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Question

Dear Father Angelo,

I’ve already written to you about other things, and I approach you more for a chat than for a question, or maybe for something that bothers me or something I need to understand. The sin and the confession. I torment myself on one point, why do I not feel the pain of my sin on me as Christ feels it? Why does Jesus not give me the opportunity to understand the horror of my sin physically? Then I think that perhaps only the Saints have this most painful privilege, I think about Saint Padre Pio, Saint Francis and Saint Rita and then I realize that I might not be able to bear such suffering but at least for a moment I would understand the horror of my sins. How can I understand the evil I do to Jesus by sinning? How can I be a prodigal son in a definitive and coherent way without having to make up for thousands of times? Of course confession is important, certainly I must not be presumptuous in not wanting to sin but is not always confessing the same sin or the same sins a symptom of inconsistency and a superficial confession? Or, as one of my old confessors said, the climb to Christ is so difficult that you end up falling continuously? Of course falling is a fact that hurts me because I peel my knees and elbows, but sin also hurts Jesus and not only myself. Moreover, Christ would never have shed his Blood if the world had been free of guilt. Explain to me, Father, or at least guide me in understanding the deep meaning of sin, help me, Father, to grasp all sides, so that I understand the pain of Christ and I can stop and, if I cannot stop, at least I get to confession with the real weight of my guilt.

For those who have attended the sacrament of confession assiduously in life, could Purgatory be explained indeed as what remains to be paid to the righteousness of God for what we did not understand of our sins when we confessed?

Help me because I need it, because I’ve been thinking about this for a while now.

Cordially 

Paul

The Priest’s reply

Dear Paolo,

1. If the Lord does not make us feel the sensitive pain of our sins, it is undoubtedly for a singular plan of love.

Maybe we would die instantly and be so down and depressed that we could not do anything.

2. At the same time the Lord asks us to become increasingly aware of the gravity of sin because the consideration of what sin is, is the best remedy for not making us do it again.

3. To this end I went to back to fetch the texts of a great mystic, Saint Catherine of Siena, who, perhaps, as few described so effectively the reality of sin.

4. As a true Dominican (the motto of the Dominicans is veritas) she says that sin is a lie.

Sin always presents itself under the semblance of good, but it is a false good actually.

Pursuing a lie is the same as wanting to be deceived.

I think all of us have sometimes had the experience of being deceived. In deception we find ourselves disillusioned, deprived of good and full of so much evil.

Now, if someone deceives us, it is okay.

But wanting to be deceived by oneself and pursuing deception as the goal of one’s life is endless foolishness.

5. Saint Catherine also says that with sin (understood to be serious) we become adulterers because with Baptism we received Jesus as Bridegroom.

Now, “the real bride loves nothing but her groom, that is, she loves nothing against his will. 

Thus the true bride of Christ must do: to love only him with all her heart, with all her soul and with all her strength; and to hate that which he hateth, that is, vice and sin; and to love that which he loveth, even the virtues, which are tried in the love of her neighbour; serving him with fraternal charity in his needs, as it is possible.

Would not that soul be foolish and mad, who, being able to be free and married, became a servant and a slave and an adulteress, reserving itself to the devil?

Certainly it would.

So does the soul that, freed from the slavery of the devil and repurchased by the blood of Christ crucified not by gold or silver, but by the blood considers itself vile and does not recognize its own dignity; it despises and considers vile the blood from which it was repurchased with so much fire of love; and, having God made it the bride of the Word his Son, the sweet Jesus, (…), it becomes adulterous, loving something outside of him (that is, not loving them in him and for him, e.n.), or father or mother, or sister or brothers or kinsmen, or wealth or states of the world, ceasing to be loyal and faithful bride to its groom” (Letter 262).

6. This adultery is a bitter offense inflicted on the heart of God because, instead of keeping Jesus as a faithful Bridegroom, the source of all good, we choose though indirectly to have a relationship with the devil, father of all deceit and unhappiness.

And since Christ is the head of the body, both of the Church and of the individual person, committing sin is like cutting off the head from the body and remaining deprived of any supernatural life.

7. Saint Catherine writes: “Oh how blind is the human generation in that it considers not its own dignity! From being great thou hast become small, from a ruler thou hast become a slave, and that in the vilest service that can be had, because thou art the servant and slave of sin, and art become like unto that which thou dost serve.

Sin is nothing. Thou, then, hast become nothing; it has deprived thee of life, and given thee death” (Dialogue 35).

8. And again, “To serve God is not to serve, but to reign.

It is not like the perverse servitude of the world that demeans man and makes him a servant and a slave of sin and the devil: for the soul that serveth creatures and riches without God, loving them, and desiring them disorderly, falls into death, and debaseth itself, because it is subject to things which are less than itself.

For all created things are made for the service of man, and man for the service of God. Therefore, the more man lusteth after these transitory things, the more he loses that sweet lordship over them, which he acquires in serving the Creator; and he submits to that thing which it is not, because, by loving disorderly out of God, he offends God. It is therefore true that by serving the world we come to nothing.

Oh how foolish and mad is he who begins to serve the one who has no other lordship but that which is not, that is, sin!” (Letter 112).

9. Saint Catherine observes the foolishness of the sinner who puts himself at the mercy of the devil. 

She says that the devil does not have the power to put men under his rule. In this respect we are stronger than him.

“He who surrenders himself to sin becomes a servant and slave of sin, loses the lordship of himself and lets himself be possessed by anger and other defects.

What gain would we have then to dominate the whole world if we did not dominate the vices and sins that are in us? Alas! This is our blindness: that, since there is neither demon nor other creature that can bind man to a single mortal sin, he binds by himself” (Letter 149)”.

10. For this reason she exclaims: “How terrible sin is, and how God dislikes it, who did not want to leave it unpunished, but did it justice and vengeance upon the body of his Son” (Letter 60).

“God disliked and dislikes it so much that, to punish the sin of Adam, he sent the Word, his only Son, and wanted to punish it on his body, although in him there was no poison of sin” (Letter 287).

11. She also says: “The gravity of mortal sin is so great that only one is sufficient to send to hell the soul that is bound within it” (Letter 287).

“The soul believed that it had acted against God by sinning, and instead it acted against itself: it made itself judge of itself and condemned itself by making itself worthy of eternal death” (Letter 24).

“The wretched soul that must be the temple of God, where God dwells with his grace, the sinner made it the temple of the devil: it gave this city into his hands and dominion and subjected it to the sin that is nothingness.

As a blind person and without intellect, he does not think about what evil he has incurred, nor the punishment that will result from guilt.

If he saw it, he would rather die than offend his creator, and this for nothing in the world” (Letter 338).

12. So Saint Catherine concluded: “Sweet God, give us death before we offend you”  (Letter 31).

I hope you will come to this before you can crucify Jesus again (cf Heb 6:6).

That is why I remember you in prayer and I bless you.

Father Angelo