Mortal Sins

[JesusIPray]

Aight, I know that when you have a mortal sin upon your soul, that you need to go to confession to clear your conscience, and to open your road with God again. But what if you dont know you have a mortal sin upon your soul and you die? What happens? I was just thinking this because I did a section in my Catechism on Penance; going to confession ect... It says how when you commit a mortal sin that cuts off your relationship with God, and you willingly give up your place in heaven. Thats so terrible to me. So I was wondering/worrying if I had any grave sins on my soul that I'm not aware of. Will Blessed Mother help me to recognize them if I do? Because I am praying for her to show me I have any because if I did I would want to be rid of them. If I did something that I was not aware of it being a mortal sin so I didn't think twice about it, and still am unaware of its severity. What should I do?

Thank you ahead of time.


p.s.
I shall keep watching for responses, but if someone asks me something I might not respond because its saying I dont have permission to reply to this thread, perhaps it will though, but I'll listen to any advice that is given.

[Theologian in Training]

You are right in your understanding of mortal sin, however, it sounds to me as though you are trying to find sin where sin might not exist, rather than letting God reveal that sin to you when you are ready. Someone once said (a saint, I believe) that if God were to reveal to us the entirety of our sins we would most likely drop dead instantly from shock, fear, and all the other gamut of emotions one would travel.

Our understanding and our sensitivity with sin grows with our relationship with God. The closer we get to Him, the closer we come to the Light of the world, the more we see that was cloaked in darkness. When we try to find sin, we can fall into the trap of driving ourselves crazy and become incredibly scrupulous. As a result, one of two things will happen, you will begin to see everything as a sin, be afraid to do most anything, as a result, and start to look at God in a very irrational way, some I have seen almost have a Santa Claus mentality, whereby, God is watching you, all the time, checking off His list whether you have been "naughty or nice." The other thing that can happen is that you outright rebel and rather than worrying about what a sin is, you commit many freely so as to be sure it is indeed a sin, and this way alleviating any doubt, on your part. Both are the extremes, you obviously want and need to avoid.

The other thing is that we cannot accidentally sin, or unintentionally commit a mortal sin, because for a sin to be mortal three things must be present: you must know it is a sin, and it is must be grave matter, in other words, you must know it is a really bad sin. There must be sufficient reflection and full knowledge that it is indeed a sin that it is grave, and you must give full consent of the will. If any or all of those factors are not present, you are not committing a mortal sin.

So, even if you are aware of things you did in the past that were indeed mortal sins, while I would recommend you confess them, you did not know that, at the time, they were indeed mortal sins. This is why it is also very important to have a well-formed conscience to help you with such matters.

I hope that clears up some of the confusion and helps a bit, and btw, since this is under the Q&A you cannot reply, you can only read the answer.

God Bless

Fr. Brian