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Good morning Father Angelo,

My name is Stefano, and I would like to ask a simple but profound question. How can I feel worthy and at peace with the Lord after Confession? Even though I consider myself deeply religious, It is hard for me to comprehend the possibility of a complete reconciliation with Him: I think I’m completely ignorant of how to confess, as if stay dirty even if there is the sincere intention of cleansing well. Sometimes I feel unworthy of being called a son of God, and I try to make up for it by praying. Sometimes I speak to an extraordinary priest, looking for a spiritual guide capable of giving a human form to such an immense God. 

I know you have hundreds if not thousands of emails to answer, but I have serious doubts I’m worthy of being His son.

I often search for Him in my mind and heart; I would love to be perfect for Him but I mostly feel like a clanging cymbal that repeats prayers, psalms or parables from the Holy Bible.

Faith comforts me, the only weapon I have: I cling to it tenaciously, conscious of the fact that I’m an “earthworm”, as Natuzza Evolo used to say. I’ve read many of your answers to wiser and more profound questions than mine. I’m sorry if it appears to be superficial or inappropriate, but nonetheless I’d appreciate a personal response.

Thank you very much, may God bless you.

Stefano

The answer from father Angelo

Dear Stefano,

1. Being sons of God means participating in God’s life, which is a life of the supernatural order. This reality is infinitely superior to all human capabilities, hence the impossibility of acquiring this condition by our own forces. For example, Iron can’t catch fire by itself but must be reached and penetrated by fire. God does the exact same thing with us: via baptism, He introduces in our souls the seed of divine life. From that moment on, man becomes a son of God.

2. Since participation in divine life isn’t owed to us, but is gratuitous, it is a Grace. More appropriately a “sanctifying grace”, because it is a divine benevolence that reaches us, purifies, heals and elevates us to the supernatural order.

3. Being elevated to the supernatural order is the same as acquiring the capability of having the thought of God and reasoning like Him (this is Faith); of acting with the help and supernatural force which is given to us by God (this is the Theological Hope); of loving in a divine and supernatural manner, proper of God (this is Love).

4. Then we feel this unworthiness in being sons of God, not only because it is not our right but the fruit of His infinite benevolence, but also because after our sanctification we still lug behind many burdens. This is why Saint Therese of Lisieux quite rightly wrote: ” I know that before You every action is like a filthy rag”. She borrowed the expression from the Sacred Scripture, precisely from Isaiah: “All of us have become like unclean men, all our good deeds are like polluted rags” (Isaiah 64, 5). Therefore we don’t have anything to boast of before God. Instead, we must be thankful because He was merciful with us, and still is.

5. It must be said that in the sanctification of the soul, another gift of the Holy Spirit is the Fear of God, which should be interpreted as the profound respect for the Lord, as well as the sense of our infinite smallness before the greatness of His love. This holy fear of God will remain even in Paradise: this is confirmed in Revelation where it can be read that as the words “Holy, Holy, Holy” were sung, everybody bowed before the throne. Here is the precise quote: “The four living creatures, each of them with six wings, were covered with eyes inside and out. Day and night they do not stop exclaiming: «Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and who is, and who is to come».

Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to the one who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before the one who sits on the throne and worship him, who lives forever and ever. They throw down their crowns before the throne, exclaiming: «Worthy are you, Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things; because of your will they came to be and were created»” (Revelation 4, 8-11).

6. It can be read in the life of the Holy Curé of Ars that he once asked the Lord to see the vastness of his misery. The Lord granted his wish, but the saint couldn’t bear a second of it, and asked to make it go away: it oppressed him so much that it would have made him incapable of taking any action.

7. The saints, as they grow in sanctity, increasingly understand their personal misery. By moving towards the light, they see with greater clarity all the dust and filth; this is why they easily see themselves as the greatest sinners of the world. For the same reason, they go to confession very often.

Therefore, there is a sense of unworthiness which is innate in the Christian experience. 

8.  But there’s also a sense of unworthiness that derives from the experience of sin. First of all from venial sin; but especially from mortal sin, because it emerges an awareness of being among those who “are recrucifying the Son of God for themselves and holding him up to contempt” (Hebrews 6,6).

9. Hence, we must tirelessly cultivate the virtue of humility to acknowledge before God that we’re “dust and ashes”, as Abraham said (Genesis 18, 27).

10. I’m writing this response on the eleventh of October, the memorial day of Saint Pope John XXII. Here’s what he wrote in 1939: “Even around me I hear the whisper: three “ad maiora, ad maiora” (in ecclesiastical jargon it means: to higher dignity, n.d.r.).

I don’t want to lend myself to such caresses which are, even for me, a temptation. And I cordially try to overlook these voices that sound like deception and cowardice. I see them as a joke; I smile and move on.

For that little, for that nothing that I am in the holy Church, I already dress my purple: that is the blush to find myself in this place of honour and responsibility, me being worth so little.

Oh, what comfort to feel free from these aspirations to change place and to go up! I consider it a great grace of the Lord. May the Lord always give it to me” (n.736).

I wish you to grow more and more in the humility of heart that is particularly pleasing to God. I bless you and will remember you in my prayers.

Father Angelo