Good morning, 

availing myself of the possibility to remain anonymous offered by the internet, I will present a personal issue of mine to you, Father. 

I have a very morbid relation with masturbation, ans especially with pornography, almost an addiction. 

I confess the sin of the solitary vice every week, but confession is now reduced to a sort of cheat: I don’t confess any other fault besides my usual one, therefore I end up neglecting an adequate examination of my conscience. 

Furthermore, as I usually go to confession on Saturdays, I make sure to receive the Communion on Sundays. Nevertheless, within a week I am sure to relapse into bad habits, therefore, in earnest, I feel that I am receiving the Holy Communion without the due dispositions. 

On the other hand, I have a feeling that attending mass without taking Communion is somehow meaningless, as if I were attending only half of the mass…

I wish you could clarify the matter a little bit…

Yours 

X

The priest’s answer

Dear friend,

  1. what you say is true. As a confessor, I have noticed myself that when a person is devastated by almost daily autoeroticism and pornography and goes to confession once a week he ends up saying: I have my usual sins. And he does not add anything more about the other faults of his personal life, because they seem negligible compared to the previous ones, which are much more serious and disastrous.  It would be as if one said that he has burnt down his house, and then accused himself of leaving it also a little untidy. 
  2. Nevertheless, although confession runs the risk of becoming perfunctory and a passport to receive communion only to revert to one’s old habits soon, I do not feel I can tell you to go to confession less frequently. The reason is not only that this would cause you to stop receiving the Holy Communion, but also that receiving the sacrament of Penance and the Eucharist on a weekly basis is very important in order to live a Christian life and to grow ever more fervent. It is so important that if you, by the grace of God, succeeded at eradicating completely the two evils that have been afflicting you, I would forcefully urge you to continue going to confession on a weekly basis. In the Philothea, Saint Francis de Sales says that “in confession you not only receive absolution from the sins you confess but also great strength to avoid them in the future, light to see them clearly, and abundant grace to repair whatever damage you have incurred. You will also practice the virtues of humility, obedience, simplicity and charity. in the single act of confession you will exercise more virtues than in any other act whatsoever” (ST. FRANCIS DE SALES, Introduction to the Devout Life, translated by J. K. Ryan, Doubleday, New York et alibi, 1989, pp. 113-114).
  3. Now, let us come to the point, namely how to overcome the two slaveries. Some people are able to turn the page all of a sudden. Others would like to… they would be happy if these plagues were not there, but unfortunately they are always present. I know these people’s suffering. They would like… they would be happy to have wings and fly high, not being stuck in the same asphyxiating air. At this point, I must acknowledge how right Saint Thomas was when he said that the craving for lust is so overwhelming that it impairs reflection, restraint, deliberation. Under its influence a person “is most vehemently intent on its object, to wit, the object of pleasure, on account of the vehemence of the pleasure” (Summa Theologiae, II-II, 153, 5). It is as if someone were suddenly deported because he had unwittingly opened a door slightly.
  4. Just as Saint Dominic said to the Papal Legates that they were supposed to fight heresy with a nail that drives away another (the first nail being the practice of virtue, especially poverty, as opposed to the only ostensible virtues of the heretics), so you, too, have to fight this addiction with another addiction which is different from the first, as it is agreeable and inebriating not only while you are experiencing it but also after, and it is capable of extinguishing any lustful desire whatsoever. For sure, you have already grasped what I mean. You need to live and enjoy the friendship of Jesus Christ. You have to cultivate this friendship. Actually, you have to find some time to stay with Him. I would recommend you devote to this exactly the time when you know you are in the habit of falling into sin.  
  5. What does friendship with Jesus do? Listen to Saint Thomas who, when he speaks about friendship, seems to be talking of his friendship with Jesus: “Now, it is proper to friendship that a man reveals his secrets to his friend […]. Not only [this, but also] that he should share his belongings with him. […] It also belongs to friendship that a man delight in the presence of his friend, and rejoice in his words and deeds; also, that he finds consolation in all his troubles: hence it is especially to our friends that we have recourse for comfort in time of sorrow”. (Contra Gentiles, IV, 21-22).  
  6. Try to follow these five steps: 

Let Jesus reveal to you His secrets. There are things he wants to tell you. Just open the Gospel and you will find out the secrets and the desires he wants to communicate to you.

Let Him bestow His gifts on you. Generally, they are intimately connected with His secrets, but there are also surprises. Do not interrupt the friendship until you have heard His secrets and received the gifts that He has brought for you. 

Then have a conversation with Him. Delight in his presence.  

After that, rejoice in His words (the secrets), in His gifts, in what He is raising in your mind and in your affections. 

Finally, have recourse to Him for comfort in your sorrows and, above all, try to comfort Jesus because He gets relentlessly crucified in many hearts within the Church and outside of her. Then, you will commit to do something for Him immediately. 

  1. You can do all this by also taking the Rosary in your hands and saying to yourself: “I am not satisfied with reciting only one rosary. Just as in the past I have frittered away my time with foul things, now I want to spend my time in the company of Our Lord. I want to spend the whole evening doing this”.

The feeling you will experience when you do this will be so inebriating, so beautiful and lasting and, most of all, so different from the previous ones, that you will no longer feel the wish to sin. You will understand by yourself and you will experience what Jesus said to the Samaritan woman: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4: 13-14). Staying with the metaphor, whoever drinks of the water of pornography will thirst again for pornography. He will never be satiated and will end up going through humiliating and degrading experiences (the so-called extreme sex). Whereas whoever drinks the water that the Lord gives will not be thirsty again, namely he will stop to crave for pornography and autoeroticism forever. He will not want to hear about these things, because he understands well that it is like shutting oneself in a  prison and becoming the prey of the devils.  He feels that the water the Lord gives him satiates his body and his soul. He is so full of the presence of the consolation of the Lord that he understands how true are Jesus’s words: “the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life”. It is a water that lifts up, that unites to God and to Heaven, whereas the other water drags ever lower. 

  1. Try to spend time with Jesus like this, start tonight, without looking at your stopwatch. If you do this, you will see how many things will change. Everything depends on your commitment to leaving the world of masturbation and pornography and to enter another world, the real one. 

I accompany you with my prayer and I bless you.

Father Angelo

Translated by Alessandra N

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