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Good evening Father Angelo,

first of all, congratulations for the comprehensive answers you give to those people seeking comfort and advice from you.

My name is F. and I have a girlfriend and we have been engaged for almost 6 years; at the beginning of our relationship, I lived as a non-believer, but then about 3 years ago I reconnected with faith; my girlfriend as a non-believer (she was only baptized) was quite surprised by my change, I tried to talk to her about it, but she thinks that religion is something stupid that belongs to weak people.

I really care a lot about this girl, but human thoughts and the matter of faith are completely opposite to each other.

We have premarital relations, and she has been taking the pill to regulate “her things” even before she lost her virginity (with another partner); as I once again read the catechism, despite having partaken of confession and communion, I commit a sacrilegious act… my change of life since I returned to the faith has improved a lot: before, I had constant arguments with my parents, while now if anything happens I hug and kiss them; before, I used to blaspheme for anything that may happen and I was also the cause of scandal for other people in various places, now as I hear blaspheming I recite Hail Marys to make amends; before, premarital sexual relations with my girlfriend were just for my pleasure, the same as viewing pornographic material and acts of masturbation (by myself), now pornography and masturbation have been almost eradicated (except for the occasional relapse), while sexual relations still happen but with less frequency, because I can say that I am “almost fine” with myself, but she does not want to understand this.

I feel my heart burning inside, I cry sometimes, because she does not want to understand the joy that I would like to share with her, I cry and my body burns because I’m afraid that our relationship will end and I would hate to make her feel bad because it’s true that she loves me very much, she is kind and thoughtful to me, despite the “abyss” that divides us.

I am so afraid, I pray to God to help me perhaps convert my girlfriend’s heart, thus becoming a “returned son” to the Father.

As I wait for your answer, a heartfelt thank you for your helpfulness and kindness in answering me, and I apologize if I wrote badly.

I entrust myself to your prayers and will say 3 Hail Marys for you.

Best regards

Answer from the priest

Dear Son,

1. if your girlfriend’s thoughts about her relationship with God are those you wrote to me, there is nothing to be done.

You cannot be at the side of a wife who regards as stupid and childish the most precious thing every human person possesses, which is the relationship with God.

Nor is it conceivable that, as a mother of children, she would educate them with such feelings.

2. Sexuality touches the intimate core of the person, as St. Pope John Paul II said.

Now, when God is excluded from the intimate core of the person, it is inevitable that, as in the case of concentric circles, he is excluded from the rest of one’s life as well.

3. Contraception is the same thing as excluding God from our emotional life, because we live as if the ability to love was not given to us by him and were not given to us in view of him.

4. Unfortunately, your girlfriend has excluded God from her life for quite some time.

But without God and without the view to eternal life, present life ends up shrouded in darkness.

It is terrible not to know what you live for!

As if our life were worthless!

5. Erasing God from our lives is the same as setting nothingness as the beginning and goal of our existence.

In this way we reduce ourselves to living for nothingness.

If nothingness is the meaning of our life, one cannot justify why we should stay faithful in marriage and before marriage. It would perhaps just be a ruse to be less unhappy in some respects.

6. St. Pope John XXIII rightfully remarked in Mater et Magistra that “the most perniciously typical aspect of the modern era consists in the absurd attempt to reconstruct a solid and fruitful temporal order divorced from God, who is, in fact, the only foundation on which it can endure. In seeking to enhance man’s greatness, men fondly imagine that they can do so by drying up the source from which that greatness springs and from which it is nourished. They want, that is, to restrain and, if possible, to eliminate the soul’s upward surge toward God. But today’s experience of so much disillusionment and bloodshed only goes to confirm those words of Scripture: ‘Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it’” (MM 229).

And he also stated: “Let men make all the technical and economic progress they can, there will be no peace nor justice in the world until they return to a sense of their dignity as creatures and sons of God, who is the first and final cause of all created being. Separated from God a man is but a monster, in himself and toward others; for the right ordering of human society presupposes the right ordering of man’s conscience with God, who is Himself the source of all justice, truth and love” (MM 227).

7. I well understand your discomfort as a person who is more and more accomplishing your own conversion.

Impurity and sanctification cannot go together.

St. Thomas says that there is nothing that hinders union with God and spiritual life as much as the impurity of the flesh.

You are experiencing this first hand. And this is why you feel more and more urgent the need to take the plunge, to throw away the things of the past and to be solely on God’s side.

8. I also understand your great discomfort because on the one hand you feel that this girl is kind and thoughtful and on the other hand you feel that there is “a great abyss” between her and yourself.

It is an abyss that stops the deepest kind of communion, because it is capable of creating communion in all other areas of life.

Only the presence of God in the hearts of both can bridge that abyss.

9. However, there is hope: let Our Lady intervene.

Just a few days have passed since we celebrated the feast of the Blessed Virgin of Lourdes.

Bernadette related this detail: she had noticed that above each foot of Our Lady there was a golden rose.

That means that where Our Lady rests her feet everything blooms again in the most beautiful way.

Well, when we pray the Holy Rosary, we allow Our Lady to rest her feet in our lives.

When we recite it for another person, as in your case, we have her feet rest close to that person’s life.

10. It fills us with even more hope to know that Our Lady always intervenes by acting in her own way, which is that of her sweetness.

In the Salve Regina we salute her with that beautiful title of our sweetness.

Therefore, rest your hope in Our Lady.

Her prayer is omnipotent and can obtain from God the grace of your girlfriend’s conversion.

I gladly join my prayer to yours.

Thank you very much for the three Hail Marys you promised me. They are a precious gift.

I bless you and wish you all the best.

Father Angelo