Questo articolo è disponibile anche in: Italian English Spanish Portuguese

Question

Dear father Angelo,

I am a sinner who cannot live the faith I  miraculously received 14 years ago.

I turn to you because I feel the peace of  the Truth in your writings.

(here the visitor tells his personal story)

I have lived with my compulsive carnal sins for several years, I fight against them, but I cannot tame them, nor do I  know if I will ever succeed, feeling hopelessly weak.

My question is about the discomfort I feel when I realize that the mentality of the world has permeated so much the confessors  to whom, struggling to overcome a thousand internal resistances, I approach:  the welfare of divine forgiveness is momentary, while the feeling of being a lost sheep remains.

Moreover, I know that my spiritual battle affects those around me as well, starting with my children. 

I live in Milan, in a large city and in the largest diocese in the world, but I feel alone and lost as if I were in a place that has no christian traditions.

I asked the Lord for the grace to find a confessor and spiritual director who will truly take care of my soul and help it to deserve paradise.

Do you think this is an appropriate request? Will you grant it?

Best wishes and I assure you of my prayers,

M.

The Priest’s reply

Dear M.,

  1. Meanwhile, I am pleased with  the miraculous healing of moral character  that you’ve achieved.

You too can say in some way with Saint Augustine: “What I feared to lose before (of conversion) , now I am happy to have left it”.

  1. Without a  doubt a good confessor and spiritual guide can help you eliminate those evils you call compulsive.

However, it is not easy to find them.
They must be asked to God with much prayer.

In any case,for the sacramental absolution is sufficient to have recourse to any priest, however, if you want to make some progress, it is extremely useful and I would say almost indispensable to keep a permanent confessor that gradually will help you take  the most appropriate steps.

3. In the hope that you’ll find him soon, I’ll just give you some general guidance.

You will finally heal, even from those temptations you call almost compulsive, when you begin to feel the disgust.

And this will come when you begin to enjoy and inebriate yourself with something else that is in the opposite direction.

4. In the translation of the Bible of the Vulgata we read about  the Messiah who, in his coming, would have given to drink a wine that germinates virgins (vinum germinans virgines, Zech 9:17). The current Italian translation says otherwise.

But, beyond the translation, there is the text of the Bible in Latin, which is the Church’s official one, and above all the concept that attracted in particular St Bernard, who asked Our Lady to obtain the wine that germinates virgins.

5. There are occasions that propitiate the outpouring of this grace.

The meditation of the Holy Scripture, the long stay together with the Lord after receiving the Holy Communion, the closeness y of Our Lady through the recitation of the Holy Rosary, the fulfillment of acts of charity, as well as the readiness to repel the assaults of temptation from the very  beginning, obtain us to drink a new wine that changes the tastes and desires of life.

It is in this way that a well laid out  terrain is prepared.

6. Certainly, we cannot wait in an inert manner for our inner disposition to be changed.

To continue with the same way of life for which, for example, you are in front of the television or the PC, listening to everything it provides and waiting for Our Lady to get us to drink a new wine is an almost impossible undertaking.

Only a miracle could do that.

7. So ask yourself what you are doing about what I mentioned in No. 5.

And if you find that in your life those precious moments are reduced to a minimum or even absent, try to determine yourself, to take some steps.

You cannot hope from spiritual guidance what only you can do by putting together the invocation of help from heaven and your good will.

Wishing you the grace to know how to determine yourself in reference to Christ, I assure you of my prayer and I bless you.

Father Angelo