The Three Sources of Our Thoughts

Above all, we ought at least to know that our thoughts have three origins: from God, from the devil and from ourselves. [a]

They come from God when he graciously visits us with the light of the Holy Spirit, lifting us up to a higher stage of progress; and when, where we have made but little progress, or have been overcome through acting lazily, he chastens us with most healing heartfelt sorrow; or when he discloses heavenly mysteries to us, or turns our purpose and will to better actions. So it was when King Ahasuerus, chastened by the Lord, was prompted to ask for the books of the annals. By them he was reminded of the good deeds of Mordecai, and he raised him to the highest place of honor and at once recalled his most cruel sentence for the slaughter of the Jews. Or when the prophet says: “I will listen to what the Lord God will say in me.” Another, too, tells us: “And an angel spoke, and said in me.” Or when the Son of God promised that he would come with his Father and make his home in us; and: “It is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.” And the chosen vessel says: “You seek a proof of Christ who speaks in me.”

But a whole range of thoughts springs from the devil, when he tries to destroy us either by the pleasures of sin or by secret attacks, in his crafty wiles deceitfully showing us evil as good, and transforming himself into an angel of light for us. So the evangelist tells us: “And when supper was ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray” the Lord. And again, “after the morsel,” he says, “Satan entered into him.” Peter, too, says to Ananias: “Why has Satan tempted your heart, to lie to the Holy Spirit?” And there is what we read in the gospel, foretold much earlier by Ecclesiastes: “If the spirit of the ruler rises up against you, do not leave your place.” There is also what is said to God against Ahab in the third book of Kings, in the person of an unclean spirit: “I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.”

But they arise from ourselves when, in the course of nature, we recall what we are doing, or have done, or have heard. The blessed David speaks of this: “I thought on the days of old, and kept in mind the years long past, and I meditated; by night I exercised myself with my heart, and searched out my spirit.” And again: “The Lord knows the thoughts of man, that they are vain”; and “The thoughts of the righteous are judgments.” In the gospel, too, the Lord says to the Pharisees: “Why do you think evil in your hearts?”