Penitent Sinners Who Offered Their Lives To Christ And Became Saints

[MarysLittleFlower]

I found that seeing Jesus as my Beloved is what helped me personally with the above problem though at times I feel so unworthy to call Him this. But I think it consoles Him too when souls do

[beatitude]

I can so relate.. I have been learning the lesson this year of relying only on Jesus and I'm still learning and still have so much to learn! Lol! I get too attached to my friends too and then I realised I won't be number one in their life because its not that type of relationship. So I'm trying to learn for Jesus to be number one in everything for me and to be content with only Him... There is the suffering part (one holy soul called it the "crucifying duty of loving only You" (Him), on the other side theres something so beautiful and sweet in the idea that - no one but Jesus will ever have my heart. I can serve Him in all but I'm to be only His. The very intimacy of this is so beautiful that one would want to give up all for Him... Even if other times there's pain from our weakness.

​The beautiful old Irish hymn that begins "Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart" provides a lot of comfort and insight - it reminds me that if God is my vision then through Him I will see everyone else, and that my friendships will not be lost or stunted, but changed for the better. When I was really hurting over my friend's behaviour, and wondering if I was worth anything to them at all, I remembered something that Mother Janet Stuart (a Sacred Heart sister) once wrote: "We ourselves know the best and worst of ourselves, and others know the middle...the part that shows. It ought to increase our reverence for each other very much when we think that however much good we see in others the best is always hidden." Let Christ be our vision and we start to see glimpses of the best, and when we can't glimpse it, we are at least aware that it's there. This makes it harder to be let down or hurt by a friend, which means you can love them more.

From what I've heard from priests and religious sisters, there is always a time when this particular form of loneliness bites, and it's perhaps tougher for consecrated single people because we don't have the immediate support of a community and the structure of a horarium. It's painful, but I think it is also a way in which God's goodness becomes manifest to us - if we didn't go through this, we wouldn't seek that goodness out. St Jane de Chantal wrote to a sister who was in pain and distress, "Look at God and let him act," and when I came across that line I felt that the letter had been addressed to me. 'Look at God' seems to be chastity in three words - retaining a pure focus and a pure heart.

Edited June 4, 2015 by beatitude

[BarbTherese]

Once one has made a good Confession, The Church tells us that The Lord Forgives & Forgets (Cardinal Mauro Piacenza, the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary – a Vatican tribunal dealing with issues involving the forgiveness of sins as well as indulgences).  To dwell overly on one's past returning to past failure with heightened negative emotional content might prevent one from growing and becoming who it is one was created to be, i.e.  one might develop a distorted view of oneself locking oneself in the past - this does not mean that one does not return to one's past in some way now and then with sorrow and a desire for reparation somehow.  It is not so much the heightened emotional content that is the problem as it is an inability to put the past in the past and move on free of it. There is a kind of 'returning' to the past which is not an exaggerated dwelling on the past and out of that context that The Lord has indeed forgiven and forgotten.  This is an occasion for sorrow for past failure, yes - but far more an occasion to be Praising and Thankful for The Lord and His Unlimited Love and Mercy - Love and Mercy that it is totally impossible for any human being to either merit or deserve.  It is His Absolute and Faithful Always Embrace of us, born of a Love that so puzzles me in it's extent, I might be tempted to state that it is a Foolish Love !!! (foolish = lacking in good sense, judgement; unwise)

While some religious orders might be hesitant about a person with a past, I think probably there are far more religious orders that will embrace such a person providing that one's past is some years in the past and this time span may vary.  Why, indeed, should the human reject one if The Lord does not?

As Catholics, we can almost be consumed with irrational guilt and perhaps especially over sexual type of failures.  We are sexual creatures and the CCC tells us that the seriousness of sin can be mitigated by the pressure of passion for one.

 

Edited June 4, 2015 by BarbaraTherese

[BarbTherese]

Catholic Catechism http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc.htm

1763 The term "passions" belongs to the Christian patrimony. Feelings or passions are emotions or movements of the sensitive appetite that incline us to act or not to act in regard to something felt or imagined to be good or evil.

1860 .....................The promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense, as can external pressures or pathological disorders. Sin committed through malice, by deliberate choice of evil, is the gravest.