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Dear Father Angelo,
My name is Valeriya, I am 20 years old, I am taking evening classes, during the day I work as a health and social care worker and I work in a restaurant during weekends. I have believed in God since I was little, and this trust and love have become stronger in recent years following two deaths of two very important people to me.
This is how, thanks to God, I found the light again, the meaning of everything that happens around us.

Thus began my hunger for knowledge, prayer, confessions, frequenting the sacraments, and I completely changed my way of living and seeing things.

But what I am confronted with is a Church that does not teach us young people how to save ourselves. I searched and searched for a priest who could help me on this journey, but no luck for now. The times I go to confession I am often told that I should be more serene, that God is merciful. And it is not that I don’t believe it, but I see too much do-goodism and too much superficiality in the things of God, if everything were so easy wouldn’t we all be saints?

Yet we are all sinners…

I have often found myself misunderstood at various points of what God wants from me, such as chastity.

And this misunderstanding lasts until now.

My own family says it’s impossible for me to find someone truly willing to accept it these days, and father, lately that’s what I find myself thinking too. No one now believes with this measure of faith.

I am seen as too extreme in my belief and as someone who will never get married if she does this…

I entrust myself to the will of the Lord, yet I don’t know what else to do… I’ve been living in chastity for two years, of course sometimes I fall for the “little things”, but then I always resort to confession, repentant…

I’m almost afraid now to delve into any acquaintances, because every time I encounter people of little faith. So moving them from their firm and convinced thoughts always seems like a very difficult task…

Everyone tells me “of course it is good to wait, yes, but until marriage… it’s too much”; “It’s important to understand if you like a person”:

I try to explain everything, everything that led me to make this choice, but explanations are not enough.

I found myself thinking: “you can’t understand the things of heaven if you live with your feet in the mud and you even like it…”.

However, when I go to church I only find people of a certain age, so…

What do you recommend I do?

Thank you so much

Priest’s answer

Dear Valeriya,
1. You tell me that you are faced with a world of the Church that does not teach the way of salvation for young people because it gives in to do-goodism and to please in its own way of life.

I can’t blame you entirely.

2. St. John the Baptist, the forerunner of our Lord, began his preaching by saying: “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt 3,2).
We read the same thing about Our Lord: “From that time on, Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt 4,17).
Even to Saint Peter, the prince of the apostles, in his first sermon given on the day of Pentecost, he said: “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the holy Spirit (At 2,38).
And a bit further on: “Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away” (At 3,19).

3. Today we are almost afraid to pronounce this word: “Convert!”.
Most likely because we ourselves, preachers of the Gospel, are not like Saint John the Baptist and Saint Peter who were fully converted, so our listeners might say: “You start!”.

However, this does not exempt us from the task that has been given to us: to preach conversion and to be the first to bear witness to it.

4. Coming to you, who find yourself discouraged by the widespread mentality that despises premarital purity and who for this very reason struggle to find a boy who has the same feelings as you, I say two things.

5. The first is about the firmness you must have in remaining converted and how you should not conform in any shape or form to the mentality of the world.
Especially given that because of this conduct you have started to “taste the good word of God and the powers of the age to come ”, as the letter to the Hebrews says (Eb 6,5).
Therefore do not listen to those who say to you that you should convert to the world’s mentality, that today it is impossible to find young men who think in your same way and that you have to adapt otherwise you will never get married.
I am sure that if you ask the Lord for this firmness, he will give it to you because he wishes above all to communicate the goods of a spiritual nature.

6. The second thing I want to say to you is don’t give in to what some guys may tell you: “Yes, it is right to wait but not until marriage’’.
If you remain firm and clear on this point, some will probably turn away. It will be better this way, because they would have made you suffer later.

But perhaps someone will be amazed and fascinated by what you propose to them in view of a growth in life in Christ.

In this regard, I like to remember what Saint Teresa of Avila wrote at the beginning of her autobiography. Teresa was about twenty years old. There was a consecrated person who lived in a miserable state because he was the victim of a curse or spell placed on him by a woman.

She had given him an amulet to always keep with him. And through this amulet she exercised a bond over him that kept him subjugated.

Saint Teresa had the opportunity to spend time with this man with whom she had spiritual conversations and for this reason she respected Teresa and had great affection for her.
Saint Teresa writes: “For in order to please me, he finally gave me this little idol, which I then threw in a river. Once he got rid of this, he began – like someone awaking from a deep sleep – to recall everything he had done during those years. And being frightened about himself and grieving over his bad moral state, he at last began to abhor the woman” (Autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila, V,6 ).
7. Later Saint Teresa will make this consideration: “For I believe that all men must be more friendly toward women who they see are inclined toward virtue. And this is the means whereby women ought to gain more of what they are seeking from men” (Ib.).
As if to say: men will be men. But when they find a virtuose girl they know they can count on her for their future.
While they immediately realize that there is nothing to hope for from a girl with loose morals.
For this reason, I urge you to have faith: either the Lord will immediately make you find someone with the same feelings as you or he will transform him, as Saint Teresa managed to do with that man.

With the hope that this is what the Lord has reserved for you, I bless you and remember you in prayer.
Father Angelo