Dear Father Angelo,

My name is …, I am turning to you again because I really need spiritual advice for what happened to me this summer, and it still makes me suffer and feel guilty. I will try to explain briefly:

This summer I had an ectopic pregnancy that led to internal bleeding and emergency surgery with consequent removal of the tube. It was a painful event because no doctor wanted to operate on me and that fear lasted almost two months, as I risked my life because of the hemorrhage if the tube had broken at the wrong time.

That said, the problem that is torturing me is another: when I found out I was pregnant I had a lot of human fear, both because of the disease I suffer from (I am epileptic, pregnancies should be planned as much as possible because the drugs I take are teratogenic, so I was afraid of a possible malformation of the fetus) and because of the economically great sacrifice.

I must say that I never thought, not even for a second, of having an abortion, but I was so afraid and I could not abandon myself to the providence of God the Father.

For this reason, I feel terribly guilty because I do not experience this loss as by mourning, on the contrary, sometimes I am almost relieved that, after natural causes, I do not have to face the difficulty of a second child.

I am saying some really bad things, I know.

Since it happened, I feel a deep sadness but I cannot quite identify the reason; I thought that the suffering was due to the relationship with my husband that has inevitably changed, leading to a mutual estrangement.

Last Sunday, however, the Lord made me see with great clarity the reason for this sadness, which also leads me to have panic attacks or sudden tears: a great sense of guilt towards this child who was never born, that is, I do not feel like a mother to this child, as once my father told me with great wisdom (without going into the matter in depth because we were talking about something else); a priest once asked me if I had given a name to this child, and this left me completely speechless.

I imagine this child as orphaned by an “earthly” mother, I have never prayed for him and I have never thought that I also have a child in heaven.

I have a great sense of guilt not only for that, but also because I think that, in my situation, many mothers would suffer and long for their child. I do not experience that suffering.

I think this child in heaven has nobody on earth who loves him, and that he is angry with me; this thought makes me feel terribly guilty, and I think that he will never forgive me for this attitude of mine, which I continue to have. How can I be in God’s grace if I think these things?

Since everything became clear to me, I can no longer approach the Eucharist.

I do not experience the pain of having lost a child, perhaps because two days after the pregnancy test the gynecologist told me that I just had a miscarriage, and I did not have time to “feel like a mother” or heard his heart beating….

What should I do? … I am not a victim of all this, but only an alienated and cruel mother … and, whoever can console me, if I abandoned this child at once and I am almost happy that things went this way, even if I risked my life?

I thank you if you answer me and I apologize if I often use your time.

I get this occasion to wish you a Holy Easter.

The Priest’s answer

Dear,

since April 6th of the past year, only today I got your mail. 

I am sorry and I apologize.

1. The child, who flew prematurely to heaven, sees everything in God. He also sees your state of mind.

If he could talk to you, he would tell you not to discourage yourself because it often happens that a woman becomes pregnant without a thought about the child and with no wish.

However, once present in her womb, she does not take long to feel attachment.

The same would have happened to you too.

2. Caused by the spontaneous termination of pregnancy, your cry gave you a sense of liberation.

Yes, that is true. But the liberation is not about the baby so much as it is about the situation that you seemed very difficult to deal with.

Your baby understands everything from heaven.

3. Probably, God showed him also what would have happened if he had been able to lead a normal life.

And he understood that God did not mistake even in allowing his life to be taken from this world before blossoming.

Perhaps he spared him much physical and moral suffering. Perhaps he could even have run the risk of being lost forever.

We like to think of him too in heaven, because God gives everyone the possibility to dress in grace, worthy of staying in His presence, so associated with the chorus of those who sing joyfully: “Alleluia! Salvation, glory, and might belong to our God, for true and just are his judgments.” (Rev 19:1-2).

4. He sees your pain for himself, a child who went from this world without being known, without being loved and without being missed.

But this pain is a sign of your great love to him, would it not? You could not give him your love before, but now you are giving him it, crying for what appears only an unhappy fate from a human point of view.

5. I believe it is not wrong to think that the sorrow and repentance, which entered your heart, are a gift from your new child who is donated to heaven.

Your inner sense of sorrow is the tangible sign that this child is permanently in your life.

And he is present not simply in your thoughts, as a fruit of your imagination, but by a saving plan of God; he himself enters your life as a permanent sign of his affection from heaven.

Your child is not inoperative in heaven because he remains eternally grateful to you for having given him existence, even if it was not exactly in your plans.

The existence he has received from you allows him to enjoy the fullness of communion with God, and with all those who are his family and friends in heaven.

6. It is a nice thing to give him a name, but it is not essential.

A text from the Apocalypse applies to your child, so we can say that he has already received a name from God, even if now this name remains secret. In fact, we read: “To the victor I shall give some of the hidden manna; I shall also give a white amulet upon which is inscribed a new name, which no one knows except the one who receives it.” (Rev 2:17).

The Jerusalem Bible says with its famous conciseness: [tr.] “the hidden manna is the food of the heavenly kingdom (John 6:31.49).

The white amulet (the color of victory and joy) is the sign of admission to the kingdom [ed.n.: because diadems are received there];

The new name expresses the interior renewal that makes one worthy of it”.

7. If you wish a concrete indication about how to give your affection to this child, unknowingly donated to heaven, then: make some Masses celebrated for him.

As he has no sins, these are certainly not for suffrage, they are Masses for his greater glory.

The glory of Heaven consists in the possession of God.

But alongside the possession of God, called essential glory as well, there are other goods that the saints can enjoy such as the possibility of benefiting those who are on earth.

Just as you can celebrate Holy Masses in honor of the Madonna so that God gives her further possibilities to be even more present and active in the world and, just as you can have Holy Masses celebrated in honor of Saints, so that they could achieve many graces from the Lord for those who appeal to them; rightly and appropriately, in the same way Holy Masses can be celebrated in favor of those children so that, from heaven, they obtain to bring great benefits to those who generated them, and however in favor of those who are still on the way toward the eternal homeland.

Wishing you a great communion with whom you generated, and who stands afore God for eternity, I bless you.

Father Angelo

Questo articolo è disponibile anche in: Italian Spanish Portuguese