To continue browsing while you listen, play the audio in a new window.

It can be frustrating when we feel like we've been struggling with the same problem our entire life. The Scriptures are repetitive too, and they reflect the reality that so much of life seems to repeat itself. Our job is to find one way to defeat our enemy, then use that strategy again and again as we win over our temptations and dig deeper into ourselves to take the evil out at its root.

(References: Daniel 4:10-37)

The Bible describes many things as being holy, or sacred. The Ark of the Covenant is one very holy object. The inmost chamber of the tabernacle is called the "Holy of Holies". Things that proceed from the Lord are holy. Objects are holy if they contain something, or represent something, from the Lord. For that reason, the names of the Lord in human languages are holy because they represent qualities of the Lord, things that are Him. The Bible is holy because it contains, interiorly, the Lord's divine truth. The tabernacle of Israel was holy -- not because of the wood or gold or dyed cloth -- but because those things represented qualities that the Lord has. Those same qualities exist, as in an image, in the spiritual states of people who follow the Lord's laws. No person is holy, but if a person's mind contains truth from the Lord and his or her will comes to love the truths and the actions that these truths suggest to him, then his or her mind will contain holy things, because those truths and loves come from the Lord. These things become that person's life and they remain with that person in heaven, after death.

(References: Arcana Coelestia 3997, 4091, 8302)