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Dear Padre Angelo,
I need help urgently.
I was wondering if a soul can damn itself in life before dying.
I am 33 years old and at the age of 23 I made a pact with the devil to have professional success and I got it. There was a moral price to pay.
I became wealthy but when I paid the moral price I told him about, I renounced what I had done.
I cried a lot and I regretted it.
A few evenings later I had a dream: a sort of deformed dwarf told me that he (referring to the devil) would take away everything he had given me.
In fact, due to events that happened, I lost everything. I got closer to the Lord, I repented, I confessed this sin to my confessor and I have been forgiven.
But I always hear voices as if they were thoughts that don’t let me pray, that tell me that there is nothing left to do, that I am damned and that I now belong to the devil.
I’m going through a very bad time. Blasphemous thoughts come to mind, blasphemous phrases even in Church. Among other things, I have been going to Mass every day for two years.
I pray the Rosary, but nothing, I feel besieged by evil… What can I do?
Am I lost forever? Am I out of God’s grace and mercy?
I really need your help please.
I hope you reply to me as soon as possible.
Priest’s Answer
Dearly beloved,
1.you regretted what you did, you confessed it and you were forgiven.
The obsessions that currently disturb you are assaults from the one into whose hands you put yourself at the time and who does not want to let go of you.
But you no longer belong to him.
I am very happy that you participate in the Holy Mass daily. Just as I am equally happy that you recite the Holy Rosary.
2. The blessed Bartolo Longo had not only given himself over to the devil, but had become a Satanist priest.
If the Lord made of Bartolo Longo, who had degraded himself, a Saint, he can do the same for you too.
In fact, he wants to do it with you too.
3. The devil particularly vexes those who have changed their lives.
Most of all he torments the saints.
Among these I like to remember the holy Curé of Ars.
Multitudes of demons told him: “Truffles eater! We will have you, we will have you!… You are ours, you are ours!” (t.n) (A. Monnin, The Curé of Ars, p. 163).
In this way they tried to drive him to despair.
4. The holy Curé was disturbed by very violent noises, which turned the whole house upside down.
He called men to watch with him during the night. They too heard the noises, but saw nothing.
Meanwhile his fellow priests made fun of him and said: “If the Curé of Ars lived like the others, if he took his share of sleep and food, that effervescence of imagination would calm down, his brain would not be populated by ghosts and all that infernal phantasmagoria would vanish.” (t.n) (Ib., p. 165).
5. If they had the opportunity to talk to him they would tell him: “Let’s go let’s go! Dear curate, do like the others, feed yourself better: it’s the best way to put an end to devilry.
Thus the poor curate was treated in capital letters as a visionary and a maniac. He did not respond to those insults; he retreated to his room, numb to everything except the joy of being humiliated’’ (t.n) (Ib., p. 166).
6. Little by little the holy curate learned all the devil’s tricks to disturb him and make him suffer.
But by now he had learned to say: “The devil is very cunning, but he is not strong.
A sign of the cross puts him on the run.
Just three days ago he was making a lot of noise above my head. It seemed as if all the carriages in Lyon were rolling on the attic… Last night crowds of demons were shaking at my door, they spoke like a horde of barbarians; I didn’t understand a word of their jargon. I made the sign of the cross and everyone disappeared” (t.n) (Ib., p.167).
7. He also understood that if God allowed certain vexations it was to prepare him to receive greater graces: “Every time the devil’s vexations doubled in frequency and intensity he foresaw that grace was about to send him some great sinner to convert: his forebodings rarely failed.” (t.n) (Ib., p.167).
8. Learn to make the sign of the cross often to ward off that harassment.
Not only that, but be convinced that if the Lord allows it it is to redeem some soul and bring it to conversion.
Therefore accept the disturbances and suffering caused by those obsessions in atonement for what you have done and for the conversion of sinners.
How beautiful it would be if where sin abounded grace would abound!
9.Lastly, nobody is ever eternally damned until alive in this world.
We have freedom and through it we can always reverse and deny the evil we have done.
With the help of the grace we can always save ourselves.
I wish you a serene and Holy Christmas, I bless you and I remember you in my prayers.
Father Angelo