it. Disorder does not annihilate our dignity, it merely obscures it.
Thus, discipline is not about proving our strength to God. It is about allowing God to restore our sight.
Fasting: The healing of the lust of the flesh
Fasting is not just about food. It is about breaking our instinct that says, “If I desire comfort, I must have it.” When we deprive our body, we teach our soul that it can choose what is good even when it does not feel good. This is freedom, not the freedom of preference, but the freedom of mastery.
Almsgiving: The healing of the lust of the eyes
Almsgiving severs the subtle belief that what we own defines us. In a generation shaped by consumerism, individualism, and the pressure to project stability, where material comfort, personal independence, and the quiet pressure to “have it all” often shape how we measure success, almsgiving becomes an act of theological rebellion. It refuses the lie that our value comes from what we can accumulate, upgrade, or display.
When we give away what we could have kept, we make a profoundly Christian declaration:
I am not my possessions, nor is my worth measured by what I can secure for myself.
Prayer: The healing of the pride of life
Prayer dismantles the illusion of self-sufficiency. It reminds us that our strength, identity, and purpose come not from our abilities but from our communion with God. Pride is not always loud. Sometimes it is silent, subtle, and self-assured. Prayer shatters this very essence of pride.
All three disciplines work together not to diminish us but to purify us. And it is around this point in our Lenten journey that they begin to do their deepest work.
This is why “cheat day” thinking is dangerous.
Sundays are not a break from Lent. They are a foretaste of Easter. The Church suspends fasting on Sunday because no penance can overshadow the joy of the Resurrection. But the heart that sees Sunday as an excuse to indulge everything it surrendered reveals how deeply our desires still govern our heart.
Lent teaches us to ask not, “How little can I sacrifice?” but “How deeply do I desire God?”
Rediscovering Our Worth: Desire Rooted in the Image of God
Our disordered desires are not the ultimate issue. The real question of Lent is identity. The entire struggle with concupiscence is rooted in a forgotten truth: we no longer remember who we truly are. Our true identity.
Genesis tells us that we are made “in the image and likeness of God.”
Saint Thomas explains that this image is rooted in our rational nature, our capacity to know truth and to love freely. This is the dignity God gave us. But sin has clouded our mind, weakened our will, and distorted our desires. We still bear the image, but our likeness must be restored.
This is why our desires cling so fiercely to lesser things. When we do not live from our deepest identity, we attempt to construct a substitute:
• If I forget I am a child of God, I will cling to comfort as my security.
• If I forget I am loved by God, I will cling to possessions as my stability.
• If I forget I am known by God, I will cling to status as my worth.
Concupiscence is not simply a moral weakness. It is a theological wound, a wound in our true identity.
Saint Augustine says, “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”
Restlessness is not failure. It is a sign of what we were made for.
Thus the battle for desire is not the rejection of humanity but its restoration. When the Church calls us to deny ourselves, it is not because desire is evil, but because our desire must be purified to become capable of God.
This is the heart of our Lenten journey: the restoration of our desires toward God.
Our cravings intensify not because we are weak, but because now we stand on the threshold of transformation. Our desires are being stretched, purified, redirected. And this is the moment when the enemy whispers compromise. But this is also the moment God whispers our identity.
“You are mine.”
“You are made for more.”
“You are not enslaved to your impulses.”
“You bear My image, live from that dignity.”
“I love you.”
The purification of our desires are the recovery of our soul’s rightful order.
This is the Turning Point
Lent is not a burden placed upon us but an invitation to purification and renewal.
It is the time when our desires begin to speak honestly, when our attachments reveal themselves, when our habits protest, and when our identity in God begins to re‑emerge through our struggle.
Lent is not about proving strength.
It is about reclaiming freedom.
It is about allowing discipline to heal the concupiscences and allowing grace to restore the likeness of God within us.
This Lent, let us not ask whether Sundays are a “cheat day.”
Let us ask instead:
What kind of heart am I becoming?
A heart mastered by its impulses?
Or a heart purified, disciplined, and made capable of desiring God above all things?
Lent brings us face-to-face with this choice.
And the choice we make here determines the kind of Easter we will celebrate.
If this reflection has stirred a deeper desire for freedom from the desires and habits that bind your heart, you can go further this Lent with Fasting and Feasting with Christ. Your support helps us continue this work of thoughtful Catholic writing.
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