Question

Dear father,
I am a 20 year old boy, and often my sins (especially the serious ones, like masturbation), bring me into a state of confusion, distress, inability to love, hardness of heart, distance from God, from his love and the love I owe his children, my brothers.
When I am in such a state I am not sure if true repentance is even there, or if it’s mostly just a desire that my spiritual state of sin would end.
I’m wondering father, how should a good repentance take place? Could it be that I am not taking sins too seriously, considering them a normal fact of life for us humans on earth?
I believe that this has caused me to make bad, insincere confessions, and that is why I did not feel much better both after confession and after communion.
I hope I was clear enough and I pray the lord to be with you always, especially when you respond to all of us.
Thank you.

Priest’s answer

Dear friend,
1. First of all let me thank you for your prayer that the Lord be always with me when I answer the visitors’ questions.
I can assure you that before I do I ask for his help, and more than once I have found myself writing things I would not have been able to think on my own.

2. About your repentance, I would like to reassure you.
Yes, the way you feel when you are in that particular sin prevents you from being very sincere before God.  You feel inherently confused and humiliated.

3. However, some kind of repentance is there, and that is what matters, even if it is not motivated by the highest causes. 
The Church is aware of this.
And this is why, when it asks to recite the act of contrition, it helps the penitent to move from the less noble motives on to the nobler ones.
The less noble motives are outlined in the words: “O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because of thy just punishments”.
The Lord’s punishments are the punishments we inflict upon ourselves.
The feelings you experience after the sin you are referring to are not sent by the Lord, but are the immediate fruits that particular sin produces in us: “Confusion, distress, inability to love, hardness of heart, distance from God, from his love and the love I owe his children, my brothers”.

4. But then, here come the more noble motives, when the Church prompts you to say: “but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love”.

5. With such feelings, and most of all with the grace infused in you by the priest’s absolution, your repentance – along with the less noble motives – acquires the more noble ones.

6. That’s what happened to the prodigal son. When he decided to return to his home he was still thinking of himself: “My father’s servants have bread in abundance, and here I am starving to death”.
But when his father embraces him, he understands his love, he experiences a deeper conversion and his repentance becomes nobler.

7. Do not fear then.  Your confessions are all valid, even when certain feelings of inner desolation may linger for a while because of the penalties connected with sin.
Sin goes away, because it is forgiven, but some consequences remain.

I remind you to the Lord and wish you a serene and holy Easter.
I bless you.
Father Angelo

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