Regardless of how much the stars seem to align in your life, there will come a time when you realize that as much as life is beautiful, you will inevitably come face-to-face with the unsettling fact that the world is decidedly against you.
By Casey Chalk
Crisis Magazine
May 8, 2026
I confess that I sometimes allow myself to be deceived. When things are going well professionally, when election results go the way I hoped, when I seem to be getting along with everyone I know-I can be disarmed into thinking that I am at peace with the world. Then, like a thunderclap, I'm jolted back to the truth of the matter: the world is not my friend.
I presume most of you have had a similar experience. If you haven't, just wait. You will. It may not happen this month or year, but at some point, regardless of how much the stars seem to align in your life, there will come a time when you realize that as much as life is beautiful, as much as personal and professional successes pile up, you will inevitably come face-to-face with the unsettling fact that the world is decidedly against you. Just ask St. Claude La Colombière.
St. Claude entered the Jesuits in 1658 and professed vows in 1660. He became spiritual director and promoter for St. Marguerite-Marie Alacoque-famous for her veneration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He seemed destined for a great ecclesial career. In 1676, he was sent to London to serve as preacher for the Catholic Duchess of York, a prestigious responsibility given the widespread antipathies toward the Church in Protestant England. Yet, two years later St. Claude was arrested and exiled from England for the crime of being a Jesuit. The time he spent in English prison harmed his already fragile health, and he died from a severe hemorrhage in 1682. He was only 41 years old.
Granted, with hundreds of years of hindsight, we can say hey, the man's still a saint. Though he passed from this world more than three hundred years ago, people still read his books. They pray to him. He's associated with one of the most beloved devotions in the Church today: the Sacred Heart. But the man still died young, presumably with much spiritual wisdom left to share. His death (only one year younger than myself as I write this) was in one sense a tragedy. How much life he had to live in a world-at least in Catholic Europe-that adored him.
But St. Claude didn't seem to see it that way. "The world does not merit our cares; they are all due to God and to the salvation of our soul; they are all necessary for this matter, and they are useless for all the rest except for God," he writes in the recently translated and published collection of his spiritual reflections, Not of the World. It's an exhortation we would do well to remember, regardless of how well things currently fare for us and those we love.
What especially strikes me is how immediately relevant St. Claude's words are to our contemporary distemper. We obsess over how others perceive us, carefully creating self-curated images of ourselves on social media. "The world is naught but a continual dissimulation," St. Claude retorts.
It is good, I avow, in some occasions, but in any excessive use, does not this world become a perpetual comedy, about all in our hearts ? One puts on a mask upon entering it; one goes about in order to be seen, for one's own interest, to observe the faults of another.
What an astute summary of the identities we fabricate on the internet.
If we are prudent, we do our best to set careful boundaries over what we allow our eyes to see and our ears hear. Yet even the vigilant cannot help but feel the pressure and enticements of sin. "But the world does not conceal those which it prepares for you," warns St. Claude.
It loudly publicizes its most dangerous maxims; it disguises neither its sentiments nor its designs. How could one not see the snares that it lays out for chastity since it lays them out in their sight, for the majority, and since its whole aim is to lay them out visibly?
Keep in mind that the French Jesuit was writing at a time when all of Europe was still avowedly Christian, whether Catholic or Protestant. Think what he would say today, when simply reading an article on a news website or scrolling through a feed often means navigating through highly sexualized advertising.
St. Claude's reflections are a warning about the places we go, the company we keep, the media we consume.
Alas ! If you knew what cliff you're running towards ! That this beautiful world will soon tarnish all the beauty of your soul ! That it will have soon snatched the grace of God away from you and ravaged all those beautiful virtues that a careful and painstaking instruction began to cause to germinate in your heart!
We all know stories of seemingly harmless behavior that in time turned into something addictive and destructive, that exerted a pressure upon the soul that, much to the addict's surprise, suddenly seemed impossible to overcome.
Your spirit is attacked by eyes, by ears, by nose; you are surrounded by cliffs, you cast yourselves into the midst of ferocious beasts, and you want to make me believe that they do not bite you ? You are a stone, you are made of bronze: are you not a man like the others ? How, then, could you handle fire without being burned?
That's certainly an admonition about how we spend our time in 2026. But I'd offer that it really doesn't matter how carefully you structure your life to avoid the near occasions of sin. Sin will inevitably come searching for you—at work, at the gym, in the privacy of your own home.
If that's the case, what, then, is a Catholic to do?
St. Claude says,
It is necessary, then, that all retire from the world: this is not my thought, much less am I of the humor of those who would want, if it were possible, to cut away all the sweetnesses of life from the world: this is not my sentiment.
He continues, "I wish I were able to guide all the world to heaven along a path of roses." But how to "retire" from the world while working a job, raising a family, participating in the polis?
Few of us are called to a life of secluded, eremitic prayer. But regardless of our vocation, that is the mentality (and spirituality) we are called to pursue. In a line reminiscent of C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, St. Claude declares: "Our heart is too small for the world and for the salvation of our soul, our life too short for such distinct affairs." If we are tempted into complacent thinking that this world really is simply a good and happy place for us, in which there are no daily tensions threatening our spiritual welfare, then it may be time to do some soul-searching.
I don't necessarily need to provide a list to show where these tensions lie, but here's a start for things that threaten us, whether married, single, or religious: contraception, surrogacy, in vitro fertilization; resentment, bitterness, and hatred toward our political opponents; pornography, alcohol, or medication addictions; careerism or chasing the next luxury vacation.
All of these are temptations that face Catholics every day in the United States. "If you follow the maxims of Jesus Christ, you will condemn the manners of the world, you will trample its idols underfoot; the world, henceforth, will not do business with you," writes St. Claude. If you're not feeling that tension between the world and the Christian life, it might be good to ask Jesus what He thinks.