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Question

Hello,

I need to find answers to my questions. Let me tell you my story from the beginning.

Last summer I met my ex-boyfriend for the very first time.

He did so much for me! He was always doing his best to try to win my love,, he made me feel important and he had me become part of his family very soon.

In the beginning I didn’t love him, I used to cheat on him and I was going to leave him.

But I felt too guilty, so I stopped cheating on him, I asked the Lord for forgiveness and I begged  Saint Pio of Pietrelcina to intercede so that I would  fall in love with him and have children with him.

After a while, I fell head over heels in love with him!

I told him that I loved him and after a week, by mistake, we had a complete sexual intercourse, although I was in my fertile period.

We talked over this and he said that if I had gotten pregnant, we would have carried the pregnancy ahead.

After a while, I started to feel sick and to have stomachache.

I should have bought a pregnancy test the following day, but my mother gave me parsley tea and some rice boiled in it.  I knew that parsley tea could cause  abortion. I didn’t want to drink it, but my mind reeled, I was scared at the prospect of having a baby with a person I loved but whom I barely knew, I had a terrible stomachache, so I made the mistake of drinking that decoction…

It was as if a mysterious force had taken over me…I ate that rice even though I didn’t want to, I felt as if my body was moving  by itself.

My mother gave me more parsley tea and rice the following morning, as soon as I woke up. She did so against my will, taking advantage of my being sleepy and semi-unconscious.

Therefore, I started to have strange-coloured leakages and I even saw two tiny foetuses, smaller than 1 cm.

A few months have gone by already, and I am so distressed about what happened.

I feel so bad and I wish I could go back in time and change things.

I the early days after the abortion I used to dream of my children almost every night..

I feel bad anytime I see pregnant women as well as  babies.

My ex-boyfriend used to say that in his opinion I haven’t had an abortion, because I hadn’t had a pregnancy test.

We had planned to go to live together and my father bought a house for us.

My ex-boyfriend said that we would start to try to have children soon.

But on St. Valentine’s day, while we were on holiday, he locked himself in the toilet and I overheard him saying to a girl on the telephone: “today it is our day, I love you”.

He kept denying it, but because of this we drifted apart.

I sought to avenge myself by rekindling a relationship with an old flame of mine. It happened to me the same thing that I had experienced when I drank parsley tea: I felt I was taken over by something. So I started to have erotic telephone conversations with this man.

After this, I felt so tremendously bad and impure that I asked God to forgive me.

A few days later, my ex-boyfriend wished to reconcile with me, but he checked my cell phone and found out that I had called my old flame. He got upset but ended up forgiving me.

During the covid-19 quarantine, we spent eleven days together, but then I overheard him talking on the phone to his girlfriend again. We broke up for a few days and I suffered because of  this.

I think that his infidelity is a well-deserved divine punishment for my previous betrayals and for my abortion.

I torment myself every day thinking that if I hadn’t drunk that parsley tea, we would be still together and I would be pregnant and happy now…

What is this thing that takes over me and forces me to do despicable things?

When I was fifteen years old I made a pact with the devil, asking for every girl I knew to be my friend and for every man to fall in love with me. After that, something took possession of me; I felt as if I had lost control of my words and my actions and I was hospitalized in a psychiatry department.

I confessed myself and the priest made me pray. I also prayed to St. Michael the Archangel to keep the devil away from me. Have I been forgiven by God? Is the pact still ongoing? Did I really manage to liberate myself from it?

I want to drive the devil away from me, and to be forgiven by God for my despicable deeds.

What can I do? Is it still possible for me to receive a  grace again?

The Priest’s reply

Dear,

1) everything about  your story is sad. It is the story of those who free themselves from the lordship of Christ, that is the only lordship that sets authentically free (John, 8:32).

Disentangling  oneself form the lordship of Christ is not freedom, it is a way to give yourself up to the thief that «comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy» (John 10:10).

2) When you were fifteen years old you made a pact with the devil asking for all the men to fall in love with you and all the girls to be your  friends. How did you benefit from it? You were already enslaved by whom  you were making a pact with, and you were putting yourself in God’s place.

What did you have to give to the girls you wanted to make friends with? What could you give to the hearts and souls of all those  men? Do you think you could have been the most valuable thing for them?

3) The devil himself tried to put himself in God’s place when he tempted the Lord in the desert: «all these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me» (Matthew, 4:9).

In fact, he could not give any  kingdom nor any precious thing of the world, because they are not his but God’s. What could he give besides the experience of hell? The devil’s seduction is nothing but a deceit. You wanted to surrender yourself totally to your enemy by making a pact with him. And he did come, but he came only to make you experience hell. He came to steal and slaughter and destroy (John 10:10). He stole your dignity as a human person and as a woman. He killed an innocent. He tortured you and your boyfriend by getting you to suspect and betray each other and he finally destroyed your friendship.

4) I will not examine one by one all the sins that you have listed. They are all mistakes you made and own goals you scored. Maybe you are not aware that they are sins: impurity acts, sexual intercourses, neglecting to  observe the holy days , planning to go and live with your boyfriend…

5) I will tell you directly what you can do now.

The first thing to do is doubtlessly a genuine confession of your sins to a priest. If you are sincerely determined to change your life, confession will tear up the pact with the devil. You must be determined to change your life and follow the Lord. Because a confession that lacks the resolution to start a new life doesn’t tear up the pact with the devil.

6) In your new life you should pray, listen to the Word of God, carefully keep observing the holy days , regularly and  frequently  approach the sacrament of Penance  and comply with the Law of the Lord, especially with the sixth and the ninth commandment (you shall not commit impurity acts and you shall not covet impure things).

7) After changing your life, you should be vigilant. Never feel too confident, because your enemy, who had enslaved and devastated you, will not give up. Do as the Lord says in the Gospel: «when an unclean spirit goes out of a person it roams through arid regions searching for rest but finds none. Then it says, “I will return to my home from which I came”. But upon returning, it finds it empty, swept clean, and put in order. Then it goes and brings back with itself seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they move in and dwell there; and the last condition of that person is worse than the first» (Matthew 12:43-45).

8) Finally, you ask me if you can receive grace again. In this regard, the figure of St. Mary Magdalene is enlightening. We do not know whether she had made pacts with the devil, but for sure seven demons had gone out of her (Luke 8:2). After her conversion she became so pure that, according to St. Augustin, the Virgin Mary alone is purer than her. In addition, according to the tradition of the Bollandists (reputed historians) she did not receive just one grace, but her whole life was a grace, as for over thirty-three years her only nourishment  was in the Eucharist. Thus, she anticipated mystical phenomena that various people lived over the centuries, such as Therese Neumann, who died in 1962 and consumed no food other than the Eucharist for thirty-six years, or Marthe Robin, who lived on the Eucharist for forty years and passed away in 1981.

9) I am not suggesting that you should aspire to this , because it  is  a singular divine gift that God gives only to whom He wants and only to fulfill his salvific project. I am only saying that  what  was granted to the repentant Magdalene who did not receive just one grace, but whose whole life after conversion was a grace, might similarly be granted to you as well,so that what  the Lord wants for you, that is to say that «where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more» (Romans, 20:5), can become realty  So,cheer up!

The Lord wants to renew you and fill you with grace.

I accompany you in  my prayers and I bless you.

Father Angelo