Questo articolo è disponibile anche in:
Italian 
English
Dear Father Angelo,
I believe that God only judges our spiritual and not psychological aspects. I find socializing with others very hard, yet God will not judge us on how smart we are, on our self-confidence or various trifles, these false values have been introduced by men. Instead, other aspects of my life worry me, such as the period of strong atheism that I went through from the age of 18 till one year ago (now I’m 22), and my search for consolation in esoterism or my interest in oriental practices, such as meditation. One year ago I got to the point of wanting to commit suicide because life had no meaning for me, until I thought that life cannot just tend to nothing, it must tend towards SOMETHING or SOMEONE. So I started believing in God and Jesus Christ again and I started to participate in the Holy Mass ,too. I am praying to the Lord to obtain the grace to go to Confession and receive Communion, as I still cannot consider myself as a sinner, neither am I able to feel disgust for my sins, nor do I feel the need to change. Also,can there be involuntary masturbation, that is, uncontrolled sexual fantasies that make you feel aroused, but without manipulation of the genitals or release of the male sperm? I pray to the Lord to free me from these fantasies.
Dear friend,
1- being smart and confident is a great gift. This is undoubtedly a good resource.
But there is no merit in these traits of our personality.
That is also why you correctly say that the Lord will not judge us on our psychological traits, but on our actions and on our path.
Only the fruit of our deliberation can be attributable to us. We are responsible for this alone.
2. In the meantime, I am pleased that the Lord has pulled you away from the abyss of the insignificance of life.
If our life is destined to dissolve into nothing what is its use?
What does it mean to live, to be creative, to love, to suffer if everything is destined for nothing?
Raissa and Jacques Maritain would have also decided to commit suicide if they had not discovered the meaning of life.
By the grace of God they were led to understanding it by reading the review of a book entitled La femme pauvre by Léon Bloy. Then they also discovered the thought of St. Thomas and understood how much time they had lost by following the philosophies of the time.
Through St. Thomas they came to know Christ. They got baptized. Raissa became a great mystic and Jacques one of the most significant Christian thinkers of the twentieth century. To him Paul VI, at the end of the Council, delivered the Church message for the intellectuals .3. But now I come to the most important statement of your email: “life cannot tend to nothing, it must tend towards SOMETHING or SOMEONE”.
In fact we see this: that every reality is ordered to serve something .
Is it possible that only human life, which is the highest manifestation of life in the cosmos, does not have a goal?
4. Every man ponders on the final goal of life.
The various religions are man’s answer to this question.
5. Christianity is different from other religions.
And from a certain point of view it is not even a religion, if by religion we mean the path of man that leads to God.
In fact, Christianity is not man’s way, but it is God’s way to go to God.
6. It is God’s way first of all because it is God who goes towards man and calls him to communion with Himself.
It is the way of God because it is God Himself who has revealed it since Christ is not a man like all other mortal creatures, but it is God who became flesh and gave such overwhelming proofs that he could say: “If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me; but if I do them, even if you do not believe in me, believe in the works, so that you may know and know that the Father is in me, and I in the Father ”(Jn 10: 37-38).
7. The goal of man’s life then cannot be something.
Things, however precious they may be, do not satiate the heart of man.
Only one person, indeed only a Divine Person, can satiate the heart of man.
This Divine person is Christ.
8. Only the encounter with Him satisfies.
Only the communion of life with Him satisfies.
Only His words satiate, because they are not human words, but divine words that communicate eternal life.
Only His Person, the only one who can enter your heart at this moment, is sufficient.
9. I urge you to live this communion.
For some time now, the Lord has been knocking on your heart.
You heard the voice and opened the door for Him.
Jesus is “the Lord, the Master, the key, the center and the end” of your life and of all human history (Gaudium et spes, 10).
I urge you to meet Him daily especially in sacred Scripture, in prayer, in the celebration of the sacraments, even if for now you cannot receive Holy Communion because you have not gone to Confession. The union with Him will enlighten you and make you understand what helps you to unite with Him and what distances you (sin).Then, with the illumination of the Holy Spirit, you will understand what sin is, you will grieve, you will be happy to remove it from your soul by means of the Blood of Christ poured out on your soul by the priest in Confession.
I wish you a good journey, I will gladly remind you in front of the Lord and in the meantime I bless you.
Father Angelo
