We should go to God with all of our needs.
But anything – even something neutral or good that we pray for – that's placed in importance above God in our lives becomes really evil to us.
Not that the thing itself is necessarily evil, but that our idolatry of that thing will corrupt our souls.
This idolatry is the reason so many people feel cursed and actually are cursed – because it destroys all spiritual armor and our very souls.
Until our soul is right before God, no curse can be lifted.
God is not discussed in our society in a practical way that would allow us to have a meaningful relationship with Him.
He is often discussed in our society as being something undesirable or "oppressive." (Especially in our education system.)
But in reality, loving God is the only thing that fulfills us, God Himself is the only One that fulfills our lives and frees our souls, making us peaceful and truly joyful.
And false idols oppress people.
False idols make us completely miserable.
If you would rather die than live without it, it is a false idol.
A false idol is anything you think about or care about more than God (who is little discussed in the world in a way that you could care about Him).
God is Goodness and Adorableness Itself – the more we learn about Him, the more we find He is Good and Adorable, and the more we can’t help but love Him, and want to love Him.
You need a God experience. A moment where you experience God. So you can see for yourself.
This can only happen if you actively seek God, instead of the false idol.
Then you will know and understand how God can fill up person’s soul and how someone could seek God in life. Then you will experience God's peace and satisfaction.
You will experience the peace of God, which is not a peace anything in the world can give you.
Many people refuse to stop seeking their false idol and so refuse to start seeking God.
They say, "if God won't give me this false idol that I want, then He is mean and I won't have anything to do with Him!"
or, "if God won't get rid of this cursed state without me having to change my life, than I think that is too much work and give up!"
This is called “rejecting God.”
It is spiritually very dangerous because it can make us extraordinarily, unimaginably unhappy in life and very very miserable when we die.
Because only God will make us happy.
God wants to free us from our attachment to false idols because false idols make us miserable.
Rejecting God leads us to be more and more miserable, to feel completely dead inside, even though our bodies are still alive.
We were made for God, to love God, and no matter how much a person denies that fact, reality is always the same, and that person will always be miserable.
False idols will always fail us, always let us down and disappoint us.
People lose their minds when they have invested their lives into a false idol and it inevitably fails.
Many people in the world lose their minds or their depth, becoming shallow and hollow and corrupt (and so seek philosophies that try to make them sound deep, like existentialism, but it only points to how shallow they are), because they seek false idols instead of God.
Our society supports rejecting God, but not only will the person who rejects God be miserable in life, she will be spiritually lost when she physically dies.
At death, we go to enter into eternity and all of our false idols go away. They don’t exist anymore.
We aren't judged based on how much we pleased our parents or ourselves or our spouse or how many followers we had online or what other people thought of us or how we conformed to society or how much money we made or how good our grades were or how nice our car is or how high we got.
All that is gone in a moment.
What is left is only us and God.
Suddenly, God is the only thing that matters.
But in reality, God is the only One Who matters during our lives, too.
If we spent our lives seeking false happiness in false idols, we have practiced rejecting God every moment of our lives.
That daily training of rejecting God our whole lives kicks in when we die and we reject God a final time because we have practiced rejecting God every moment of every day for years.
Many people say "I already know God, I don't reject Him but accept Him" – but they do not put Him first in their lives – they are still more attached to their idols.
Actions are more important than words – reality is more important than personal judgement.
If you yearn for something more actively than you yearn for God, it is a false idol.
We don’t want to meet God for the first time when we die, realizing we have neglected Him our whole lives for emptiness.
We want to know Him already, very well, when we die.
We don’t want to have wasted our entire lives by having rejected God for a false idol.
False idols are what make us completely miserable and make people even want to die.
Because everything is empty and dead without God, when anything is put above God.
The idolatry is what is making us miserable.
Not-having a relationship [or not-having whatever idol] is not what makes us miserable.
(Whatever the idol is, whether it is self-satisfaction, being the best/superior to other people, narcissism – being your own god and depending on your own strength, our jobs, money, success, fame, popularity, being thought of well by others, being "perfect" in a worldly sense – by society's standards, conforming to society/fitting in/following society, revenge, having control and power over other people, a new car, drugs and alcohol, having something specific whatever it is, "having everyone look at and pay attention to me," mother or father's approval/pleasing mother or father, sex, etc. etc. etc., these are all false idols when we seek them instead of seeking God.)
Many people think they would rather die than not be in a relationship.
Idolatry about relationships, or idolatry about a particular relationship, is what makes us miserable.
Thinking only that relationship will make us happy. [Or only whatever idol.]
Many people know little or nothing about God and so don’t think about Him or seek Him.
Many people are unhappy because everything in their life is more important than God.
Even people who think they are Christians but really, everything in their lives are idols.
In reality, only God will make someone happy. That is why the relationship is a false idol – it is being treated like it is God (thinking it will bring deep fulfillment like only God will).
If you think about your relationship or a person more than you think about God, it is a false idol.
That means it is making you miserable, because you feel like dying or like life isn’t worth living without the relationship, like you “need” this relationship.
Any great "need" like that is going to be misery, and lead to misery.
Idolatry is a spiritual condition – a spiritual disease, a sickness.
God cures this spiritual disease with His Love for us, when we seek to love Him back.
God is known as the Doctor of not only our minds and bodies, but also our souls.
He is kind and merciful – we have only to ask Him to heal us of our spiritual disorders, and then follow His instructions.
He wants to cure us and heal us, even more than we want to be cured and healed.
He will help us in our struggles to love Him and conquer idolatry (that is, give it up) and become happy.
God will heal us.
Only God can help us and only God can heal us.
Idolatry is why you are unhappy.
Not necessarily what you think is making you unhappy, if you think you are unhappy because you are not in a relationship.
Not because of the relationship, but because of idolatry – making the relationship into God, instead of worshipping God as God.
For example, the woman who is desperate to get married, and maybe her family urges her to get married, too, and she gets involved with all kinds of bad relationships that are complicated.
She becomes very stressed and miserable, always worrying who likes her and feeling her heart torn in many different directions.
And she goes through one relationship, it ends, and she feels a gapping hole in her.
So she replaces that relationship with another relationship, and she is distracted for a while, but she is dissatisfied still, again and again.
And that relationship ends, too. And she just keeps replacing people because she thinks she has to be in a relationship.
Or she clings to the idea of a particular relationship that has ended, even though the relationship is over.
She's made a false idol out of being in a relationship.
She thinks she needs a relationship because she has made a false idol out of it, so she’s willing to go through all this grief, looking for a relationship that will fill her up.
But NONE of them will fill her up, even if it is superficially happy or distracted for a little while.
Because the real hole in her heart is for God.
"But I love God very much!" she says.
God is infinite. People taste a little of His love and it's dazzling, so they think they've had it all. But they've only had a drop.
So long as they keep worshipping people and relationships, they will keep dying of thirst for God.
God is the only satisfaction of your soul, NOT your boyfriend or your husband or your ex, and people will never complete you or fulfill you.
(Most often, the opposite will happen – people chisel away at you until there is nothing left.)
God is also driven out of a soul through mortal sin.
Mortal sin leaves a hole in the heart that only God can fill.
People think the hole in their hearts is because they do not have something – whatever it is they have made a false idol out of.
A woman has a hole in her heart because she isn’t in a relationship, she thinks.
So she gets in a relationship.
It doesn’t fill the hole in her heart because the hole is really from God not being there anymore.
She’s still dissatisfied on a deeper level, even if she distracts herself superficially with a relationship or the idea that everything is okay because she’s in a relationship.
The emptiness eventually leads her to dump him. Because she made the relationship a false idol, she blames all her emptiness on the relationship, even though the emptiness is because God is gone.
Or he dumps her because the relationship is spiritually dead, because the people involved in it are spiritually dead, meaning God isn’t in their souls (even though neither of them consciously understand that is the reason the relationship doesn't work – they don't understand this because they reject God and focus on idols).
And she still worships the idol of a relationship, so she is extremely anxious about not being in a relationship.
All her friends and sisters will make fun of her for being single, think of her as a “loser.”
She was bad and used to make fun of people behind their backs for being single, or secretly look down on them or secretly gloat over them, thinking she was superior to them because of this relationship.
So she is afraid, because of her sins she has committed against other people.
She has a false idol of what they think, so it makes her anxious, and she has never repented of her sins or changed her ways. Nor has she ever sought God.
She is not seeking God.
The anxiety makes her unhappy, the anxiety of her idolatry makes her unhappy, but because she has this idol, she thinks it is the anxiety of not being in a relationship, about others’ opinions.
So she seeks another relationship, or seeks after her ex who is gone.
She is even willing to sell her soul, so to speak, by committing sin to get her ex back.
She practices the occult and is willing to fornicate, but these will only make her spiritually dead inside by driving God away. They will make everything in her life a dissatisfaction because God is gone.
She prays to God for these idols, to have these idols of her relationships back.
She is trying to make Infinite God serve her idols.
When He – God – asks her to love Him, she doesn’t hear His call because she has mortal sins on her soul. These sins have blocked her from hearing God. She cannot hear Him.
She mistakes God's call to love Him for needing to serve her idols more and more, even though they make her miserable.
What she is really missing in her life is God.
She thinks about relationships and people more than about God.
She cares about her public image more than she cares about God.
Every relationship will ultimately crumble because of the spiritual death (God not being there) in and around her.
And each new relationship will leave her emptier and emptier – until she seeks God.
Even the good opinion of others will not fulfill her.
She will be miserable and empty until she seeks God.
God alone can make us happy.
God is Infinite Beauty, Beauty itself. Not superficial beauty. God is the beauty of the soul, most pleasing to the soul.
God is Light itself, not superficial, material light, not the light of the world, but the Light of the soul.
God is Joy Itself, not superficial distractions or an adrenaline rush or the tittilation of sin. But God is the ONLY joy of the soul.
God is Peace itself. Not the false, superficial material “peace” of getting high or a biological chemical effect in the brain after intercourse.
God is the profound peace of the soul, and the ONLY peace of the soul. True peace, “a peace the world cannot give.”
God is the answer, the ONLY ANSWER, to everything that the human soul wants.
This is because God made us.
He created us.
He created us out of His Love, in order to love Him back.
Some people think they "need" a specific person for financial reasons or comfort or strength during trials.
We are never dependent upon one person. We must be dependent totally upon God, not a creature or creatures as God.
God will send us people who can help us in certain areas (like getting a job) for financial help – there is no one single person to help us.
We must pray and seek God and seek to reject our sins so God can be with us and bless us.
And other people will never satisfy us or give us strength and courage the way God will.
Often our fantasy of someone encouraging or comforting us is very different from the way things turn out in reality.
People don't really comfort us in real life like we fantasize they will.
They don't really make us feel good, like we ache for them to, like we long for them to.
What we are fantasizing about is God comforting us, but because we make a false idol out of a relationship, out of people, we replace God with the false idol when we fantasize.
And often our fantasies don't include how we will be self-sacrificing for someone else, although we will expect the other person to be for us.
People can help one another out in areas of finances and comfort, and it only has a limited good.
Other people can't free us from our idolatry for money and they can't put graces of courage and strength in our soul, transforming us, the way God can.
Most people don't want to, or if they do, are too impatient and have too much sin on their own souls, and so end up taking grace — even grace God gave us — away from us.
If people start depending solely on one another for these things, they will be disappointed, they will not be growing spiritually as people in God, and they will end up using one another for what that person can give them.
God wants us to depend on Him for all our needs.
He wants to free us and give us strength in trials, and give us a peace the world (including other people) cannot give us.
God wants to be our God, He doesn't want us to worship creatures.
The human soul only feels fulfilled when it completes what it was created for – loving God in return for the love He has for us.
What God wants to do in a soul that gives itself to Him is so great that no one can even imagine it: “But, as it is written: no eye has seen, no ear has heard, nor has it entered into the heart of humans, what things God has prepared for them that love Him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9
She was not created to serve a false idol.
She was created to love God, more and more and more every day.
If she doesn’t seek God more actively before she dies, she will possibly be in permanent serious spiritual trouble.
This is the famous story, "The Cry of a Lost Soul" – we can see what misery we avoid and how to avoid it, through this affirming account:
This unusual narrative recounts the revelations of a lost soul to a former acquaintance. From [ olrl ]
An imprimatur indicates that the subject matter is free from error in faith and morals.
Clara and Annette, both single Catholics in their early twenties, worked adjacent to each other as employees of a commercial firm in Germany. Although they were never very close friends, they shared a courteous mutual regard which led to an exchange of ideas and, eventually, of confidences. Clara professed herself openly religious, and felt it her duty to instruct and admonish Annette when the latter appeared excessively casual or superficial in religious matters.
In due course, Annette married and left the firm. The year was 1937. Clara spent the autumn of that year on holiday at Lake Garda. About the middle of September she received a letter from her mother. "Annette . . . is dead. She was the victim of an auto accident and was buried yesterday at Wald-Friedhof."
Clara was frightened because she knew her friend was not very religious. Was she prepared to appear before God? Dying suddenly, what had happened to her?
The next day she attended Mass, received Holy Communion, and prayed fervently for her friend. The following night, at ten minutes after midnight, the vision took place. . .
"Clara, do not pray for me! I am in Hell. If I tell you this and speak at length about it, do not think it is because of our friendship. We here do not love anyone. I do this as under constraint. In truth, I should like to see you to come to this state where I must remain forever."
"Perhaps that angers you, but here we all think that way. Our wills are hardened in evil - in what you call evil. Even when we do something 'good', as I do now, opening your eyes about hell, it is not because of a good intention."
"Do you still remember our first meeting four years ago at. . .? You were then 23 and had been there already half a year. Because I was a beginner, you gave me some helpful advice. Then I praised your love of your neighbor. Ridiculous! Your help was mere coquetry. Here we do not acknowledge any good - in anybody."
"Do you remember what I told you about my youth? Now I am painfully compelled to fill in some of the gaps."
"According to the plan of my parents, I should not have existed. A misfortune brought about my conception. My two sisters were 14 and 15 when I was born."
"Would that I had never existed! Would that I could now annihilate myself! Escape these tortures! No pleasure would equal that with which I would abandon my existence, as a garment of ashes which is lost in nothingness. But I must continue to exist as I chose to make myself - as a ruined person."
"When father and mother, still young, left the country for the city, they had lost touch with the Church and were keeping company with irreligious people. They had met at a dance, and after a year and a half of companionship they 'had' to get married."
"As a result of the nuptial ceremony, so much holy water remained on them that my mother attended Sunday Mass a couple of times a year. But she never taught me to pray. Instead, she was completely taken up with the daily cares of life, although our situation was not bad."
"I refer to prayer, Mass, religious instruction, holy water, church with a very strong repugnance. I hate all that, as I hate those who go to church, and in general hate every human being and everything."
"From a great many things do we receive torture. Every knowledge received at the hour of death, every remembrance of things lived or known is for us, a piercing flame. In each remembrance, good and bad, we see the way in which was present - the grace we despised or ignored. What a torture is this! We do not eat, we do not sleep, we do not walk. Chained, with howling and gnashing of teeth, we look appalled at our ruined life, hating and suffering. Do you hear? We here drink hatred like water. Above all we hate God. With reluctance do I force myself to make you understand."
"The blessed in heaven must love God because they see Him without veil, in all His dazzling beauty. That makes their bliss indescribable. We know this and the knowledge makes us furious. Men on earth, who know God from nature and from revelation, can love Him, but they are not compelled to do so. The believer - I say this with gnashing of teeth - who contemplates Christ on the cross, with arms extended, will end by loving Him."
"But he whom God approaches only in the final storm, as punisher, as just avenger, because he was rejected by Him, such a person cannot but hate Him with all the strength of his wicked will. We died with willful resolve to be separated from God. Do you now understand why hell lasts forever! It is because our wills were fixed for eternity at the moment of death. We had made our final choice. Our obstinacy will never leave us. Under compulsion, I must add that God is merciful even towards us. I affirm many things against my will and must choke the torrent of abuses I should like to vomit out."
"God was merciful to us by not allowing our wicked wills to exhaust themselves on earth, as we should have been prepared to do. This would have increased our faults and our pains. He caused us to die before our time, as in my case, or had other mitigating circumstances intervene. Now He shows Himself merciful towards us by not compelling a closer approach than that afforded in this remote inferno. Every step bringing us closer to God would cause us a greater pain than that which a step closer to a burning furnace would cause you."
"You were scared when once, during a walk, I told you that my father, a few days before my first Communion, had told me: 'My little Annette, the main thing is your beautiful white dress, all the rest is just make-believe.' Because of your concern, I was almost ashamed. Now I sneer at it."
"The important thing is that we were not allowed to receive Communion until the age of 12. By then I was already absorbed in worldly amusements and found it easy to set aside, without scruple, the things of religion. Thus, I attached no great importance to my first Communion. We are furious that many children go to Communion at the age of seven. We do all we can to make people believe that children have insufficient knowledge at that age. They must first commit some mortal sins. Then the white Particle will not do so much damage to our cause as when faith, hope, and charity - oh, these things! - received in Baptism, are still alive in their hearts."
"Marta K - and you induced me to enter "The Association of the Young Ladies." The games were amusing. As you know, I immediately took a directive part. I liked it. I also like the picnics. I even let myself be induced to go to confession and communion sometimes."
"Once you warned me, 'Anne, if you do not pray, you go to perdition.' I used to pray very little indeed, and even this unwillingly. You were then only too right. All those who burn in hell did not pray or did not pray enough."
"Prayer is the first step towards God. And it is the decisive step. Especially prayer to her who is the Mother of Christ, whose name we never pronounce. Devotion to her rescues from the devil numberless souls whom sin would infallibly give to him."
"I continue my story, consumed with rage and only because I have to. To pray is the easiest thing man can do on earth. And God has tied up the salvation of each one exactly to this very easy thing."
"To him who prays with perseverance little by little God gives so much light, so much strength, that even the most debased sinner will at the end come back to salvation. During the last years of my life I did not pray any more, so I lacked those graces without which nobody can be saved.
Here we no longer receive graces. Moreover, should we receive them we would cynically refuse them. All the fluctuations of earthly existence have ceased in the other life. For years I was living far away from God. For, in the last call of grace I decided against God."
"I never believed in the influence of the devil. And now I affirm that he has strong influence on the persons who are in the condition in which I was then. Only many prayers, others and mine own, united with sacrifices and penances, could have snatched me from his grip. And even this only little by little. If there are only few externally obsessed, there are very many internally possessed. The devil cannot steal the free will from those who give themselves to his influence. But in punishment of their, so to speak, methodical apostasy from God, He allows the devil to nest in them."
"I hate the devil too. And yet I am pleased about him, because he tries to ruin all of you; he and his satellites, the fallen with him at the beginning of time. There are millions of them. They roam around the earth, as thick as a swarm of flies, and you do not even notice it. It is not reserved to us damned to tempt you; but to the fallen spirits. In truth every time they drag down here to hell a human soul their own torture is increased. But what does one not do for hatred?"
"Deep down I was rebelling against God. You did not understand it; you thought me still a Catholic. I wanted, in fact, to be called one; I even used to pay my ecclesiastical dues. Maybe your answers were right sometimes. On me they made no impression, since you must not be right. Because of these counterfeited relationships between the two of us, our separation on the occasion of my marriage was of no consequence to me. Before the wedding I went to confession and communion once more. It was a precept. My husband and I thought alike on this point. Why not comply with this formality? So we complied with this, as with the other formalities."
"Our married life, in general, was spent in great harmony. We were of the same idea in everything. In this too, that we did not want the burden of children. In truth, my husband would have like to have one; no more, of course. In the end I succeeded in dissuading him even from this desire. Dresses, luxurious furniture, places of entertainment, picnics and trips by car and similar things were more important for me... It was a year of pleasure on earth, the one that passed from my marriage to my sudden death. Internally, of course, I was never happy, although externally at ease. There was always something indeterminate inside that gnawed at me."
"Unexpectedly I had an inheritance from my Aunt, Lotte. My husband succeeded in increasing his wages to a considerable figure. And so I was able to furnish our new home in an attractive way. Religion did not show its light but from afar off, pale, feeble and uncertain."
"I used to give free vent to my ill humor about some mediaeval representations of hell in cemeteries or elsewhere, in which the devil is roasting souls in red burning coals, while his companions with long tails drag new victims to him. Clara! One can be mistaken in depicting hell, but never can one exaggerate."
"I tell you: the fire of which the Bible speaks, does not mean the torment of the conscience. Fire is fire! What He said: 'Away from Me, you accursed one, into eternal fire', is to be understood literally. Literally! How can the spirit be touched by material fire, you will ask. How can your soul suffer on earth when you put your finger on the flame? In fact the soul does not burn; and yet what torture all the individual feels!"
"Our greatest torture consists in the certain knowledge that we shall never see God. How can this torture us so much, while on earth we are so indifferent? As long as the knife lies on the table, it leaves you cold. You see how keen it is, but you do not feel it. Plunge the knife into the flesh and you will start screaming for pain. Now we feel the loss of God. The lost Catholics suffer more than those of other religions, because they, mostly, received and despised more graces and more light. He who knew more suffers more cruelly than he who knew less. He who sinned out of malice suffers more keenly than he who sinned out of weakness. But nobody suffers more than he deserves. Oh, if that were not true, I should have a motive to hate!"
"My death happened this way . . ."
"A week ago – I am speaking according to your reckoning, because according to pain, I could very well say that it is already ten years that I am burning in hell - a week ago, then, my husband and I, on a Sunday went on a picnic, the last one for me. The day was glorious. I felt very well. A sinister sense of pleasure that was with me all the day long, invaded me. When lo, suddenly, during the return, my husband was dazzled by a car that was coming full speed. He lost control."
"'Jesus', used frequently by some people of German language – escaped from my lips with a shivering. Not as a prayer, but as a shout. A lacerating pain took hold of the whole of me. (In comparison with the present only a trifle). Then I lost consciousness. Strange! That morning this thought had come to me in an inexplicable way: 'You could go to Mass once more', It seemed like the last call of Love."
"Clear and resolute, my 'NO' cut off that train of thought. You will know already what happened after my death. The lot of my husband and that of my mother, what happened to my corpse and the proceedings of my funeral are known to me through some natural knowledge we have here. What happens on earth we know only obscurely. But we know what touches us closely. I see also where you are living."
"I myself awoke from the darkness suddenly, in the instant of my passing. I saw myself as flooded by a dazzling light. It was in the same place where my dead body was lying. It was like a theater, when suddenly the lights in the hall are put out, the curtains are rent aside and an unexpected scene, horrible illuminated, appears. The scene of my life."
"My soul showed herself to me as in a mirror; all the graces despised from my youth until my last NO to God. I felt myself like an assassin, to whom his dead victim is shown during his trial at court - Should I repent? Never! - Should I feel ashamed? Never!"
"However, I could not even stand before the eyes of God, rejected by me. There was only one thing for me: flight! As Cain fled from the dead body of Abel, so my soul rushed from the sight of horror."
"This was the particular judgment: the invisible Judge said: 'Away from Me'. Then my soul, as a yellow brimstone shadow, fell headlong into the place of eternal torture."
–––
It is important to point out the word "eternal" – not a thousand years, not a million years, not ten trillion years, but on-going, forever, even beyond time, after time ceases.
Versus the bliss of on-going joy of knowing God for all eternity, if only we seek Him during our lives with our whole hearts, praying to Him to give us love for Him.
Some people may say, "it is so negative to talk about Hell and false idols and sin and all of this!"
So negative?
Let's say there is a man and every day, he goes to a well to get water for himself to drink.
But the well is poisoned, and he doesn't know it, and he develops a terminal illness – he becomes sick, and will die.
Even if he found out the well was poisonous and stopped drinking from it, he would still die from the disease he contracted from the well.
Let's say that you know that the well is poisonous, and you also have a cure for the disease that he is going to die from.
Is it "negative" of you to point out that the well is poisonous and that if he keeps drinking from it, he will die?
Is it "negative" of you to give him the cure to his terminal disease?
No.
In fact, if you smiled at him and said, "keep drinking from your well! You'll be okay! Everything is fine!" you would be sick in the head, either insane or a sociopath.
It would be "negative" to not attempt to prevent him from dying by convincing him not to drink the poisoned water, and it would be "negative" to not give him the cure to his terminal disease.
So, too, it is not negative to point out the origin of misery, and give the cure – the origin of misery being sin and idolatry, and the cure from not physically dying, but spiritually dying, that is, entering into perpetual Hell – the cure of which is true love of God, truly seeking God.
That's what Jesus – Who is God – was born on earth to do: point out the "poison" to us, which is sin (including idolatry), so we no longer "drink" of it, and give us the "cure" – His Passion and Death, to atone for our sins, and then to give us pure and refreshing "water" for the rest of our lives – the water of eternal Life, that is, Himself.
(Revelation, 21:6-8): “And [God] said to me: It is done. I am Alpha and Omega; the beginning and the end. To her that thirsteth, I will give of the fountain of the water of life, freely. She that shall overcome shall possess these things, and I will be her God; and she shall be my daughter. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, they shall have their portion in the pool burning with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
“The fearful,” from the above quote from the Book of Revelation, means people afraid to admit they have a false idol or too afraid to give up a false idol.
Sometimes “the fearful” is translated as “cowards.”
We want to be brave, and face our mistakes so we can correct them and make our lives pleasing to God and good for us to live in.
We can pray to God to ask for the grace of bravery, for Him to make us brave.
If we don’t, we will get more and more miserable, and our lives will get worse and worse.
“The fearful” are people who realize they have done something bad with their lives, but instead of turning to God for help, they become self-conscious and turn away from God.
But God came to save sinners – people who have done something bad.
He pities us when we do something very bad because He knows how unhappy it makes us.
He knows it makes us unhappy to not have Him in our hearts.
More than we could want to save ourselves, God wants to save us – God wants to cleanse us and give us strength to not sin anymore, so He can be welcomed back into the heart of every person, no matter how bad that person was before turning to Him for help.
That is why we should ask God for help and not be so fearful that we end up hating Him.
Hating God will make us more miserable. He knows that, and He doesn’t want us to be miserable.
Fear takes away. Fear takes away from us until we are empty shells, and slaves to idols and sin.
Then we become miserable.
God gives. God gives to us. We increase when we are connected to God, when He dwells in us.
Then we become truly joyful.
The human soul can only be truly happy when it is pleasing God. And then we are incredibly happy, not just superficially, but in a deep, powerful way.
Mortal sin is a sin that permanently severs a soul from God until the sin is removed in sacramental baptism (if someone has never been baptized; you can only be baptized once) or sacramental confession.
God is Thrice Holy – He cannot exist in a soul that has very bad sins in it.
So He is driven out when we sin very badly.
Our society says these things aren’t sins, but that is a lie. That is why certain sins make people very unhappy, even though society says they will make us happy.
Those sins will distract us for a time, but they will leave us empty, because they drive God away from us.
A mortal sin is different from lesser sins.
It is called "mortal" because it kills the soul, meaning the person is spiritually dead.
Spiritual death does not mean our souls stop existing when we die.
God made us immortal. We will live forever as ourselves.
Spiritual death means God is not in our souls, whether our bodies are alive or not.
This is called "death" because God is Life – Life of the soul.
On earth, a spiritually dead person has many false idols to distract him or herself with.
He or she may even say, "I don't believe in this so it is isn't going to effect me."
But even those who are cowards and so lie to themselves and say "it isn't real so it won't effect me," suffer from the effects of their mortal sins.
The cities with the highest suicide rate in the country are Miami and San Francisco.
They are "atheist" cities where anything goes.
The people aren't killing themselves because someone is "guilt tripping" them – no one would dare say, "you shouldn't do such-and-such" in one of those cities.
They themselves don't feel guilty for their sins.
Despite anyone's personal feelings or "personal belief," it is an objective reality that, when sin drives God out of a soul, and a person stops seeking a relationship with God, she is empty inside.
Even if she is so arrogant that she doesn't acknowledge or ever think of God at all, or even if she despises Him, or "denies" that sin exists.
These "atheists" spiritually die inside and are more and more miserable deep down, like all humans who commit mortal sin.
There was a counsellor on a college, who used to tell students who came to him: "do whatever makes you happy, whatever you want! Don't worry about 'right' or 'wrong'!"
He had so many of his students commit suicide that he eventually came to the conclusion that sin really exists, and converted, and now he spends his life trying to explain this truth to people on behalf of all the students he indirectly killed with his lies and misinformation.
Other people find themselves false teachers who say, "once saved, always saved – you can to anything and you will not spiritually die because Jesus died for our sins so we could do anything."
But Jesus said: "Not everyone that says to Me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the Kingdom of Heaven: but she who does the Will of My Father who is in Heaven, she shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." (Matthew 7:21)
These people may lie to themselves and take photos that they show to everyone where they are look happy, to lie to others, too, but that doesn't change how agonizingly dead inside they are without the God Who loves them and created them.
All people were created by God out of His Love.
When we physically die, all idols are gone, and so we can no longer distract ourselves from the spiritual state of our soul.
A person in mortal sin will only have remaining that he or she doesn't have God anymore at death – pictures of pretend happiness on social media won't be there, and don't fool God, anyway.
God sees into their souls no matter what they do or where they are or who they deceive – even if they deceive themselves. God sees passed all deception.
When a person in mortal sin dies and does to judgement before God, there is a burning in the soul, an intense agony, because that soul forever sees God completely revealed in all His splendor and beauty and mercy and love, the fulfillment of all human longing, but cannot ever join Him because of the sin (including her idolatry) on her soul.
And the soul sees that it is because of its own actions that this agony has happened – because it rejected God and sought false idols instead during life.
A soul is capable of feeling more pain than a physical body. A body will eventually die if there is too much pain – the soul never dies, so it can feel much greater pains.
As beautiful as God is, and as fulfilling and wonderful as God is, is as terrible the pain a soul feels upon not being able to enter into God.
This unending pain is spiritual death – the torture of Hell.
Most people in Hell didn't believe there was a Hell, or didn't think they would go to it.
Mortal sins include: not praying every day, not seeking God (idolatry), fornication (pre-martial sex – that is, a marriage recognized by the Church – or a legally married relationship that idolatrously worships sex, putting sex above God's law, including focusing excessively or obsessing on sex, building the relationship on sex, and/or doing certain sex acts that God condemns), pornography and willfully meditating on pornographic thoughts rather than using prayer to banish and oppose them (meditating on God can save your soul, so meditating on pornographic thoughts can destroy your soul), masturbation, getting drunk/high, (of all these things, it may be said: "you knew how to make a martyr of your heart to give pleasure to your flesh. Now make a martyr of your flesh to give eternal peace to your heart.") We are warned "sins of the flesh," more than any other reason, are why people go to Hell.
blasphemy (defiling God and His Holy things and His people and Saints), murder and gossip/rumor spreading/excessive abuse/intense rage (which all have the purpose and/or result of destroying another person), harboring hatred in your heart for another person (no matter what s/he's done) or towards yourself (self-love isn't the opposite of self-hatred because both focus on the self – forgetting the self and loving of God is the opposite of both and the cure of both), meditating on destroying another person or meditating on doing violence to another person, actually doing violence to another person, compulsive lying or manipulating, (of all these things, it may be said: "God gave us sight and speech to accomplish holy deeds. A slanderer misuses them and degrades them, employing them for evil deeds.")
abortion, contraception (instead of natural family planning), tampering with the occult – whether sincerely or even as a joke – which is the easiest way to become demonically possessed and the easiest way to curse yourself (casting spells, including love spells, going to a palm reader or witch doctor or psychic, playing with ouiji board, tarot cards, fortune telling, yoga, New Age, transcendental meditation, wicca, Santaria, spiritism, spirit guides, speaking with spirits like supposed TV “ghost hunters” or “clairvoyants” commonly do, anything to do with any kind of energy transfer, summoning spirits, doing anything with chakras, Labyrinths or other occult prayer walks, etc.); bribes (accepting or offering bribes);
if you have had your First Communion (Catholic): to not go to confession at least once a year, to not go to Mass every weekend, to receive Communion in a state of mortal sin (if you are in mortal sin, or if you haven't had your First Communion, you can go to Mass, simply don't come up for Communion – pray instead until you have gone to Confession or gone through RCIA – Roman Catholic Initiation for Adults), the "charismatic movement" which claims equality with God (Philippians 2:6: "Jesus who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness" – if Jesus, Who is God, humbled Himself as an example to us, how much more ought we be humble?),
for everyone: it is a mortal sin to despair of God's Infinite Mercy (despair is saying, "my sins are too great for God to forgive"), or take for granted God's Infinite Mercy.
Those are all a few common mortal sins, unfortunately.
Run to His Divine Mercy with all sincerity (not just to take advantage of Him or His Mercy or ignoring His Judgements).
On Divine Mercy: There is no sin that is too great for God to forgive:
Part of the Divine Mercy devotion is also the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, a prayer of which Jesus promised: "Say unceasingly the chaplet that I have taught you. Whoever will recite it will receive great mercy at the hour of death. Priests will recommend it to sinners as their last hope of salvation. Even if there were a sinner most hardened, if he were to recite this chaplet only once, he would receive grace from My infinite mercy. I desire that the whole world know My infinite mercy. I desire to grant unimaginable graces to those souls who trust in My mercy."
Some clarifications on sins: (Sometimes people say they are practicing "Christian astrology" or "Christian yoga" or whatever occult practice and tact on the word "Christian" before it. They are refusing to humble themselves. Astrology is condemned in the Old Testament as occult, as it is now condemned as occult. It was rampant in the Middle Ages when witchcraft was actually a social concern, although we are becoming more and more like that with even mainstream newspapers publishing "curses" to put on politicians. // And several Hindu leaders have warned foolish Westerners that they really are invoking gods [demons, as all false gods are] through yoga, which is one of the reasons people become obsessed with yoga so quickly. Obsession – of anything – is a spiritual step below demonic possession. Yoga has been warned against for centuries, even by secular psychologists. It is only now that people are so far from God and so idolatrous that it is part of the culture. There is no way to "invoke" God through yoga, and so there is no way there is such a thing as Christian yoga – that is a lie.)
(If someone is texting or looking at their phone while driving and commits property damage [destroying a car, for example], or injures a person, or kills a person, he or she has those sins. Someone who kills someone else from texting and driving has the sin of murder on her soul. Or destroying another's car, they have destruction of property – stealing that person's money, because it will cost money to repair the car. These sins don't go off the soul until the person stops texting while driving and goes to confession for committing murder, injury, or stealing. So, then – what is the sin of texting while driving, in and of itself? Idolatry, most likely, because it is putting social relationships above God – God gave you the duty to focus on driving safely and legally so that you don't kill or hurt others or yourself.
Likewise, if you are on the phone or online at work, or asleep at work, when it isn't a break, you are stealing company money because you are not doing what you're supposed to be doing. This is also a sin.
Finally, the rate of pedestrian deaths has increased to about 6,000 a year, from basically none a year several years ago, as a result of being so absorbed in social media or texting on the phone, which is, again, idolatry, and – negligent suicide? Reckless behavior resulting in death, which God also condemns.)
(Sometimes people can dress – or be un-dressed – in very provocative ways, and this can destroy that person's soul, as well, by driving God away. You know what I mean. You can be fashionable, you can look nice, but you can't try to be or look like a sex idol or porn star without driving God away from your life.)
(Cosmetic plastic surgery, such as implants, for example, breast or other body part implants, are also a mortal sin, as also seen from the high rate of suicide and depression after women get these. 15% of women who get breast implants successfully kill themselves after getting them. For every successful attempt, it is estimated that 8 more unsuccessfully attempted, and 20 more than that contemplate suicide, meaning women who get implants universally consider or commit suicide. The reason for this is idolatry – expecting something other than God to make her happy, this being, the way she looks – and the desecrations of the Temple of the Holy Spirit, which is, the human body. The flesh is being cut open, and a solid object inserted under the flesh, and then the skin sewn closed around the solid object. This must be, spiritually speaking, a desecration of the body, considering the spiritual problems that result from this procedure. It is also idolatry of trying to be perfect by worldly standards, to the point of committing the sin of having one's own body cut open and desecrated.)
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Many people think that they are cursed who have committed mortal sin because nothing in their lives works right anymore.
But the answer is that God is not in their lives anymore – He was driven out by their sins.
Jesus said, "blessed are the poor in spirit." The "poor in spirit" are those who depend on God above everything else.
Not depending on having a relationship, money, health, or some worldly success.
That means the opposite of that statement is also true: "cursed are the rich in spirit," that is, those whose spirits are cluttered with a false idol(s) and/or other sins, so that there is no longer room for God.
In the New Testament of the Bible, Saint John teaches us that there is a difference between venial and mortal sin: “All iniquity is sin. And there is a sin unto death.” (1 John 5:17)
We must avoid both lesser sins (because they prepare the soul to accept greater sins), as well as previously mentioned mortal sins (focuse on overcoming mortal sin first, before the lesser ones which aren't listed here, especially if a great number of mortal sins are in your life).
Every sin we commit is on our soul until God removes it.
If we sinned 20 years ago, the sin is still on the soul.
When a person is baptized "in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Ghost)," the newly baptized person's soul is forever changed.
A "baptismal robe" is on the soul forever.
Even if that person never knows anything about Christianity,
even if that person hates God,
even if that person goes to Hell for all eternity,
the baptismal mark is still on the soul.
When we sin, our baptismal robe is stained.
When we commit mortal sin, our souls are severed from God, and if we were to die in a state of mortal sin, we would go to Hell, because we are separated from God through sin.
A person cannot be baptized twice.
The baptism is permanent, forever, because it permanently and forever changed the baptized's soul (if done in the correct formula, that is, "in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Ghost)," those exact words and not any other, ie, "gender neutral" forms of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are an invalid baptism).
So how to clean the "baptismal robe," as our baptism is called, should we stain it with sin?
That is what Sacrament Confession (confession with a priest in the prescribed formula) is.
You aren't telling your sins to the priest, you are telling them to God, and the priest is acting as a mediator.
The priest doesn't forgive your sins, God does – the priest blesses you.
In anti-Catholic propaganda, a priest will say, "I forgive you your sins."
But in real confession, the priest just blesses you – only God can forgive our sins.
Jesus – God the Son, who intercedes for our sins – is truly present in the confessional. Even if the priest is not a great priest, Jesus is the best priest, and He is truly there.
We have to believe wholeheartedly that our sins, if truly confessed in the confessional, are gone, or else we blaspheme the Sacrament of Confession.
Reconciling our souls with God begins at home.
We can start repenting of our mortal sins now, and seeking to turn away from them, and God will begin to help us.
Going to Confession undoes the sin in our lives, as if it never was on our souls.
God forgets the sin we committed.
He hears our prayers again.
He helps in a very mighty way to correct the damage done by our sins (although we should strive to do this with God's help, as well).
We are united to God again, and His comfort envelopes our souls.
Our baptismal robe is washed in the Blood of the Passion through the Sacrament of Confession, and a worthy Confession is more spiritually profound than an exorcism, because a soul that was dead is brought to life again.
Confession also fortifies our souls greatly, so we will be less tempted to commit the sin in the future.
It reunites our souls with God:
Apocalypse (Revelation) 22:14: "Blessed are they that wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb: that they may have a right to the tree of life, and may enter in by the gates into the city [Heaven]. Without [outside of Heaven] are dogs [used to describe people rich in spirit], and sorcerers, and unchaste, and murderers, and servers of idols, and every one that loves and makes a lie."
Salvation begins on earth, and so does punishment for sin as well as reward (comfort) of knowing God and turning from sin:
Apocalypse (Revelation) 7:13: "And one of the ancients answered, and said to me: These that are clothed in white robes, who are they? and whence came they? And I said to him: My Lord, you know. And he said to me: These are they who are come out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.* Therefore they are before the throne of God, and they serve Him day and night in His temple: and He, that sits on the throne, shall dwell over them.
"They shall no more hunger nor thirst, neither shall the sun fall on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb, which is in the midst of the throne, shall rule them, and shall lead them to the fountains of the waters of life, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."
*Spiritually, mystically washing their baptismal robes in the Blood of the Lamb, Christ, in the Sacrament of Confession.
While we won't fully experience the joys of never crying again until Heaven, God will begin to wipe away our tears on Earth, now, that we shed over our own sins and the problems they have caused, that we shed over the sins committed against us, and that we shed over the sins in the world that we see others commit against others.
If we have sin on our soul, it drives out God, and God Himself is Love Itself.
Loving God first will help us love one another better, because we are no longer loving each other for ourselves, but for God, and in the context of God, and with God's help.
This is why the more people ignore God and focus on themselves and worship creatures, the higher the divorce rate.
People don’t make good gods. It makes people miserable to be set up as a false idol, even if they think it will make them happy to be placed above God.
This is because everyone – every single person – was made by God to love God, as the first objective of his or her life.
If people don't have a right relationship with God — who is our most fundamental relationship — they can't have a right relationship with themselves or one another.
How we love God is reflected in how we love one another: "If any man say, 'I love God,' and hate his brother; he is a liar. For he that loves not his brother, whom he sees, how can he love God, whom he doesn't see? … No man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his charity is perfected in us.” (1 John 4:20,12)
If we ignore God, we are ignoring one another on a deep level. For example, ignoring the spiritual needs of others because we are ignoring the existence of the soul, because we ignore God.
This is how we sin against one another — ignoring God, not putting Him first.
If someone really loved another person with full understanding, she would never fornicate with him because it would destroy his soul and their relationship, and cut them off from God.
Once cut off from God, they are cut off from virtues like loyalty and purity, and sins like adultery and abuse and dehumanizing one another (getting “bored” with one another) come into the relationship.
The relationship decays because sin and spiritual death are there. God – Life – is not there.
The people aren't capable of acting in a loving way anymore, because God Who is Love is no longer in them.
If they act loving, it is empty – an act. It is no longer life-giving because God is Life. And it is an act that often fails and the misery and hate – the absence of God – shows through.
This act is even observed in secular psychology. It is referred to as a "fantasy bond."
But it is really the result of idolatry and sin, and can only be cured through a real, meaningful relationship with God.
In a relationship between two people without God, there is no more appreciation for one another because they don’t appreciate God who does everything for them, because He is no longer in their hearts.
How can they deeply appreciate one another, people who are imperfect, if they don't appreciate God, Who is Perfectly Loving and Adorable? It is not possible.
She would seek God first, so she could understand how human lives and souls work, and seek to benefit both the life and the soul of herself and others, in the context of God, instead of in the context of false gods.
If both people in a relationship did that, then the relationship wouldn't crumble or be bad.
But if even one person seeks God, it can save many souls, and those souls would owe their salvation in part to the one who sought God on earth.
They would thank her and be her friend if they make it to Heaven, be her friend for all eternity because she prepared to meet God when they distracted themselves with deep misery, and so grace came through her to their souls, too.
Many people will not know the joy of a real relationship with God on earth. This is very sad, that they refuse this.
They spend their lives chasing meaningless idols that dissolve at death, and ignore everything that is important.
Don't be miserable like one of those people. They are very sad.
...
Some people think, "I will just ignore these mortal sins, brush them under the rug, pretend I didn't do them,"
but the sins don't go away off the person until she goes to sacramental confession with a real ordained priest.
The sin is still on her soul, preventing God from coming in fully and she is still suffering punishment for it in her life.
She may have been willing to spend the effort to go to a palm reader or fornicate, but not the phone call and few minutes to see a priest to save her soul.
God is so merciful that He even comforts sinners, so she may feel just a drop of His comfort and say, "I am done, God is with me."
But it's not true. This is a temptation. Satan wants us to remain in sin because he is jealous, because he gave up God forever, and he wants everyone to suffer. He wants to remain in control of her life, so it can still be miserable. He may even give her intense anger or fear of confession, and may convince her it is from her and not from himself.
God is still not with her as He needs to be and she will still be empty on a deeper level.
And God won't be able to comfort her and give her special graces and support her completely, until she completely turns towards Him.
She needs to have God wash the sin off her soul.
She has to reject the [temptation to stop developing her relationship with God].
God will help us because He wants us to be united to Him fully. He longs for that day when He will be united to us.
The devil is a coward and will flee when we show determination and strength to do God's Will.
She needs to pray much and seek God much at home, for strength and courage and wisdom to do what is right, to read about God and confession and understand it, and make an examination of her conscious to give a good sacramental confession.
An example is, someone who fornicates, and then realizes it is a mortal sin, and says, "I will get married!"
But she never stops fornicating, or if she does stop, she never confesses the sin of fornication.
That sin is still there on her soul, and God is still not in the relationship.
Only God can save our souls by removing our sins, which He does through the sacraments.
The sin on her soul will cause problems in the relationship down the line – it also most likely will cause it to crumble and fall apart (or be so horrible to be in through the corruption that is caused by sin that the people will wish I had fallen apart).
80% of marriages end in divorce where the couple "lived together" for years before the marriage. And likely the 20% that don't end are so miserable that it is a greater punishment than if they did end.
There is no true happiness outside of God.
Others, finding how easy and convenient sacramental confession is, think, "I will do whatever sin I want, and take advantage of God's mercy by just removing it later!"
God sees her insincerity and her sacramental confessions don't count until she sincerely wants God in her life and sincerely wants to stop being miserable, and sacramentally confesses her insincere confessions.
So false idols lead to intense, intense misery during physical life, and a misery and despair that cannot be fathomed, after physical death.
This is why the most important thing in our life is to seek God, while we are still physically alive, and to spiritually grow in His grace.
Graces in the soul are spiritual gifts in the soul.
Graces come from God, usually diffused into the soul through prayer, or holy reading, or others praying for us.
For example, if you read this and decide to change your life to seek God instead of idols, God has given you many many graces to pull you towards Himself, and you have responded to those graces positively.
This will make you happy in the long run, both in your life on earth and, if you continue seeking God sincerely, in eternity.
God's grace will make us fulfilled now and forever.
She will no longer be alone in her own soul, alone without God.
God will be in her heart, and the hole in her heart will be filled by God, Who alone can fill it.
She must seek God.
How can she seek God more?
What can she do?
The first thing she can do have great confidence in God’s Mercy. She can pray right now: “Lord God, have mercy on me, I have not done right because I have not sought You like I should, and it has made me miserable. I do not feel You in my soul like You want. Help me.”
Pray: “Lord God, I want to do right. I want to be happy. I want You to be happy with me.”
Pray: “Lord God, I want to love You. To love You is a grace in the human soul. All grace comes from You alone. Therefore, fill my soul with love for You – You alone can put love in me. I give my heart to You: put Your Love in it.”
Pray: “Lord God, I will start to love You. Please don’t let me stop asking You to put more and more love for You in my soul.”
When will she have enough love of God in her soul?
She can ask for more love for God her whole life, and God will always increase this grace in the soul.
And then her happiness will increase and increase.
Many people and society will try to convince her to stop or give up "this God thing." They are tempting her.
She may also be tempted to keep going back to focusing on her idols and ignoring God, saying, "I will pray later" or "I've decided only my idol will make me happy" or, "I've experienced enough God, I'm done."
Jesus warns about this very much in the Gospels, so that we will recognize when we are tempted and decide to stay with God.
It's best not to talk about God experiences (depending on who you are talking to) in the beginning because people may try to convince you to hate Him, either through reason or through looking down on you, or even trying to hurt you psychologically or emotionally.
They are miserable because they hate Him and want others to be miserable, too – whether they publicly acknowledge that's why they're trying to destroy God in other people or whether they don't acknowledge it, or don't even realize it consciously.
However, you can't deny God if put on the spot.
"She who denies me before people, I will deny before My Father in Heaven," (Matthew 10:33) Jesus says.
This includes denying God by promoting mortal sin or pretending to still live in mortal sin.
Just don't go open yourself up to people attacking you by publicizing that you are now seeking God.
They will try to steal grace out of your soul, and when you are just starting out in seeking God sincerely, these can be very dangerous attacks.
Seek God and give up sin.
When God strengthens you, you will be able to phase out those people who actively hate Him after you give a testimony of Him.
Ignore temptations within yourself to postpone God or dismiss Him.
Ignore temptations from the world to hate God or give up on seeking Him.
Ignore temptations to return to false idols – remember how miserable you were while seeking the idols, and believe in the promise of God to save your life and your soul, and so seek Him.
Love always says, “more, more!” Love never says, “enough!”
Love God – "God, give me more love for You! More, more! I want to love You more and more – sincerely love You, not in word only but in my whole heart and with my whole life! Joyfully love You!"
A soul filled with love of God will always thirst for Him more and more, no matter what anyone else says, and no matter what temptation the devil (who is very jealous and miserable for having given up God for worthless idols) lays before it.
Keep turning to God and ignore all temptation to put Him off.
Saint Peter writes: “For if, flying from the pollutions of the world, through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they be again entangled in them and overcome: their latter state is become unto them worse than the former.
“For it had been better for them not to have known the way of justice, than after they have known it, to turn back from that holy commandment which was delivered to them.
“For, that of the true proverb has happened to them: The dog is returned to his vomit: and, The sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire.”
People who have dogs know that when the dog throws up, it walks away from it's vomit for a time, then walks back to eat it.
The proverbs is a metaphor for going back to something that is not useful for us.
Peter is telling us that we need to seek God and not look back to our old paths, our old ways of doing things or thinking about things.
We need to give up the way the world sees things, because it will lead to our misery.
Peter goes on to write that the ways of the world are “promising us liberty, whereas they themselves are the slaves of corruption. For by whom a man is overcome, of the same also he is the slave.” (2 Peter 2:19)
This slavery makes us unspeakably miserable inside. Those people are miserable. They gloat over others and act superior, and they are dead inside.
God will help us not go back to the ways of the world.
Romans 8:34: “Jesus… is at the right hand of God, who intercedes (prays and appeals to God) for us.” He is constantly praying for us and offering His Wounds for our sins, that we might turn away from them towards Him.
He alone will judge us: the world does not judge us, nor those who gloat over us, nor those who we are in a relationship with or want to be in a relationship with will judge us.
Only God will either save us or judge us at the end of our lives: we have to do what He asks, or else we will be unhappy.
We have to keep seeking God, and asking Him for wisdom.
This is very good!
But she is still anxious about her relationships because she still has these idol attachments in her soul.
She will keep praying to love God forever, every day, many times a day.
But she is still anxious about all these things.
She has not spiritually grown enough in her relationship with God or dealt with her mortal sin.
What else can she do??
Literally every single entry on this blog is about what you can do to seek God, and about God’s Infinite Mercy in forgiving our sins, and how we can obtain information about Him and learn to love Him more and more, by suggesting reading of works by Saints (which, if we read prayerfully, are the most helpful and wonderful education we will ever receive in our whole lives).
Most of the entries quote the Bible and Saints, who are real people, once physically alive like you and me, and suggest further reading. These saints are very wise and spent their lives loving God and meditating on Him and the Bible. We know the Saints are in Heaven because prayers to them have had God work miracles and led people to growing closer to God and understanding Him better. (They are not the spirits "summoned" by occultists.) Very rigorous and objective tests and trials are done to determine if someone is a Saint in Heaven after he or she has physically died.
Their writings are very helpful because we can see the struggles they went through and how they came closer to God.
Because we know their lives brought them to Heaven, we don't have to worry about their writings leading us to error.
We have to pray to God so He can enlighten us so we can understand their writings.
Otherwise, our sins or idols or spiritual immaturity can blind us, and we can read their works wrong.
We need to pray always.
We can pray the same prayers the Saints prayed to God and overcome the world and our own sins and fears, the way they did.
Then we can become true children of God and be very fulfilled.
If we know more about Him, we can think more about Him, understand Him better, and learn to speak to Him and pray to Him, and learn how to be reconciled with Him.
Then, we can love Him more and more, and become happier and more fulfilled.
How can she find time to read these entries, and – many of these entries lead to books written by saints. How can she find time to read all of these things?? It is so many things!
God said, we must rest on Sunday, His Holy Day. And we must be kind to people on these days, too – we must not say mean things or fight or argue. And – we must pray to Him on these days, too.
He says, when we do these things, we will please Him and He will start to bless us by giving us more graces in our souls.
When we are resting on Sundays, we will have much time to read about Him and learn things about Him and think about Him.
And then we will have new information to think about all during the week.
And so she will do this.
And she will learn many wonderful and powerful prayers that will draw her closer to God and God closer to her.
She will learn the Rosary, too, which is a powerful prayer.
And then God’s grace will really flood her soul and transform her from who she was, into a new creature of God's grace.
And she will be led by God towards Himself and towards all that He loves, and He will be able to shower her with all the graces He wishes to lavish upon her.
She can pray and discern that if God is calling her to a relationship, that she can ask Him for a relationship that will enable her to grow in her love of God, so that she can be ultimately happy.
God is love – when our relationships are in God, they are a greater and purer love, endowed with very much virtue and joy and depth. They are not selfish and impatient, and they are not disappointing the way they would be if they were false idols because we are not depending upon human relationships for our deepest fulfillment – we are already fulfilled and sustained from God.
The human relationships become fruitful ways for us to express our love of God, Who said we ought to love our neighbor like ourselves out of love of God.
We, people, can love each other heroically and deeply and lastingly when we love one another out of love of God.
We can only love one another really when we have the charity of God in us, which we have through prayer and turning away from sin.
Because God is eternal, and God is love, when we love someone with God, our love is eternal – it's not fickle and selfish and impatient and so willing to discard people, like the "love" of the people who aren't seeking God.
Humans can really only love one another out of our love of God, out of God's grace in our hearts. Without it, we can't love each other. And in the love of God, our relationships are so peaceful.
But the focus must still be on God first and foremost.
Then everything in our lives is in relation to our relationship with God. Everything becomes in the context of God. And then things become deeply peaceful and deeply joyful, because we are loving God in return.
And then the human relationships aren't idolatrous and disappointing, aren't above God, so they aren't empty, because human relationships, although strengthened and lifted up, become secondary to our relationship with Love Himself, with Holiness Himself – with God.
And then, she will be happy and not idolatrous and empty, like the other people in the world who constantly seek after empty idols.
It happens that when we have spent our whole lives in worldly relationships, with people who aren't sincerely seeking God and who aren't seeking to love one another out of their love of God, and we have also not been aware of doing that in our lives, either, we may realize that – our whole concept of what a relationship even is, how it is supposed to look, how it is supposed to feel, how we are supposed to act, has been defiled by the corruption of our society which really usually only depicts sin and idolatry.
They're not very good relationships, those in the world. They're usually discouraging, and controlling, and bitter, and selfish, and painful, and accusing, and envying the abilities of one another, and full of trying to prove oneself or build oneself up while demeaning the other, manipulation, impurity, insincerity, ridicule, disregard, gossip, disrespect, joylessness, bragging, showing off, lying, cruelty, sometimes even physical violence, taking advantage of one another sexually, and full of betrayal on both sides.
A real relationship, the way God meant it to be, might be... really foreign, difficult or impossible to imagine.
We may have never seen one before.
We may have no such positive experience with our parents or family members, either.
Don't worry! We have only to rely on God our loving and merciful, generous Father!
She can pray to Him to help us understand what authentic human relationships look like, feels like – what one even is.
She can pray for a relationship that won't cause her great suffering from abuse or cause her to lose her soul.
So often I tell this true information about God's generosity and the people go deaf to everything they had just heard, and forget all the fear for their souls they just had, and get intense about what their idol is, thinking, "ah-ha! I can get this idol now!"
They say to themselves, "I already love God," and they will forget the holy fear they had for their souls reading the above, they willfully listen to the temptation that their souls are "fine," and then begin long prayers for their idol [whether it's a relationship or physical health or worldly success], trying to try to make God to serve their idol instead of seeking Him.
I've seen so many people clamoring so intensely for relationships, worldly success, and all the like, and how it just smashed their lives to pieces.
So many people I grew up with are dead, from drug abuse, suicide, and stress, and I'm not even 30.
Normal middle class and upper middle class kids.
They're all dead or their lives are smashed to pieces from idolatry, blasphemy, occultism, fornicating, and other sins...
I knew an atheist, she didn't believe in her soul or in God or that fornicating was a sin, and she started, and she had nightmares of worms eating her soul, and her mother (who never baptized her and encouraged her sin) was examining her dying with great cruelty.
She got involved with spells and other occult things, because one sin leads to another, (as we see in another post on this blog too, when the woman, though legally married, was still fornicating because she made a false idol out of sex and went to a witchdoctor and became cursed).
This "friend" (because out of envy she was cursing everyone because their backs, although smiling to their faces, so she was betraying everyone and was no friend) had disturbing things happening in her house that she couldn't explain, preternatural phenomenon.
And then she lost everything – her family, all her friends, got stuck in a miserable job, which she then lost, ended up living in a run down slum even when she had the job (who knows where she is now), then lost her sexual partner...
Everything crumbled around her. And she cursed everyone, causing death and insanity in people around her. Working to damn everyone around her.
It didn't matter that she didn't "believe." She didn't believe because she rejected God, she wanted to be God, and redefine good and evil, so that evil was good and good was evil.
And it all fell apart.
I know countless stories like this. I could fill up books... long, long books, just full of all these people I've known, who are dead now, or their souls are dead and they're dying... So many people striving desperately after what will destroy their souls, and what does destroy their souls...
I have to try to not think about them, because otherwise, you develop this survivor's guilt...
Our generation, in public school, taught: idolatry to government (socialism and communism, both condemned by the Catholic Church, both that Mary warned about at Fatima, both that caused millions of deaths – 100 million deaths by communists, communists who call themselves "militant atheists," who school teachers largely sympathized with, and the Nazis, which are the socialists, causing millions of deaths, although school taught against nazis they were certainly pro-socialist from day one, and they tried to feign a distinction between them and other socialists, but there is no distinction, because they both was global domination and atheism or a religion so watered down that it is no "threat" to them; and teaching the French Revolution, the Mother of Communism and Socialism, that was based on lies, and resulted in the rounding up and beheading of thousands of Catholics in Paris in a blood bath, the first act of modern terrorism – they taught this atrocity as... enlightened... "the Enlightenment," they taught in school – praiseworthy, when humanity killed God in favor of being relevant to what "the people" wanted) – and the public schools also institutionally taught blasphemy of Mary.
At Fatima, Mary mentioned 5 points of blasphemy by which God is offended and by which we are to make reparation by means of the daily rosary and the First Saturday devotion.
Those blasphemies are (from Marian.org, Fatima Timeline) First: blasphemies against the Immaculate Conception; Second: against her Virginity; Third: against the Divine Maternity, refusing, at the same time, to receive her as the Mother of mankind; Fourth: those who seek publicly to implant, in the hearts of children, indifference, disrespect, and even hate for this Immaculate Mother; Fifth: those who revile her directly in her sacred images.
Our public school teachers taught us all these blasphemies.
Without any fear of God, they taught us these things as facts, full of ridicule and contempt.
The only "religious" topic they taught was heretical "creationism," which the Church opposes because the Bible doesn't actually say that.
And that is the result – deadly idolatry, deadly hatred of God. Literally. Deadly for soul. Deadly for body. Insanity. Cruelty. Sociopathy. Narcissism. Destroying minds. Destroying lives.
I converted after public school, which I talk brief of in the depression healing post (I'm the one who was saved from suicide by the rain when you get to the "rockbottom" stories), and after converting by so much grace and reading so many holy saints' works, it was so disappointing and confusing to see so many Catholics (worst of all, priests and deacons) falling into this, believing and wanting to believe and teaching – worst of all teaching – empty worldliness, lies that there really isn't any sin or anyone intentionally hurting each other and the lie that there isn't any spiritual effects from being sinned against, New Age, Protestant culture, narcissism (worshipping the "self" in the place of God), Nietzschism, sex, drugs, and other forms of materialism (I say "teaching," but they teach these things even by not preaching against them, by being silent about drugs and fornicating and porn and spiritual devotions and spiritual consequences of being sinned against and sinning).
Ignoring Fatima, ignoring Akita, ignoring Divine Mercy, ignoring the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts, – ignoring God.
Pushing God to the back, rather than climbing the spiritual mountain towards Him.
I sort of knew Catholics in High School. Catholics who went to "youth group" events, considered "active" in their churches, even. Put on pageants and the like.
They never talked about anything spiritual. They gossiped (which is a mortal sin). They never were devoted to the Sacred Heart or knew about Divine Mercy or why anyone would ever even need Mercy; they knew nothing of Mary, not that she was the head of God's army, that God would even have an army.
They didn't know anything at all, and they were going through CCE and all of that at the time. One who was even an instructor of children going through catechism.
Their religion was an accessory to them, that they used to enhance themselves, to feel superior to others or to have a sort of false security blanket – "Jesus loves me." But they didn't love Jesus, in a concrete way, in a mystical way, in a way that was incorporated into their lives. They didn't live their religion, they didn't pray, they weren't seeking God.
(I don't think those "Catholics" are dead, maybe spiritually dead – but if they are spiritually, they wouldn't realize it.)
It's shocking to think about – when being attacked, you'd think a better strategy would be to become more religious, to have stronger and holier Masses, to be more united, to preach ceaselessly the message of Fatima and Akita, focusing so much on both of them. In short, to fight back mystically, rather than to give in to the spiritual darkness...
Seeking the Light of God, rather than the light of the world...
God gave us an organized religion (Catholicism) because – evil is organized. Organized against us, to destroy us.
Those people I know are dead because of this push from within themselves, from society, and from their parents, to run after all these things you're "supposed" to have, and "supposed" to want, to "live life to the fullest" as society defines "life" (but in fact, it is the emptiest), and ignore God, or just put Him to the side, blaspheme Him, or only turn to Him when they were at the end of their rope rather than all the time; to not fear Hell or Judgement, not fear the consequences of their actions, pretending sin doesn't exist and that there will be no judgement for sin and so no need to repent.
Repenting is what gives us hope.
We only have hope when we turn back from the dark abyss, from sin, from idolatry, from distrust in God's goodness and trust in our own ways or the ways of the world.
I can recall how many years of prayer I wasted, praying for these things that led to so much emptiness and stress.
I did pray to save souls, I did unite my suffering to Jesus', but my faults were only given grace out of God's Infinite Mercy – that doesn't mean they in themselves were good. They weren't.
I wish I had prayed that I was pleasing to God, and that God felt loved, instead of praying really at all for worldly success, money, health, relationships...
Worldliness is so unspeakably empty and meaningless in the end.
I learned, don't focus on those things (I mean, as part of what God wants, you have to focus on doing the best and most careful job you can with whatever job you are doing, but – success, money, relationships, even "friendships," fame, whatever – if that's the focus, the drive, then it's empty). If they happen, they happen, but they're ultimately not worth a lot of focus or attention.
Just, God.
God feels so lonely, and it's so tragic when God, Who not only has literally everything, but can create or destroy anything and everything, and has created everything, is literally omnipotent, and is deserving of all love, is... sad.
How can God be sad? It's baffling. God is amazing.
But I know why He's sad, because He says so – because of such an emphasis on these false gods.
I think if I had prayed to be pleasing to God, and let Him take care of me instead of grasping for all these things I thought I "needed" or "wanted," and to pray for God to be loved and to feel loved (not just to make me more loving of Him, but also as a call to raise up the souls He chooses to love Him, wherever in the world those souls may be), and just prayed to separate my soul spiritually from the influence of the world and people living in the world, .... how much better my life would have been... how much simpler, how much less... awful.
I would have had a lot more comfort. I would have been a lot happier and a lot more fulfilled. God would have been a lot happier.
I don't want other people to have to suffer the same regrets that I have, or waste any more of their lives on this... emptiness that consumes the world and is tearing it apart, at an ever-increasing pace.
Saint James says to this, to encourage us to come close to God: "Draw close to God, and he will draw close to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners: and purify your hearts, you double minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into sorrow. Be humbled in the sight of the Lord, and he will exalt you." (James 4:8-10)
You really must seek God first and get rid of your mortal sins (including idolatry) with God's help, by asking Him to purify you and asking Him for the grace to love Him.
Your main focus is your soul.
Your main focus is not just using God to fulfill your wishes, but getting closer to Him.
Because that is the deeper wish of every soul, the longing has just been translated to worldly things because of human spiritual blindness – the fall of man – caused by original sin.
I have seen so many people's souls who need to love God, and when I say that's what they need, they smugly, proudly cut off this guidance by saying, "I already love God."
This must be the same way they brush God off, and He walks away sadly, His arms full of the graces He would have given them.
These people need to seek the grace of inner conversion from God, asking Him for help.
Their hearts are not on fire for love of God.
He would mercifully give them the fire of His love. All they have to do is ask.
(Linked at the end of this post are some resources for learning how to love God, how to advance in the spiritual life, but it all starts with the prayer to have a desire to love God. Even the desire to love God is a grace from God, given to us through prayer.)
Loving God doesn't mean feeling superior to others, and it doesn't mean trying to control the world so that it is right, and it doesn't mean showing off to everyone how outwardly pious you are.
That's worldliness. Pharisees are worldly.
That's idolatry, trying to control others and showing off and feeling and acting superior to others. It's empty, it's death.
Matthew 6:6: "But when you shall pray, enter into your chamber, and having shut the door, pray to your Father in secret: and your Father who sees in secret will repay you."
That's why I wrote this, to try to convince people to stop serving their idols and start loving God, Who is so sad that His love isn't returned, or sought.
God, who is so easy to love, and so willing to help us love Him.
People think, "oh! God is loving! I can ignore Him now, I know He'll always be there, I don't have to struggle for His love so it isn't worth anything."
But this isn't true, we do have a tremendous struggle, so that we can be pleasing to God.
And God will help us in that struggle, help us so much. Because He does love us – He wants us to struggle with Him.
We have to struggle against the world and sin and idolatry to people and idolatry to worldly success and idolatry through fear and idolatry of pleasing the world, and that struggle is a more fierce and exciting struggle than anything else.
If you don't think it's a tough struggle, it means you haven't truly tried yet.
Or if it's overwhelming, you haven't yet tried with God's help.
When God is so unhappily ignored, treated like a dead object, the people go off in misery (with false hopes for their idols) to throw their devotion at the feet of some false god, to receive nothing for their efforts but pain and destruction, while their own God Who loves them and would reward them beyond imagination, sighs and weeps.
We must — must — ask God to lead us to Him, and beg Him for wisdom and understanding and the grace to truly love Him.
Even if we have hitherto convinced ourselves that we "already love Him."
We can't make ourselves love God without asking Him for the grace to love Him.
If we try to run away and achieve change in ourselves on our own, God will lament: "Why would you run away privately and not acquaint yourself with Me, that I could bring you on your way with joy, and with songs, and with timbrels, and with harps?"
(Meaning, an inner rejoicing, rejoicing in the soul – your soul itself and all Heaven will be singing with joy.)
God wants to lovingly carry us to loving Him.
He wants us to not be lonely within ourselves, ever.
And then, what happens when she's closer to God, is her heart will no longer stop and her breathing will no longer stop, as if she were dying, when she thinks about not being in a relationship, or not having the idol.
She will still feel deeply peaceful in God, despite outward circumstances.
And she will want to seek Him more, want to be even closer, because seeking God with God's help was so fulfilling.
This is when the idols will have been smashed by the grace of the love of God.
She will no longer feel like a "loser" and she will no longer look down on others but instead be the one to pity those around her because they are so enmeshed in their idolatry, and they think it gives them something but she will understand in her soul, in a profound way, that it makes their lives much, much emptier.
And she will understand that they will have to stand before God, too, at the end of their lives. And their boyfriends and husbands and social status will not stand next to them on the judgement day of their souls – only how much they sought God and loved Him still or their sins will stand with them.
And she will understand that her exes will also have to stand before God. And only how much they sought God and loved Him or their sins will stand next to them.
And she will end up being the one who plays a big role in saving their souls because her prayers will become holy and no longer idolatrous or superstitious. And God will start to hear her prayers because she no longer has mortal sin in her soul. So she will be able to pray that people do not lose their souls, and many souls (that she either knows or does not know) will be able to avoid Hell when they die because of her prayers.
And she will be their great hero for all eternity in Heaven.
And a true brethren to the other people in Heaven, and they'll all be united together with her in God's infinite love and mercy.
Mary’s 15 Promises to Those Who Recite the Rosary:
Many people don't have the grace to understand any of these words or concepts because they are still seeking to serve their false idols instead of seeking to serve God.
That is why it is better to pray for people than preach to them (or, 99% praying for them, 1% giving a testimony of your own experience to them). They need grace to accept God and rise out of their current situation, and grace comes from prayer.
Prayer is love. Jesus tells us to love our enemies by praying for them. By saying this, He is saying that prayer is love itself.
He wants us to love our families and friends in this way, too.
Prayer is love because it brings people closer to God, Who is Love. It brings down grace for their souls, so they can give up the misery of false idols and sin and seek God, and avoid being lost forever.
When she does this, she will no longer be competing with people, or idolatrously striving after them, but hoping that God saves them.
God will be very pleased with her, and she will be happy.
So she will no longer be sad, and seeking after empty things, but she will become filled with graces, and seeking after God and praying to God.
She will have fulfillment, because she will have begun seeking God, and God is ultimately the complete fulfillment of the soul, and the only One Who can deeply fulfill any human heart and allow us to love others.
In this way, she and God will have spiritually conquered all her idols and her enemies and all her sorrows, and replaced them all with the true meaning of life, which is to seek the God that created her out of His Infinite Love, and for the purpose of His Infinite Love.
She will be fulfilled and joyful.
Sometimes, it keeps us locked in the past to continue thinking about people of the past.
Sometimes, thinking about people of the past is like "a dog returning to her vomit." And sometimes, it can make us spiritually sick.
We may still want to pray for these people, but without thinking of them specifically because it is bad for us.
If you have wronged someone, you can also pray for that person, and when you confess your sins against that person, God will help reconcile you (if it is spiritually safe – if it isn't dangerous for your soul to reconcile with that person), or you can ask God to give that person what he or she lost because of how you sinned against that person, and God will hear your prayer.
This way, you can make up for your sins against others, out of your love of God, and this will be so pleasing to Him, very pleasing, very dear to Him.
Then, after making up for your sins through penance, prayer, and possible action, you can stop thinking about people of the past, and reach out towards the future.
We can pray for everyone we have ever known, regardless of who harmed who, by waking up in the morning and praying this formula: "Eternal Father, I offer my day to You, united to the life of Your Son on earth, for all those I know and who know me."
God knows who those people are. When we pray this way, we are putting it all in His Hands and He is using our relationship with Him to mystically save souls. It's all happening spiritually, beneath the surface.
We have to have confidence in God's mercy. More than we could want to save souls, God wants to save souls.
We have to trust that He will hear our prayers if we are asking that He bring us closer to Him and are sincerely asking that He give us love for Him and understanding of Him, and is working to save souls, even when we don’t see it.
Think – many years you spent away from God, and all of a sudden, you decided to turn away from idolatry towards God wholeheartedly.
There was no indication you would for years and years, but there were many many people – people you don’t even know – praying for you all that time.
Amazing how we are all connected when we are in God, isn’t it?
And how we are all disjointed from one another when outside of God.
We have to turn wholeheartedly towards Him.
It is important to always ask and pray, "God, where do I have an idol, or a sin?" so that we can confess it to God and ask Him to replace it with His Love.
Sometimes people think they have no sin, not even a little one, and that they have no idol. So they don't ask God to get rid of it.
This keeps us from getting closer to God.
God is Love. We must always want more, more Love, closer, closer to Love Himself!
We must always, our whole lives, even if we are no longer committing or living in mortal sin, ask God to show us our small sins, and take them away.
We must always be brave our whole life, and always face ourselves, so we can have God richly in our lives, so we can be fulfilled and happy and not miserable and empty.
This will indirectly help many other souls, as well.
And we will be happy and peaceful in our lives and for all eternity, for being very close to God.
--
If you are tempted to go back to seeking idols, remember the story of this famous European rock star who converted.
The story of Paddy Kelly, a famous European musician who had everything (wealth, fame, talent, fans who would do anything for him, the desire of women, a supportive and loving family, approval of millions, envy of millions) but was still empty and suicidal:
In 1994 his album “Over the Hump" sold more than 4.5 million copies throughout Europe. In Germany it is the biggest selling album of all time. His group is bigger than the Beatles.
The group has sold over 50 million records worldwide.
At twenty years old he was a teenage sensation, a huge rock star and lived in a 17th century castle in Europe. He had all the riches, fame, fortune and the adulation of millions.
His name is Paddy Kelly.
He and his group the Kelly Family sold out the huge Westtaleanhalle in Dortmund, Germany, nine times in a row - a feat no other musician has since accomplished. They filled football stadiums, some shows with over 250,000 in the audience.
He was born in Ireland to American parents. He was the star of the incredible singing group “The Kelly Family.” He has eleven brothers and sisters and most sing in the band. They started out singing in the streets of Europe but quickly their incredible singing talents took them to the top.
Paddy Kelly became a huge idol with adoring female fans. He needed body guards in public. He was hounded by paparazzi where ever he went and traveled by private jet and helicopters. He was recognized everywhere he went. He had it all... this amazing young man had everything, but despite the fame and money he began to feel empty, isolated..
He felt lost... He felt his soul was dying. He had lost his mother when he was five years old but toured the world with his family that gave him love and support.
Even with the love of his family he began to fall into depression and even despair. It all began to break down for Paddy Kelly. He lost the sense of who he was and all his ideals and false securities began to break down. He felt like he wanted to end his life.
Nothing made sense to him anymore. Material goods and money, not even music made him happy.
This was when a deep search for the truth began. He asked himself “If all this doesn't make me happy then what is the sense of life. Why do I exist?” He then asked the question “Who can tell me who I am ? Who has the true answers to my questions?" As he began to ask these questions, he realized he had no real friends. He felt alone and empty.
At a moment of deep crisis, standing on a ledge [outside] of his room, he sensed in him a voice telling him to “Hold on, hold on..." and after this moment passed he wept bitterly at what he almost had done.
Soon after he began to search his spiritual side.. He read about eastern religions [and texts] like Buddism and the Koran, but it was the Gospels that seemed to pull him in a new direction. He felt the Gospels were alive.
At a chance meeting with a gathering of priests near his palatial home the 17th century castle he felt his spirit grow. Still he struggled with depression and sadness and then one day...he was [flipping through the channels on] his television and by chance he came across a program about Lourdes, France, which houses a shrine dedicated to an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
His first thought was that it was “Only for blue-haired grandmothers and naïve people who believe anything.” But he felt pulled to Lourdes like a magnet.
He decided to go. But he was certain that the town would be filled with “horrible plastic statues” and would be no place for a “rock star” to find God.
So he went and to his surprise not only were “gray-haired grandmothers" praying the Rosary, but so were many young people he thought dressed 'cool' and they liked rock and roll. He therefore joined the youth program.
Then that evening with the youth group there came a moment of “Prayer and Silence” and during that moment he felt a simple yet a deep peace in his heart. He was experiencing a deep presence of someone inside of him. Wow! He thought, God is accessible and came to him through the Blessed Virgin Mary. He realized that Mary was not some Christian myth, but no she was a person.
He felt she was asking him to give life a second chance. He felt she wanted to help him and he no longer felt alone. He had grown up Catholic but now he knew that he could meet God and that night he gave life a new chance.
He was to live his life according to God's will. He knew Mary had planted the seed of faith in Lourdes and now he also knew only through prayer could his faith grow. As his spiritual quest moved forward he found his brothers and sisters also saw that money and fame did not bring happiness.
And in the summer of 2000 he and two of his brothers and sisters decided to go to the Youth festival in Medjugorje. There he met Father Jozo and quickly through his words, counsel and abundance of graces a deep movement of conversion with God came to his brothers and sisters and in the months and years to follow.
He believed that God existed but he had not yet experianced the Holy Spirit in a deep and powerful way. He wanted to know if [Jesus] was truly the Son of Man. He wanted to believe it and not just tell himself so or because the Church said so. He wanted to feel the interior confirmation of the Holy Spirit.
Then one morning the Holy Spirit entered his heart in a real way.
He called his brothers and sister that he loved so much and said to them “Jesus is God, Jesus is God, Jesus is God.” [The completion of the Holy Trinity.]
---
His lyrics before his conversion and after his conversion mark the great upheaval that took place in his soul and the beautiful work of mercy God worked in him.
Before his conversion, his group performed the song Million Flies; here are the lyrics: Wake up afraid / nightmares again / haven't slept for three days / the parasites attacking me again / tormented by night / paranoia about them
Oh nononono I'm losing my senses / Oh nononono I'm building up fences / talk to myself / what's so ever the case / no commonsense / now imagining all kinds of things / so lie on my floor / locked in this room / tearing up in the cokes / see the world through a kaleidoscope
Chorus: a million flies are on their way / and they won't go go away / a million flies are here to stay / and they won't go go away [etc]
I wanna go back / back in the womb / see the grave digger / smiling to me waiting at the tomb / I'm caught in the trap / so help me to laugh / cause I'm sick of fighting / come and pinch me / tell me I'm just dreaming
Versus the songs he wrote post-conversion, for example Thanking Blessed Mary:
Such a beautiful site
Entered into my life
My interest conquered the fright
To meet the Mother of all Light
My pounding heart rose in speed
When She planted a seed
In the deepest essence of me
It was the day my spirit was freed
Oh I'm thanking
Blessed Mary
For light Divine
Thanking Blessed Mary
For light Divine
Thanking Blessed Mary
For light
Temptation messed
Me around
She picked me up
From the ground
And taught me to never let go
Of your God given soul
But sometimes I still lose my mind
When life is cruel and unkind
But it's when I suffer that I learn
In a repenting heart love will burn
Oh I'm thanking Blessed Mary
For light Divine
Thanking Blessed Mary
For light Divine
Thanking Blessed Mary
For light
Oh my faith has been renewed
She guides me to
Eternal life
And to the truth oh oh oh oh oh
Yes my faith has been renewed
Oh I'm thanking
Blessed Mary...
And now I've met Jesus Her Son
With the Holy Spirit
I've begun
A pilgrimage to heaven above
To our Father's kingdom of love
Ave, ave, ave Maria
Gracia plena, gracia plena
Ou sleep
Neither songs, the Flies one nor the Mary one, were fake or to impress – they were both raw sets of sincere emotion.
He wasn't faking his distress when he was still lost and he wasn't faking happiness when he wrote the Mary song – they were both real, sincere, true, honest.
His song Hope talks about his conversion from a state of suicide to a state of love of God.
Other songs include Pray, Pray, Pray and Rain of Roses (in honor of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, who answers prayers to her with a visible rose, book of testimonies, and the website for Society of the Little Flower which is about Thérèse).
You can see how his soul went from dark to the light of God, and from despair to hope, peace, and thanks in God.
And how he gave up all of his fame, wealth, and even public life (as he stopped writing songs publicly to avoid idolatry) because all of that made him ultimately empty.
He didn't try to make God serve an idol, but instead prayed to love God and have true peace because he remembered the distinct pain of being idolatrous, without God.
---
One of the most important devotions to look at is the Divine Mercy Devotion – already mentioned but important enough to mention again – in which Jesus speaks to a mystic, Saint Faustina, and this is recorded in her diary (a free copy of the Diary in PDF form, which you can open at random and read bits and pieces, or start from the beginning – both are good devotions). After thorough examination, it was deemed that everything Jesus said was in line with what was in the Bible and the Catechism.
Jesus: Write this for the benefit of distressed souls; when a soul sees and realized the gravity of its sins, when the whole abyss of the misery into which it immersed itself is displayed before its eyes, let it not despair, but with trust let it throw itself into the arms of My mercy, as a child into the arms of its beloved mother. These souls have a right of priority to My compassionate Heart, they have first access to My mercy. Tell them that no soul that has called upon My mercy has been disappointed or brought to shame. I delight particularly in a soul which has placed its trust in My goodness.
Jesus: Encourage souls to place great trust in My fathomless mercy. Let the weak, sinful soul have no fear to approach Me, for even if it had more sins than there are grains of sand in the world, all would be drowned in the immeasurable depths of My mercy.
Jesus: I wait for souls, and they are indifferent toward Me. I love them tenderly and sincerely, and they distrust Me. I want to lavish My graces on them, and they do not want to accept them. They treat Me as a dead object, whereas My Heart is full of love and mercy.
Jesus: The flames of mercy are burning me. I desire to pour them out upon human souls. Oh, what pain they cause Me when they do not want to accept them!
Jesus: Let the greatest sinners place their trust in My mercy. They have the right before others to trust in the abyss of My mercy. My daughter, write about My mercy towards tormented souls. Souls that make an appeal to My mercy delight Me. To such souls I grant even more graces than they ask. I cannot punish even the greatest sinner if he makes an appeal to My compassion, but on the contrary, I justify him in My unfathomable and inscrutable mercy. Write: before I come as a just Judge, I first open wide the door of My mercy. He who refuses to pass through the door of My mercy must pass through the door of My justice...
Jesus: My mercy is greater than your sins and those of the entire world. Who can measure the extent of my goodness? For you I descended from heaven to earth; for you I allowed myself to be nailed to the cross; for you I let my Sacred Heart be pierced with a lance, thus opening wide the source of mercy for you. Come, then, with trust to draw graces from this fountain. I never reject a contrite heart. Your misery has disappeared in the depths of My mercy. Do not argue with Me about your wretchedness. You will give me pleasure if you hand over to me all your troubles and griefs. I shall heap upon you the treasures of My grace.
The graces He wants to offer us are freedom from sin, getting our lives in order before Him, and the grace to love Him and thank Him and obey and heed Him, which are salvation and peace.
Saint Faustina herself went through many struggles with grasping God's Mercy and so her very humble words are very encouraging and enlightening for us to read on our own spiritual journey.
There is another book, that is very easy to read, called An Easy Way to Become a Saint by Father Paul O'Sullivan. (It's copyrighted, I don't have a copy to give you for free, but it's available at amazon and tan books and is very cheap, inexpensive.)
This might seem out of reach or not a goal you considered, being a Saint, but a Saint is simply someone who loves God in deed and with very great sincerity, and these are graces that God is willing to give a soul, any soul, that asks Him.
The work is based on the works and lives of countless Saints, main among them Saint Thérèse, Doctor of the Church, whose "little way" of being a Saint raised her to the greatest heights of love of God.
From the back of the book: "The 'secret' is to love God–since one act of love is worth a thousand acts of any other virtue. Fr. O'Sullivan gives us the keys to obtaining love for God–even if we feel cold and dry towards Him now."
It's a very inexpensive book, but well-made and one that is like a manual that you can keep using for years and years because of it's practical, every day information.
Here is an audio copy (mp3) of Story of a Soul by Saint Thérèse, from a free audio books site. Listening to one of the primary sources for "An Easy Way to Become a Saint" might also be very helpful when reading the book.
Thérèse is one of the most important Saints in the 20th century (and into the 21st century). She teaches her "Little Way" to God, and having confidence in God's Love.
She's brilliant, but speaks so simply that anyone can understand.
Thérèse is very inspirational.
Even if you haven't had an abortion, I think reading about people who were spiritually healed by God from this will be encouraging.
It can also help us so much to see someone going through what we are going through:
This is a WONDERFUL testimony by a man who was so so far from God, and how God brought him back to Him, and will be very encouraging to you if you find that you are far from God, and even if you aren't in that situation, you will still find it so beautiful and interesting and educational (he is also very funny and a good speaker)
He also explains about "the economy of graces," how you can help save other souls by wholeheartedly seeking God's grace (spiritually, in private, through prayer and a personal conversion, how that will allow God's grace to mystically and spiritually flow out of you, like a point of grace in the world, almost like a geyser that shoots water into the world, only taking place in the spiritual world and effecting people spiritually).
Be brave and be comforted – watch it! :
If the above embedded video doesn't work, you can watch it on YouTube by clicking here – very positive, wonderful and instructive, watch it right now
I think everyone would benefit greatly from reading the book Interview with an Exorcist by Father Fortea.
I recommend that book and people cringe – they become very afraid because they think 1) the book is filled with scary exorcism stories and 2) it is filled with information that will cause a panic attack, like when you realize that your life isn't in order with God.
These two things are not true, and you ought to consider fear of such a comforting, straightforward book (with no scary stories) to be a temptation from the devil to keep you from the comfort and advice that good priest who wrote it will give to you by you reading it. It is a very beneficial and helpful book, especially for spiritual healing, and if the book is read prayerfully (by asking God to help you and guide you as you read it), you will get a tremendous benefit from it. Even the forward is very good, very positive, about how God wants us to help Him conquer evil and how we should not be afraid, but trust in God and do as He tells us.
It is a very positive, helpful book, I do recommend it (among many other books that I mention in these posts).
Why reading? I have never been one for reading. ... But I do make time to read books by Saints because every great God experience that people (including great Saints) have had, usually start with reading a book by another Saint, or about Saints. It's true – horrible sinners have become great saints, and it began with an encounter with God that came about through reading.
By reading the works of Saints, or a very good Catholic exorcist like Father Fortea, you will begin to have experiences with God, if you pray in your heart that you want to know God and please Him and live with Him, and beg Him to come to you.
I had my first God experience (after reading a bit about Divine Mercy and sort of learning to pray the Chaplet, as best I could learn) from reading How to Converse Continually and Familiarly with God by Saint Alphonsus Ligori – a very brief little... almost pamphlet.
Yet the writing was so connected with God, that it opened up God to my soul and my soul to God in a way so profound that there are not words for it in the human language.
I had nothing, I was nothing, I was alone, desolate, despised, and then – there was Light. I have not been alone within myself since. I would recommend any writing by Saint Alphonsus Ligori.
(A free copy of How to Converse [Continually and Familiarly with God], PDF download – use Foxit PDF viewer if Adobe PDF viewer doesn't work on your computer. It seems kind of hard to come by. It's about 30 pages – small, brief pages.)
Here is an audio copy (mp3) of The Secret of the Rosary by Saint Louis de Montfort, with many stories about the power of the Rosary, to instill you with great confidence in God's intercession through the Rosary. This is another one of the most important works of humanity, for the people of our century.
It might help to read a hard copy (an actual book) of "The Secret of the Rosary," for figuring out how to recite the Rosary according to various methods laid out by this Saint. But there are many testimonies in the book that an audio copy would be good to listen to.
There are some stories of people who have hit rock bottom on the depression post and other articles I've written in the prayer request post. I don't think any of those articles are really as blunt as this one, but they still contain good information and links.
This is probably the last post I will be writing because I was told to focus on making religious art for a while, by my spiritual director.
It is always important to make time to read books by Saints. Thank God that there is such a high literacy rate, and the internet for obtaining these books, and printing presses that make these works inexpensive, and people willing to keep these works in print or available digitally.
(Final note about exorcisms and curses: People are most susceptible to being cursed by witches and the occult who have no spiritual armor, such as those who have false idols and those who live in mortal sin. And after they are cursed, they cannot drive out the effects of the curse because of their sins, because through our sins – with or without a curse – we open up a connection to Hell. Here is a video about Fr Amorth, a famous late exorcist, discussing the dangers of using "psychics" rather than Christianity to drive out evil. For more complete information, read "Interview with an Exorcist" by Father Fortea.)
It's so important to have holy people pray for your soul on your spiritual journey:
Click a few (doesn't have to be all of them, there are quite a lot) of the below links, these prayer request links include our prayer request but are also just a couple of the Catholic nun and monk prayer requests that I've found from a quick online search. I focus on the Poor Clares because they are nuns who live separate from the world, lives of silent contemplation before God in the Eucharist, day and night interceding for the world, and their prayers are immensely powerful. These nuns are some of the most powerful people on the entire planet because of their devotion before God.
The life of the cloister (doing humble work in a monastery in a religious community while praying to save souls) is an imitation of the 30 years that Jesus spent before His public ministry, as He grew and lived with Saints Mary and Joseph. – From Poor Clares' daily life
(Also, the Benedictines and Carmelites live lives of contemplation.) (I only link to the one where they wear the habit, the sort of nun's or monk's "uniform" – I tried to weed out "reformed" monasteries as best I could because many reformed religious of any order, not just Poor Clares or Carmelites or Benedictines, but any reformed ones, were under investigation under Pope Benedict XVI for ... bad things. And the reform ones don't like the habit, the really really sincere, holy ones tend to gravitate towards the habit.)
You will feel SO GOOD in your soul, when you feel God's peace envelope you because of these holy people's prayers! "May Almighty God bless you. May Almighty God look upon you with mercy and give you peace..." – Blessing of Saint Clare
Go to these links and add your first name (only, no last name) and ask them to pray for your soul to love God and be freed from sin and idolatry, and then thank them for their prayers. You can copy and paste your intentions into the various prayer requests. (If you can spare a couple of dollars to donate, maybe sometime, consider it, because Poor Clares and the others live off of only what they receive in donations, they are quite literally very poor – very very holy people. If you can't spare money, please be sure to pray for all of these holy and wonderful people – prayer is more powerful and helpful than money!):
But anything – even something neutral or good that we pray for – that's placed in importance above God in our lives becomes really evil to us.
Not that the thing itself is necessarily evil, but that our idolatry of that thing will corrupt our souls.
This idolatry is the reason so many people feel cursed and actually are cursed – because it destroys all spiritual armor and our very souls.
Until our soul is right before God, no curse can be lifted.
God is not discussed in our society in a practical way that would allow us to have a meaningful relationship with Him.
He is often discussed in our society as being something undesirable or "oppressive." (Especially in our education system.)
But in reality, loving God is the only thing that fulfills us, God Himself is the only One that fulfills our lives and frees our souls, making us peaceful and truly joyful.
And false idols oppress people.
False idols make us completely miserable.
If you would rather die than live without it, it is a false idol.
A false idol is anything you think about or care about more than God (who is little discussed in the world in a way that you could care about Him).
God is Goodness and Adorableness Itself – the more we learn about Him, the more we find He is Good and Adorable, and the more we can’t help but love Him, and want to love Him.
You need a God experience. A moment where you experience God. So you can see for yourself.
This can only happen if you actively seek God, instead of the false idol.
Then you will know and understand how God can fill up person’s soul and how someone could seek God in life. Then you will experience God's peace and satisfaction.
You will experience the peace of God, which is not a peace anything in the world can give you.
Many people refuse to stop seeking their false idol and so refuse to start seeking God.
They say, "if God won't give me this false idol that I want, then He is mean and I won't have anything to do with Him!"
or, "if God won't get rid of this cursed state without me having to change my life, than I think that is too much work and give up!"
This is called “rejecting God.”
It is spiritually very dangerous because it can make us extraordinarily, unimaginably unhappy in life and very very miserable when we die.
Because only God will make us happy.
God wants to free us from our attachment to false idols because false idols make us miserable.
Rejecting God leads us to be more and more miserable, to feel completely dead inside, even though our bodies are still alive.
We were made for God, to love God, and no matter how much a person denies that fact, reality is always the same, and that person will always be miserable.
False idols will always fail us, always let us down and disappoint us.
People lose their minds when they have invested their lives into a false idol and it inevitably fails.
Many people in the world lose their minds or their depth, becoming shallow and hollow and corrupt (and so seek philosophies that try to make them sound deep, like existentialism, but it only points to how shallow they are), because they seek false idols instead of God.
Our society supports rejecting God, but not only will the person who rejects God be miserable in life, she will be spiritually lost when she physically dies.
At death, we go to enter into eternity and all of our false idols go away. They don’t exist anymore.
We aren't judged based on how much we pleased our parents or ourselves or our spouse or how many followers we had online or what other people thought of us or how we conformed to society or how much money we made or how good our grades were or how nice our car is or how high we got.
All that is gone in a moment.
What is left is only us and God.
Suddenly, God is the only thing that matters.
But in reality, God is the only One Who matters during our lives, too.
If we spent our lives seeking false happiness in false idols, we have practiced rejecting God every moment of our lives.
That daily training of rejecting God our whole lives kicks in when we die and we reject God a final time because we have practiced rejecting God every moment of every day for years.
Many people say "I already know God, I don't reject Him but accept Him" – but they do not put Him first in their lives – they are still more attached to their idols.
Actions are more important than words – reality is more important than personal judgement.
If you yearn for something more actively than you yearn for God, it is a false idol.
We don’t want to meet God for the first time when we die, realizing we have neglected Him our whole lives for emptiness.
We want to know Him already, very well, when we die.
We don’t want to have wasted our entire lives by having rejected God for a false idol.
False idols are what make us completely miserable and make people even want to die.
Because everything is empty and dead without God, when anything is put above God.
The idolatry is what is making us miserable.
Not-having a relationship [or not-having whatever idol] is not what makes us miserable.
(Whatever the idol is, whether it is self-satisfaction, being the best/superior to other people, narcissism – being your own god and depending on your own strength, our jobs, money, success, fame, popularity, being thought of well by others, being "perfect" in a worldly sense – by society's standards, conforming to society/fitting in/following society, revenge, having control and power over other people, a new car, drugs and alcohol, having something specific whatever it is, "having everyone look at and pay attention to me," mother or father's approval/pleasing mother or father, sex, etc. etc. etc., these are all false idols when we seek them instead of seeking God.)
Many people think they would rather die than not be in a relationship.
Idolatry about relationships, or idolatry about a particular relationship, is what makes us miserable.
Thinking only that relationship will make us happy. [Or only whatever idol.]
Many people know little or nothing about God and so don’t think about Him or seek Him.
Many people are unhappy because everything in their life is more important than God.
Even people who think they are Christians but really, everything in their lives are idols.
In reality, only God will make someone happy. That is why the relationship is a false idol – it is being treated like it is God (thinking it will bring deep fulfillment like only God will).
If you think about your relationship or a person more than you think about God, it is a false idol.
That means it is making you miserable, because you feel like dying or like life isn’t worth living without the relationship, like you “need” this relationship.
Any great "need" like that is going to be misery, and lead to misery.
Idolatry is a spiritual condition – a spiritual disease, a sickness.
God cures this spiritual disease with His Love for us, when we seek to love Him back.
God is known as the Doctor of not only our minds and bodies, but also our souls.
He is kind and merciful – we have only to ask Him to heal us of our spiritual disorders, and then follow His instructions.
He wants to cure us and heal us, even more than we want to be cured and healed.
He will help us in our struggles to love Him and conquer idolatry (that is, give it up) and become happy.
God will heal us.
Only God can help us and only God can heal us.
Idolatry is why you are unhappy.
Not necessarily what you think is making you unhappy, if you think you are unhappy because you are not in a relationship.
Not because of the relationship, but because of idolatry – making the relationship into God, instead of worshipping God as God.
For example, the woman who is desperate to get married, and maybe her family urges her to get married, too, and she gets involved with all kinds of bad relationships that are complicated.
She becomes very stressed and miserable, always worrying who likes her and feeling her heart torn in many different directions.
And she goes through one relationship, it ends, and she feels a gapping hole in her.
So she replaces that relationship with another relationship, and she is distracted for a while, but she is dissatisfied still, again and again.
And that relationship ends, too. And she just keeps replacing people because she thinks she has to be in a relationship.
Or she clings to the idea of a particular relationship that has ended, even though the relationship is over.
She's made a false idol out of being in a relationship.
She thinks she needs a relationship because she has made a false idol out of it, so she’s willing to go through all this grief, looking for a relationship that will fill her up.
But NONE of them will fill her up, even if it is superficially happy or distracted for a little while.
Because the real hole in her heart is for God.
"But I love God very much!" she says.
God is infinite. People taste a little of His love and it's dazzling, so they think they've had it all. But they've only had a drop.
So long as they keep worshipping people and relationships, they will keep dying of thirst for God.
God is the only satisfaction of your soul, NOT your boyfriend or your husband or your ex, and people will never complete you or fulfill you.
(Most often, the opposite will happen – people chisel away at you until there is nothing left.)
God is also driven out of a soul through mortal sin.
Mortal sin leaves a hole in the heart that only God can fill.
People think the hole in their hearts is because they do not have something – whatever it is they have made a false idol out of.
A woman has a hole in her heart because she isn’t in a relationship, she thinks.
So she gets in a relationship.
It doesn’t fill the hole in her heart because the hole is really from God not being there anymore.
She’s still dissatisfied on a deeper level, even if she distracts herself superficially with a relationship or the idea that everything is okay because she’s in a relationship.
The emptiness eventually leads her to dump him. Because she made the relationship a false idol, she blames all her emptiness on the relationship, even though the emptiness is because God is gone.
Or he dumps her because the relationship is spiritually dead, because the people involved in it are spiritually dead, meaning God isn’t in their souls (even though neither of them consciously understand that is the reason the relationship doesn't work – they don't understand this because they reject God and focus on idols).
And she still worships the idol of a relationship, so she is extremely anxious about not being in a relationship.
All her friends and sisters will make fun of her for being single, think of her as a “loser.”
She was bad and used to make fun of people behind their backs for being single, or secretly look down on them or secretly gloat over them, thinking she was superior to them because of this relationship.
So she is afraid, because of her sins she has committed against other people.
She has a false idol of what they think, so it makes her anxious, and she has never repented of her sins or changed her ways. Nor has she ever sought God.
She is not seeking God.
The anxiety makes her unhappy, the anxiety of her idolatry makes her unhappy, but because she has this idol, she thinks it is the anxiety of not being in a relationship, about others’ opinions.
So she seeks another relationship, or seeks after her ex who is gone.
She is even willing to sell her soul, so to speak, by committing sin to get her ex back.
She practices the occult and is willing to fornicate, but these will only make her spiritually dead inside by driving God away. They will make everything in her life a dissatisfaction because God is gone.
She prays to God for these idols, to have these idols of her relationships back.
She is trying to make Infinite God serve her idols.
When He – God – asks her to love Him, she doesn’t hear His call because she has mortal sins on her soul. These sins have blocked her from hearing God. She cannot hear Him.
She mistakes God's call to love Him for needing to serve her idols more and more, even though they make her miserable.
What she is really missing in her life is God.
She thinks about relationships and people more than about God.
She cares about her public image more than she cares about God.
Every relationship will ultimately crumble because of the spiritual death (God not being there) in and around her.
And each new relationship will leave her emptier and emptier – until she seeks God.
Even the good opinion of others will not fulfill her.
She will be miserable and empty until she seeks God.
God alone can make us happy.
God is Infinite Beauty, Beauty itself. Not superficial beauty. God is the beauty of the soul, most pleasing to the soul.
God is Light itself, not superficial, material light, not the light of the world, but the Light of the soul.
God is Joy Itself, not superficial distractions or an adrenaline rush or the tittilation of sin. But God is the ONLY joy of the soul.
God is Peace itself. Not the false, superficial material “peace” of getting high or a biological chemical effect in the brain after intercourse.
God is the profound peace of the soul, and the ONLY peace of the soul. True peace, “a peace the world cannot give.”
God is the answer, the ONLY ANSWER, to everything that the human soul wants.
This is because God made us.
He created us.
He created us out of His Love, in order to love Him back.
Some people think they "need" a specific person for financial reasons or comfort or strength during trials.
We are never dependent upon one person. We must be dependent totally upon God, not a creature or creatures as God.
God will send us people who can help us in certain areas (like getting a job) for financial help – there is no one single person to help us.
We must pray and seek God and seek to reject our sins so God can be with us and bless us.
And other people will never satisfy us or give us strength and courage the way God will.
Often our fantasy of someone encouraging or comforting us is very different from the way things turn out in reality.
People don't really comfort us in real life like we fantasize they will.
They don't really make us feel good, like we ache for them to, like we long for them to.
What we are fantasizing about is God comforting us, but because we make a false idol out of a relationship, out of people, we replace God with the false idol when we fantasize.
And often our fantasies don't include how we will be self-sacrificing for someone else, although we will expect the other person to be for us.
People can help one another out in areas of finances and comfort, and it only has a limited good.
Other people can't free us from our idolatry for money and they can't put graces of courage and strength in our soul, transforming us, the way God can.
Most people don't want to, or if they do, are too impatient and have too much sin on their own souls, and so end up taking grace — even grace God gave us — away from us.
If people start depending solely on one another for these things, they will be disappointed, they will not be growing spiritually as people in God, and they will end up using one another for what that person can give them.
God wants us to depend on Him for all our needs.
He wants to free us and give us strength in trials, and give us a peace the world (including other people) cannot give us.
God wants to be our God, He doesn't want us to worship creatures.
The human soul only feels fulfilled when it completes what it was created for – loving God in return for the love He has for us.
What God wants to do in a soul that gives itself to Him is so great that no one can even imagine it: “But, as it is written: no eye has seen, no ear has heard, nor has it entered into the heart of humans, what things God has prepared for them that love Him.” 1 Corinthians 2:9
She was not created to serve a false idol.
She was created to love God, more and more and more every day.
If she doesn’t seek God more actively before she dies, she will possibly be in permanent serious spiritual trouble.
This is the famous story, "The Cry of a Lost Soul" – we can see what misery we avoid and how to avoid it, through this affirming account:
This unusual narrative recounts the revelations of a lost soul to a former acquaintance. From [ olrl ]
An imprimatur indicates that the subject matter is free from error in faith and morals.
Clara and Annette, both single Catholics in their early twenties, worked adjacent to each other as employees of a commercial firm in Germany. Although they were never very close friends, they shared a courteous mutual regard which led to an exchange of ideas and, eventually, of confidences. Clara professed herself openly religious, and felt it her duty to instruct and admonish Annette when the latter appeared excessively casual or superficial in religious matters.
In due course, Annette married and left the firm. The year was 1937. Clara spent the autumn of that year on holiday at Lake Garda. About the middle of September she received a letter from her mother. "Annette . . . is dead. She was the victim of an auto accident and was buried yesterday at Wald-Friedhof."
Clara was frightened because she knew her friend was not very religious. Was she prepared to appear before God? Dying suddenly, what had happened to her?
The next day she attended Mass, received Holy Communion, and prayed fervently for her friend. The following night, at ten minutes after midnight, the vision took place. . .
"Clara, do not pray for me! I am in Hell. If I tell you this and speak at length about it, do not think it is because of our friendship. We here do not love anyone. I do this as under constraint. In truth, I should like to see you to come to this state where I must remain forever."
"Perhaps that angers you, but here we all think that way. Our wills are hardened in evil - in what you call evil. Even when we do something 'good', as I do now, opening your eyes about hell, it is not because of a good intention."
"Do you still remember our first meeting four years ago at. . .? You were then 23 and had been there already half a year. Because I was a beginner, you gave me some helpful advice. Then I praised your love of your neighbor. Ridiculous! Your help was mere coquetry. Here we do not acknowledge any good - in anybody."
"Do you remember what I told you about my youth? Now I am painfully compelled to fill in some of the gaps."
"According to the plan of my parents, I should not have existed. A misfortune brought about my conception. My two sisters were 14 and 15 when I was born."
"Would that I had never existed! Would that I could now annihilate myself! Escape these tortures! No pleasure would equal that with which I would abandon my existence, as a garment of ashes which is lost in nothingness. But I must continue to exist as I chose to make myself - as a ruined person."
"When father and mother, still young, left the country for the city, they had lost touch with the Church and were keeping company with irreligious people. They had met at a dance, and after a year and a half of companionship they 'had' to get married."
"As a result of the nuptial ceremony, so much holy water remained on them that my mother attended Sunday Mass a couple of times a year. But she never taught me to pray. Instead, she was completely taken up with the daily cares of life, although our situation was not bad."
"I refer to prayer, Mass, religious instruction, holy water, church with a very strong repugnance. I hate all that, as I hate those who go to church, and in general hate every human being and everything."
"From a great many things do we receive torture. Every knowledge received at the hour of death, every remembrance of things lived or known is for us, a piercing flame. In each remembrance, good and bad, we see the way in which was present - the grace we despised or ignored. What a torture is this! We do not eat, we do not sleep, we do not walk. Chained, with howling and gnashing of teeth, we look appalled at our ruined life, hating and suffering. Do you hear? We here drink hatred like water. Above all we hate God. With reluctance do I force myself to make you understand."
"The blessed in heaven must love God because they see Him without veil, in all His dazzling beauty. That makes their bliss indescribable. We know this and the knowledge makes us furious. Men on earth, who know God from nature and from revelation, can love Him, but they are not compelled to do so. The believer - I say this with gnashing of teeth - who contemplates Christ on the cross, with arms extended, will end by loving Him."
"But he whom God approaches only in the final storm, as punisher, as just avenger, because he was rejected by Him, such a person cannot but hate Him with all the strength of his wicked will. We died with willful resolve to be separated from God. Do you now understand why hell lasts forever! It is because our wills were fixed for eternity at the moment of death. We had made our final choice. Our obstinacy will never leave us. Under compulsion, I must add that God is merciful even towards us. I affirm many things against my will and must choke the torrent of abuses I should like to vomit out."
"God was merciful to us by not allowing our wicked wills to exhaust themselves on earth, as we should have been prepared to do. This would have increased our faults and our pains. He caused us to die before our time, as in my case, or had other mitigating circumstances intervene. Now He shows Himself merciful towards us by not compelling a closer approach than that afforded in this remote inferno. Every step bringing us closer to God would cause us a greater pain than that which a step closer to a burning furnace would cause you."
"You were scared when once, during a walk, I told you that my father, a few days before my first Communion, had told me: 'My little Annette, the main thing is your beautiful white dress, all the rest is just make-believe.' Because of your concern, I was almost ashamed. Now I sneer at it."
"The important thing is that we were not allowed to receive Communion until the age of 12. By then I was already absorbed in worldly amusements and found it easy to set aside, without scruple, the things of religion. Thus, I attached no great importance to my first Communion. We are furious that many children go to Communion at the age of seven. We do all we can to make people believe that children have insufficient knowledge at that age. They must first commit some mortal sins. Then the white Particle will not do so much damage to our cause as when faith, hope, and charity - oh, these things! - received in Baptism, are still alive in their hearts."
"Marta K - and you induced me to enter "The Association of the Young Ladies." The games were amusing. As you know, I immediately took a directive part. I liked it. I also like the picnics. I even let myself be induced to go to confession and communion sometimes."
"Once you warned me, 'Anne, if you do not pray, you go to perdition.' I used to pray very little indeed, and even this unwillingly. You were then only too right. All those who burn in hell did not pray or did not pray enough."
"Prayer is the first step towards God. And it is the decisive step. Especially prayer to her who is the Mother of Christ, whose name we never pronounce. Devotion to her rescues from the devil numberless souls whom sin would infallibly give to him."
"I continue my story, consumed with rage and only because I have to. To pray is the easiest thing man can do on earth. And God has tied up the salvation of each one exactly to this very easy thing."
"To him who prays with perseverance little by little God gives so much light, so much strength, that even the most debased sinner will at the end come back to salvation. During the last years of my life I did not pray any more, so I lacked those graces without which nobody can be saved.
Here we no longer receive graces. Moreover, should we receive them we would cynically refuse them. All the fluctuations of earthly existence have ceased in the other life. For years I was living far away from God. For, in the last call of grace I decided against God."
"I never believed in the influence of the devil. And now I affirm that he has strong influence on the persons who are in the condition in which I was then. Only many prayers, others and mine own, united with sacrifices and penances, could have snatched me from his grip. And even this only little by little. If there are only few externally obsessed, there are very many internally possessed. The devil cannot steal the free will from those who give themselves to his influence. But in punishment of their, so to speak, methodical apostasy from God, He allows the devil to nest in them."
"I hate the devil too. And yet I am pleased about him, because he tries to ruin all of you; he and his satellites, the fallen with him at the beginning of time. There are millions of them. They roam around the earth, as thick as a swarm of flies, and you do not even notice it. It is not reserved to us damned to tempt you; but to the fallen spirits. In truth every time they drag down here to hell a human soul their own torture is increased. But what does one not do for hatred?"
"Deep down I was rebelling against God. You did not understand it; you thought me still a Catholic. I wanted, in fact, to be called one; I even used to pay my ecclesiastical dues. Maybe your answers were right sometimes. On me they made no impression, since you must not be right. Because of these counterfeited relationships between the two of us, our separation on the occasion of my marriage was of no consequence to me. Before the wedding I went to confession and communion once more. It was a precept. My husband and I thought alike on this point. Why not comply with this formality? So we complied with this, as with the other formalities."
"Our married life, in general, was spent in great harmony. We were of the same idea in everything. In this too, that we did not want the burden of children. In truth, my husband would have like to have one; no more, of course. In the end I succeeded in dissuading him even from this desire. Dresses, luxurious furniture, places of entertainment, picnics and trips by car and similar things were more important for me... It was a year of pleasure on earth, the one that passed from my marriage to my sudden death. Internally, of course, I was never happy, although externally at ease. There was always something indeterminate inside that gnawed at me."
"Unexpectedly I had an inheritance from my Aunt, Lotte. My husband succeeded in increasing his wages to a considerable figure. And so I was able to furnish our new home in an attractive way. Religion did not show its light but from afar off, pale, feeble and uncertain."
"I used to give free vent to my ill humor about some mediaeval representations of hell in cemeteries or elsewhere, in which the devil is roasting souls in red burning coals, while his companions with long tails drag new victims to him. Clara! One can be mistaken in depicting hell, but never can one exaggerate."
"I tell you: the fire of which the Bible speaks, does not mean the torment of the conscience. Fire is fire! What He said: 'Away from Me, you accursed one, into eternal fire', is to be understood literally. Literally! How can the spirit be touched by material fire, you will ask. How can your soul suffer on earth when you put your finger on the flame? In fact the soul does not burn; and yet what torture all the individual feels!"
"Our greatest torture consists in the certain knowledge that we shall never see God. How can this torture us so much, while on earth we are so indifferent? As long as the knife lies on the table, it leaves you cold. You see how keen it is, but you do not feel it. Plunge the knife into the flesh and you will start screaming for pain. Now we feel the loss of God. The lost Catholics suffer more than those of other religions, because they, mostly, received and despised more graces and more light. He who knew more suffers more cruelly than he who knew less. He who sinned out of malice suffers more keenly than he who sinned out of weakness. But nobody suffers more than he deserves. Oh, if that were not true, I should have a motive to hate!"
"My death happened this way . . ."
"A week ago – I am speaking according to your reckoning, because according to pain, I could very well say that it is already ten years that I am burning in hell - a week ago, then, my husband and I, on a Sunday went on a picnic, the last one for me. The day was glorious. I felt very well. A sinister sense of pleasure that was with me all the day long, invaded me. When lo, suddenly, during the return, my husband was dazzled by a car that was coming full speed. He lost control."
"'Jesus', used frequently by some people of German language – escaped from my lips with a shivering. Not as a prayer, but as a shout. A lacerating pain took hold of the whole of me. (In comparison with the present only a trifle). Then I lost consciousness. Strange! That morning this thought had come to me in an inexplicable way: 'You could go to Mass once more', It seemed like the last call of Love."
"Clear and resolute, my 'NO' cut off that train of thought. You will know already what happened after my death. The lot of my husband and that of my mother, what happened to my corpse and the proceedings of my funeral are known to me through some natural knowledge we have here. What happens on earth we know only obscurely. But we know what touches us closely. I see also where you are living."
"I myself awoke from the darkness suddenly, in the instant of my passing. I saw myself as flooded by a dazzling light. It was in the same place where my dead body was lying. It was like a theater, when suddenly the lights in the hall are put out, the curtains are rent aside and an unexpected scene, horrible illuminated, appears. The scene of my life."
"My soul showed herself to me as in a mirror; all the graces despised from my youth until my last NO to God. I felt myself like an assassin, to whom his dead victim is shown during his trial at court - Should I repent? Never! - Should I feel ashamed? Never!"
"However, I could not even stand before the eyes of God, rejected by me. There was only one thing for me: flight! As Cain fled from the dead body of Abel, so my soul rushed from the sight of horror."
"This was the particular judgment: the invisible Judge said: 'Away from Me'. Then my soul, as a yellow brimstone shadow, fell headlong into the place of eternal torture."
–––
It is important to point out the word "eternal" – not a thousand years, not a million years, not ten trillion years, but on-going, forever, even beyond time, after time ceases.
Versus the bliss of on-going joy of knowing God for all eternity, if only we seek Him during our lives with our whole hearts, praying to Him to give us love for Him.
Some people may say, "it is so negative to talk about Hell and false idols and sin and all of this!"
So negative?
Let's say there is a man and every day, he goes to a well to get water for himself to drink.
But the well is poisoned, and he doesn't know it, and he develops a terminal illness – he becomes sick, and will die.
Even if he found out the well was poisonous and stopped drinking from it, he would still die from the disease he contracted from the well.
Let's say that you know that the well is poisonous, and you also have a cure for the disease that he is going to die from.
Is it "negative" of you to point out that the well is poisonous and that if he keeps drinking from it, he will die?
Is it "negative" of you to give him the cure to his terminal disease?
No.
In fact, if you smiled at him and said, "keep drinking from your well! You'll be okay! Everything is fine!" you would be sick in the head, either insane or a sociopath.
It would be "negative" to not attempt to prevent him from dying by convincing him not to drink the poisoned water, and it would be "negative" to not give him the cure to his terminal disease.
So, too, it is not negative to point out the origin of misery, and give the cure – the origin of misery being sin and idolatry, and the cure from not physically dying, but spiritually dying, that is, entering into perpetual Hell – the cure of which is true love of God, truly seeking God.
That's what Jesus – Who is God – was born on earth to do: point out the "poison" to us, which is sin (including idolatry), so we no longer "drink" of it, and give us the "cure" – His Passion and Death, to atone for our sins, and then to give us pure and refreshing "water" for the rest of our lives – the water of eternal Life, that is, Himself.
(Revelation, 21:6-8): “And [God] said to me: It is done. I am Alpha and Omega; the beginning and the end. To her that thirsteth, I will give of the fountain of the water of life, freely. She that shall overcome shall possess these things, and I will be her God; and she shall be my daughter. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, they shall have their portion in the pool burning with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
“The fearful,” from the above quote from the Book of Revelation, means people afraid to admit they have a false idol or too afraid to give up a false idol.
Sometimes “the fearful” is translated as “cowards.”
We want to be brave, and face our mistakes so we can correct them and make our lives pleasing to God and good for us to live in.
We can pray to God to ask for the grace of bravery, for Him to make us brave.
If we don’t, we will get more and more miserable, and our lives will get worse and worse.
“The fearful” are people who realize they have done something bad with their lives, but instead of turning to God for help, they become self-conscious and turn away from God.
But God came to save sinners – people who have done something bad.
He pities us when we do something very bad because He knows how unhappy it makes us.
He knows it makes us unhappy to not have Him in our hearts.
More than we could want to save ourselves, God wants to save us – God wants to cleanse us and give us strength to not sin anymore, so He can be welcomed back into the heart of every person, no matter how bad that person was before turning to Him for help.
That is why we should ask God for help and not be so fearful that we end up hating Him.
Hating God will make us more miserable. He knows that, and He doesn’t want us to be miserable.
Fear takes away. Fear takes away from us until we are empty shells, and slaves to idols and sin.
Then we become miserable.
God gives. God gives to us. We increase when we are connected to God, when He dwells in us.
Then we become truly joyful.
The human soul can only be truly happy when it is pleasing God. And then we are incredibly happy, not just superficially, but in a deep, powerful way.
Mortal sin is a sin that permanently severs a soul from God until the sin is removed in sacramental baptism (if someone has never been baptized; you can only be baptized once) or sacramental confession.
God is Thrice Holy – He cannot exist in a soul that has very bad sins in it.
So He is driven out when we sin very badly.
Our society says these things aren’t sins, but that is a lie. That is why certain sins make people very unhappy, even though society says they will make us happy.
Those sins will distract us for a time, but they will leave us empty, because they drive God away from us.
A mortal sin is different from lesser sins.
It is called "mortal" because it kills the soul, meaning the person is spiritually dead.
Spiritual death does not mean our souls stop existing when we die.
God made us immortal. We will live forever as ourselves.
Spiritual death means God is not in our souls, whether our bodies are alive or not.
This is called "death" because God is Life – Life of the soul.
On earth, a spiritually dead person has many false idols to distract him or herself with.
He or she may even say, "I don't believe in this so it is isn't going to effect me."
But even those who are cowards and so lie to themselves and say "it isn't real so it won't effect me," suffer from the effects of their mortal sins.
The cities with the highest suicide rate in the country are Miami and San Francisco.
They are "atheist" cities where anything goes.
The people aren't killing themselves because someone is "guilt tripping" them – no one would dare say, "you shouldn't do such-and-such" in one of those cities.
They themselves don't feel guilty for their sins.
Despite anyone's personal feelings or "personal belief," it is an objective reality that, when sin drives God out of a soul, and a person stops seeking a relationship with God, she is empty inside.
Even if she is so arrogant that she doesn't acknowledge or ever think of God at all, or even if she despises Him, or "denies" that sin exists.
These "atheists" spiritually die inside and are more and more miserable deep down, like all humans who commit mortal sin.
There was a counsellor on a college, who used to tell students who came to him: "do whatever makes you happy, whatever you want! Don't worry about 'right' or 'wrong'!"
He had so many of his students commit suicide that he eventually came to the conclusion that sin really exists, and converted, and now he spends his life trying to explain this truth to people on behalf of all the students he indirectly killed with his lies and misinformation.
Other people find themselves false teachers who say, "once saved, always saved – you can to anything and you will not spiritually die because Jesus died for our sins so we could do anything."
But Jesus said: "Not everyone that says to Me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the Kingdom of Heaven: but she who does the Will of My Father who is in Heaven, she shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." (Matthew 7:21)
These people may lie to themselves and take photos that they show to everyone where they are look happy, to lie to others, too, but that doesn't change how agonizingly dead inside they are without the God Who loves them and created them.
All people were created by God out of His Love.
When we physically die, all idols are gone, and so we can no longer distract ourselves from the spiritual state of our soul.
A person in mortal sin will only have remaining that he or she doesn't have God anymore at death – pictures of pretend happiness on social media won't be there, and don't fool God, anyway.
God sees into their souls no matter what they do or where they are or who they deceive – even if they deceive themselves. God sees passed all deception.
When a person in mortal sin dies and does to judgement before God, there is a burning in the soul, an intense agony, because that soul forever sees God completely revealed in all His splendor and beauty and mercy and love, the fulfillment of all human longing, but cannot ever join Him because of the sin (including her idolatry) on her soul.
And the soul sees that it is because of its own actions that this agony has happened – because it rejected God and sought false idols instead during life.
A soul is capable of feeling more pain than a physical body. A body will eventually die if there is too much pain – the soul never dies, so it can feel much greater pains.
As beautiful as God is, and as fulfilling and wonderful as God is, is as terrible the pain a soul feels upon not being able to enter into God.
This unending pain is spiritual death – the torture of Hell.
Most people in Hell didn't believe there was a Hell, or didn't think they would go to it.
Mortal sins include: not praying every day, not seeking God (idolatry), fornication (pre-martial sex – that is, a marriage recognized by the Church – or a legally married relationship that idolatrously worships sex, putting sex above God's law, including focusing excessively or obsessing on sex, building the relationship on sex, and/or doing certain sex acts that God condemns), pornography and willfully meditating on pornographic thoughts rather than using prayer to banish and oppose them (meditating on God can save your soul, so meditating on pornographic thoughts can destroy your soul), masturbation, getting drunk/high, (of all these things, it may be said: "you knew how to make a martyr of your heart to give pleasure to your flesh. Now make a martyr of your flesh to give eternal peace to your heart.") We are warned "sins of the flesh," more than any other reason, are why people go to Hell.
blasphemy (defiling God and His Holy things and His people and Saints), murder and gossip/rumor spreading/excessive abuse/intense rage (which all have the purpose and/or result of destroying another person), harboring hatred in your heart for another person (no matter what s/he's done) or towards yourself (self-love isn't the opposite of self-hatred because both focus on the self – forgetting the self and loving of God is the opposite of both and the cure of both), meditating on destroying another person or meditating on doing violence to another person, actually doing violence to another person, compulsive lying or manipulating, (of all these things, it may be said: "God gave us sight and speech to accomplish holy deeds. A slanderer misuses them and degrades them, employing them for evil deeds.")
abortion, contraception (instead of natural family planning), tampering with the occult – whether sincerely or even as a joke – which is the easiest way to become demonically possessed and the easiest way to curse yourself (casting spells, including love spells, going to a palm reader or witch doctor or psychic, playing with ouiji board, tarot cards, fortune telling, yoga, New Age, transcendental meditation, wicca, Santaria, spiritism, spirit guides, speaking with spirits like supposed TV “ghost hunters” or “clairvoyants” commonly do, anything to do with any kind of energy transfer, summoning spirits, doing anything with chakras, Labyrinths or other occult prayer walks, etc.); bribes (accepting or offering bribes);
if you have had your First Communion (Catholic): to not go to confession at least once a year, to not go to Mass every weekend, to receive Communion in a state of mortal sin (if you are in mortal sin, or if you haven't had your First Communion, you can go to Mass, simply don't come up for Communion – pray instead until you have gone to Confession or gone through RCIA – Roman Catholic Initiation for Adults), the "charismatic movement" which claims equality with God (Philippians 2:6: "Jesus who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness" – if Jesus, Who is God, humbled Himself as an example to us, how much more ought we be humble?),
for everyone: it is a mortal sin to despair of God's Infinite Mercy (despair is saying, "my sins are too great for God to forgive"), or take for granted God's Infinite Mercy.
Those are all a few common mortal sins, unfortunately.
Run to His Divine Mercy with all sincerity (not just to take advantage of Him or His Mercy or ignoring His Judgements).
On Divine Mercy: There is no sin that is too great for God to forgive:
- "I desire trust from My creatures. Encourage souls to place great trust in My fathomless mercy. Let the weak, sinful soul have no fear to approach Me, for even if it had more sins than there are grains of sand in the world, all would be drowned in the unmeasurable depths of My mercy.
- "Let no soul fear to draw near to Me, even though its sins be as scarlet."
- "No soul will be justified until it turns with confidence to My mercy; and this is why the first Sunday after Easter is to be the Feast of Mercy. [...] On this day the very depths of My tender mercy are open. I pour out a whole ocean of graces upon those souls who approach the fount of My Mercy [confession]. Whoever approached the Fount of Life on this day will be granted complete remission of sins and punishment.”
- "Let the greatest sinners place their trust in My mercy. They have the right before others to trust in the abyss of My mercy. My daughter, write about My mercy towards tormented souls. Souls that make an appeal to My mercy delight Me. To such souls I grant even more graces than they ask. I cannot punish even the greatest sinner if he makes an appeal to My compassion, but on the contrary, I justify him in My unfathomable and inscrutable mercy. Write: before I come as a just Judge, I first open wide the door of My mercy. He who refuses to pass through the door of My mercy must pass through the door of My justice"
- "I lived for you, I died for you, and I created the heavens for you. [...] Everything that exists is enclosed in the bowels of My mercy, more deeply than an infant in its mother’s womb. How painfully distrust of My goodness wounds Me! Sins of distrust wound Me most painfully. […] This distrust of My goodness hurts Me very much. If My death has not convinced you of My love, what will?" – from Devotion to Divine Mercy [ read more here ]
Part of the Divine Mercy devotion is also the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, a prayer of which Jesus promised: "Say unceasingly the chaplet that I have taught you. Whoever will recite it will receive great mercy at the hour of death. Priests will recommend it to sinners as their last hope of salvation. Even if there were a sinner most hardened, if he were to recite this chaplet only once, he would receive grace from My infinite mercy. I desire that the whole world know My infinite mercy. I desire to grant unimaginable graces to those souls who trust in My mercy."
Some clarifications on sins: (Sometimes people say they are practicing "Christian astrology" or "Christian yoga" or whatever occult practice and tact on the word "Christian" before it. They are refusing to humble themselves. Astrology is condemned in the Old Testament as occult, as it is now condemned as occult. It was rampant in the Middle Ages when witchcraft was actually a social concern, although we are becoming more and more like that with even mainstream newspapers publishing "curses" to put on politicians. // And several Hindu leaders have warned foolish Westerners that they really are invoking gods [demons, as all false gods are] through yoga, which is one of the reasons people become obsessed with yoga so quickly. Obsession – of anything – is a spiritual step below demonic possession. Yoga has been warned against for centuries, even by secular psychologists. It is only now that people are so far from God and so idolatrous that it is part of the culture. There is no way to "invoke" God through yoga, and so there is no way there is such a thing as Christian yoga – that is a lie.)
(If someone is texting or looking at their phone while driving and commits property damage [destroying a car, for example], or injures a person, or kills a person, he or she has those sins. Someone who kills someone else from texting and driving has the sin of murder on her soul. Or destroying another's car, they have destruction of property – stealing that person's money, because it will cost money to repair the car. These sins don't go off the soul until the person stops texting while driving and goes to confession for committing murder, injury, or stealing. So, then – what is the sin of texting while driving, in and of itself? Idolatry, most likely, because it is putting social relationships above God – God gave you the duty to focus on driving safely and legally so that you don't kill or hurt others or yourself.
Likewise, if you are on the phone or online at work, or asleep at work, when it isn't a break, you are stealing company money because you are not doing what you're supposed to be doing. This is also a sin.
Finally, the rate of pedestrian deaths has increased to about 6,000 a year, from basically none a year several years ago, as a result of being so absorbed in social media or texting on the phone, which is, again, idolatry, and – negligent suicide? Reckless behavior resulting in death, which God also condemns.)
(Sometimes people can dress – or be un-dressed – in very provocative ways, and this can destroy that person's soul, as well, by driving God away. You know what I mean. You can be fashionable, you can look nice, but you can't try to be or look like a sex idol or porn star without driving God away from your life.)
(Cosmetic plastic surgery, such as implants, for example, breast or other body part implants, are also a mortal sin, as also seen from the high rate of suicide and depression after women get these. 15% of women who get breast implants successfully kill themselves after getting them. For every successful attempt, it is estimated that 8 more unsuccessfully attempted, and 20 more than that contemplate suicide, meaning women who get implants universally consider or commit suicide. The reason for this is idolatry – expecting something other than God to make her happy, this being, the way she looks – and the desecrations of the Temple of the Holy Spirit, which is, the human body. The flesh is being cut open, and a solid object inserted under the flesh, and then the skin sewn closed around the solid object. This must be, spiritually speaking, a desecration of the body, considering the spiritual problems that result from this procedure. It is also idolatry of trying to be perfect by worldly standards, to the point of committing the sin of having one's own body cut open and desecrated.)
---
Many people think that they are cursed who have committed mortal sin because nothing in their lives works right anymore.
But the answer is that God is not in their lives anymore – He was driven out by their sins.
Jesus said, "blessed are the poor in spirit." The "poor in spirit" are those who depend on God above everything else.
Not depending on having a relationship, money, health, or some worldly success.
That means the opposite of that statement is also true: "cursed are the rich in spirit," that is, those whose spirits are cluttered with a false idol(s) and/or other sins, so that there is no longer room for God.
In the New Testament of the Bible, Saint John teaches us that there is a difference between venial and mortal sin: “All iniquity is sin. And there is a sin unto death.” (1 John 5:17)
We must avoid both lesser sins (because they prepare the soul to accept greater sins), as well as previously mentioned mortal sins (focuse on overcoming mortal sin first, before the lesser ones which aren't listed here, especially if a great number of mortal sins are in your life).
Every sin we commit is on our soul until God removes it.
If we sinned 20 years ago, the sin is still on the soul.
When a person is baptized "in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Ghost)," the newly baptized person's soul is forever changed.
A "baptismal robe" is on the soul forever.
Even if that person never knows anything about Christianity,
even if that person hates God,
even if that person goes to Hell for all eternity,
the baptismal mark is still on the soul.
When we sin, our baptismal robe is stained.
When we commit mortal sin, our souls are severed from God, and if we were to die in a state of mortal sin, we would go to Hell, because we are separated from God through sin.
A person cannot be baptized twice.
The baptism is permanent, forever, because it permanently and forever changed the baptized's soul (if done in the correct formula, that is, "in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Ghost)," those exact words and not any other, ie, "gender neutral" forms of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are an invalid baptism).
So how to clean the "baptismal robe," as our baptism is called, should we stain it with sin?
That is what Sacrament Confession (confession with a priest in the prescribed formula) is.
You aren't telling your sins to the priest, you are telling them to God, and the priest is acting as a mediator.
The priest doesn't forgive your sins, God does – the priest blesses you.
In anti-Catholic propaganda, a priest will say, "I forgive you your sins."
But in real confession, the priest just blesses you – only God can forgive our sins.
Jesus – God the Son, who intercedes for our sins – is truly present in the confessional. Even if the priest is not a great priest, Jesus is the best priest, and He is truly there.
We have to believe wholeheartedly that our sins, if truly confessed in the confessional, are gone, or else we blaspheme the Sacrament of Confession.
Reconciling our souls with God begins at home.
We can start repenting of our mortal sins now, and seeking to turn away from them, and God will begin to help us.
Going to Confession undoes the sin in our lives, as if it never was on our souls.
God forgets the sin we committed.
He hears our prayers again.
He helps in a very mighty way to correct the damage done by our sins (although we should strive to do this with God's help, as well).
We are united to God again, and His comfort envelopes our souls.
Our baptismal robe is washed in the Blood of the Passion through the Sacrament of Confession, and a worthy Confession is more spiritually profound than an exorcism, because a soul that was dead is brought to life again.
Confession also fortifies our souls greatly, so we will be less tempted to commit the sin in the future.
It reunites our souls with God:
Apocalypse (Revelation) 22:14: "Blessed are they that wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb: that they may have a right to the tree of life, and may enter in by the gates into the city [Heaven]. Without [outside of Heaven] are dogs [used to describe people rich in spirit], and sorcerers, and unchaste, and murderers, and servers of idols, and every one that loves and makes a lie."
Salvation begins on earth, and so does punishment for sin as well as reward (comfort) of knowing God and turning from sin:
Apocalypse (Revelation) 7:13: "And one of the ancients answered, and said to me: These that are clothed in white robes, who are they? and whence came they? And I said to him: My Lord, you know. And he said to me: These are they who are come out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.* Therefore they are before the throne of God, and they serve Him day and night in His temple: and He, that sits on the throne, shall dwell over them.
"They shall no more hunger nor thirst, neither shall the sun fall on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb, which is in the midst of the throne, shall rule them, and shall lead them to the fountains of the waters of life, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."
*Spiritually, mystically washing their baptismal robes in the Blood of the Lamb, Christ, in the Sacrament of Confession.
While we won't fully experience the joys of never crying again until Heaven, God will begin to wipe away our tears on Earth, now, that we shed over our own sins and the problems they have caused, that we shed over the sins committed against us, and that we shed over the sins in the world that we see others commit against others.
God will begin to comfort us and care for us and wipe away our tears, now, even on Earth.
We will experience great comfort.
If we have sin on our soul, it drives out God, and God Himself is Love Itself.
Loving God first will help us love one another better, because we are no longer loving each other for ourselves, but for God, and in the context of God, and with God's help.
This is why the more people ignore God and focus on themselves and worship creatures, the higher the divorce rate.
People don’t make good gods. It makes people miserable to be set up as a false idol, even if they think it will make them happy to be placed above God.
This is because everyone – every single person – was made by God to love God, as the first objective of his or her life.
If people don't have a right relationship with God — who is our most fundamental relationship — they can't have a right relationship with themselves or one another.
How we love God is reflected in how we love one another: "If any man say, 'I love God,' and hate his brother; he is a liar. For he that loves not his brother, whom he sees, how can he love God, whom he doesn't see? … No man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his charity is perfected in us.” (1 John 4:20,12)
If we ignore God, we are ignoring one another on a deep level. For example, ignoring the spiritual needs of others because we are ignoring the existence of the soul, because we ignore God.
This is how we sin against one another — ignoring God, not putting Him first.
If someone really loved another person with full understanding, she would never fornicate with him because it would destroy his soul and their relationship, and cut them off from God.
Once cut off from God, they are cut off from virtues like loyalty and purity, and sins like adultery and abuse and dehumanizing one another (getting “bored” with one another) come into the relationship.
The relationship decays because sin and spiritual death are there. God – Life – is not there.
The people aren't capable of acting in a loving way anymore, because God Who is Love is no longer in them.
If they act loving, it is empty – an act. It is no longer life-giving because God is Life. And it is an act that often fails and the misery and hate – the absence of God – shows through.
This act is even observed in secular psychology. It is referred to as a "fantasy bond."
But it is really the result of idolatry and sin, and can only be cured through a real, meaningful relationship with God.
In a relationship between two people without God, there is no more appreciation for one another because they don’t appreciate God who does everything for them, because He is no longer in their hearts.
How can they deeply appreciate one another, people who are imperfect, if they don't appreciate God, Who is Perfectly Loving and Adorable? It is not possible.
She would seek God first, so she could understand how human lives and souls work, and seek to benefit both the life and the soul of herself and others, in the context of God, instead of in the context of false gods.
If both people in a relationship did that, then the relationship wouldn't crumble or be bad.
But if even one person seeks God, it can save many souls, and those souls would owe their salvation in part to the one who sought God on earth.
They would thank her and be her friend if they make it to Heaven, be her friend for all eternity because she prepared to meet God when they distracted themselves with deep misery, and so grace came through her to their souls, too.
Many people will not know the joy of a real relationship with God on earth. This is very sad, that they refuse this.
They spend their lives chasing meaningless idols that dissolve at death, and ignore everything that is important.
Don't be miserable like one of those people. They are very sad.
...
Some people think, "I will just ignore these mortal sins, brush them under the rug, pretend I didn't do them,"
but the sins don't go away off the person until she goes to sacramental confession with a real ordained priest.
The sin is still on her soul, preventing God from coming in fully and she is still suffering punishment for it in her life.
She may have been willing to spend the effort to go to a palm reader or fornicate, but not the phone call and few minutes to see a priest to save her soul.
God is so merciful that He even comforts sinners, so she may feel just a drop of His comfort and say, "I am done, God is with me."
But it's not true. This is a temptation. Satan wants us to remain in sin because he is jealous, because he gave up God forever, and he wants everyone to suffer. He wants to remain in control of her life, so it can still be miserable. He may even give her intense anger or fear of confession, and may convince her it is from her and not from himself.
God is still not with her as He needs to be and she will still be empty on a deeper level.
And God won't be able to comfort her and give her special graces and support her completely, until she completely turns towards Him.
She needs to have God wash the sin off her soul.
She has to reject the [temptation to stop developing her relationship with God].
God will help us because He wants us to be united to Him fully. He longs for that day when He will be united to us.
The devil is a coward and will flee when we show determination and strength to do God's Will.
She needs to pray much and seek God much at home, for strength and courage and wisdom to do what is right, to read about God and confession and understand it, and make an examination of her conscious to give a good sacramental confession.
An example is, someone who fornicates, and then realizes it is a mortal sin, and says, "I will get married!"
But she never stops fornicating, or if she does stop, she never confesses the sin of fornication.
That sin is still there on her soul, and God is still not in the relationship.
Only God can save our souls by removing our sins, which He does through the sacraments.
The sin on her soul will cause problems in the relationship down the line – it also most likely will cause it to crumble and fall apart (or be so horrible to be in through the corruption that is caused by sin that the people will wish I had fallen apart).
80% of marriages end in divorce where the couple "lived together" for years before the marriage. And likely the 20% that don't end are so miserable that it is a greater punishment than if they did end.
There is no true happiness outside of God.
Others, finding how easy and convenient sacramental confession is, think, "I will do whatever sin I want, and take advantage of God's mercy by just removing it later!"
God sees her insincerity and her sacramental confessions don't count until she sincerely wants God in her life and sincerely wants to stop being miserable, and sacramentally confesses her insincere confessions.
So false idols lead to intense, intense misery during physical life, and a misery and despair that cannot be fathomed, after physical death.
This is why the most important thing in our life is to seek God, while we are still physically alive, and to spiritually grow in His grace.
Graces in the soul are spiritual gifts in the soul.
Graces come from God, usually diffused into the soul through prayer, or holy reading, or others praying for us.
For example, if you read this and decide to change your life to seek God instead of idols, God has given you many many graces to pull you towards Himself, and you have responded to those graces positively.
This will make you happy in the long run, both in your life on earth and, if you continue seeking God sincerely, in eternity.
God's grace will make us fulfilled now and forever.
She will no longer be alone in her own soul, alone without God.
God will be in her heart, and the hole in her heart will be filled by God, Who alone can fill it.
She must seek God.
How can she seek God more?
What can she do?
The first thing she can do have great confidence in God’s Mercy. She can pray right now: “Lord God, have mercy on me, I have not done right because I have not sought You like I should, and it has made me miserable. I do not feel You in my soul like You want. Help me.”
Pray: “Lord God, I want to do right. I want to be happy. I want You to be happy with me.”
Pray: “Lord God, I want to love You. To love You is a grace in the human soul. All grace comes from You alone. Therefore, fill my soul with love for You – You alone can put love in me. I give my heart to You: put Your Love in it.”
Pray: “Lord God, I will start to love You. Please don’t let me stop asking You to put more and more love for You in my soul.”
When will she have enough love of God in her soul?
She can ask for more love for God her whole life, and God will always increase this grace in the soul.
And then her happiness will increase and increase.
Many people and society will try to convince her to stop or give up "this God thing." They are tempting her.
She may also be tempted to keep going back to focusing on her idols and ignoring God, saying, "I will pray later" or "I've decided only my idol will make me happy" or, "I've experienced enough God, I'm done."
Jesus warns about this very much in the Gospels, so that we will recognize when we are tempted and decide to stay with God.
It's best not to talk about God experiences (depending on who you are talking to) in the beginning because people may try to convince you to hate Him, either through reason or through looking down on you, or even trying to hurt you psychologically or emotionally.
They are miserable because they hate Him and want others to be miserable, too – whether they publicly acknowledge that's why they're trying to destroy God in other people or whether they don't acknowledge it, or don't even realize it consciously.
However, you can't deny God if put on the spot.
"She who denies me before people, I will deny before My Father in Heaven," (Matthew 10:33) Jesus says.
This includes denying God by promoting mortal sin or pretending to still live in mortal sin.
Just don't go open yourself up to people attacking you by publicizing that you are now seeking God.
They will try to steal grace out of your soul, and when you are just starting out in seeking God sincerely, these can be very dangerous attacks.
Seek God and give up sin.
When God strengthens you, you will be able to phase out those people who actively hate Him after you give a testimony of Him.
Ignore temptations within yourself to postpone God or dismiss Him.
Ignore temptations from the world to hate God or give up on seeking Him.
Ignore temptations to return to false idols – remember how miserable you were while seeking the idols, and believe in the promise of God to save your life and your soul, and so seek Him.
Love always says, “more, more!” Love never says, “enough!”
Love God – "God, give me more love for You! More, more! I want to love You more and more – sincerely love You, not in word only but in my whole heart and with my whole life! Joyfully love You!"
A soul filled with love of God will always thirst for Him more and more, no matter what anyone else says, and no matter what temptation the devil (who is very jealous and miserable for having given up God for worthless idols) lays before it.
Keep turning to God and ignore all temptation to put Him off.
Saint Peter writes: “For if, flying from the pollutions of the world, through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they be again entangled in them and overcome: their latter state is become unto them worse than the former.
“For it had been better for them not to have known the way of justice, than after they have known it, to turn back from that holy commandment which was delivered to them.
“For, that of the true proverb has happened to them: The dog is returned to his vomit: and, The sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire.”
People who have dogs know that when the dog throws up, it walks away from it's vomit for a time, then walks back to eat it.
The proverbs is a metaphor for going back to something that is not useful for us.
Peter is telling us that we need to seek God and not look back to our old paths, our old ways of doing things or thinking about things.
We need to give up the way the world sees things, because it will lead to our misery.
Peter goes on to write that the ways of the world are “promising us liberty, whereas they themselves are the slaves of corruption. For by whom a man is overcome, of the same also he is the slave.” (2 Peter 2:19)
This slavery makes us unspeakably miserable inside. Those people are miserable. They gloat over others and act superior, and they are dead inside.
God will help us not go back to the ways of the world.
Romans 8:34: “Jesus… is at the right hand of God, who intercedes (prays and appeals to God) for us.” He is constantly praying for us and offering His Wounds for our sins, that we might turn away from them towards Him.
He alone will judge us: the world does not judge us, nor those who gloat over us, nor those who we are in a relationship with or want to be in a relationship with will judge us.
Only God will either save us or judge us at the end of our lives: we have to do what He asks, or else we will be unhappy.
We have to keep seeking God, and asking Him for wisdom.
This is very good!
But she is still anxious about her relationships because she still has these idol attachments in her soul.
She will keep praying to love God forever, every day, many times a day.
But she is still anxious about all these things.
She has not spiritually grown enough in her relationship with God or dealt with her mortal sin.
What else can she do??
Literally every single entry on this blog is about what you can do to seek God, and about God’s Infinite Mercy in forgiving our sins, and how we can obtain information about Him and learn to love Him more and more, by suggesting reading of works by Saints (which, if we read prayerfully, are the most helpful and wonderful education we will ever receive in our whole lives).
Most of the entries quote the Bible and Saints, who are real people, once physically alive like you and me, and suggest further reading. These saints are very wise and spent their lives loving God and meditating on Him and the Bible. We know the Saints are in Heaven because prayers to them have had God work miracles and led people to growing closer to God and understanding Him better. (They are not the spirits "summoned" by occultists.) Very rigorous and objective tests and trials are done to determine if someone is a Saint in Heaven after he or she has physically died.
Their writings are very helpful because we can see the struggles they went through and how they came closer to God.
Because we know their lives brought them to Heaven, we don't have to worry about their writings leading us to error.
We have to pray to God so He can enlighten us so we can understand their writings.
Otherwise, our sins or idols or spiritual immaturity can blind us, and we can read their works wrong.
We need to pray always.
We can pray the same prayers the Saints prayed to God and overcome the world and our own sins and fears, the way they did.
Then we can become true children of God and be very fulfilled.
If we know more about Him, we can think more about Him, understand Him better, and learn to speak to Him and pray to Him, and learn how to be reconciled with Him.
Then, we can love Him more and more, and become happier and more fulfilled.
How can she find time to read these entries, and – many of these entries lead to books written by saints. How can she find time to read all of these things?? It is so many things!
God said, we must rest on Sunday, His Holy Day. And we must be kind to people on these days, too – we must not say mean things or fight or argue. And – we must pray to Him on these days, too.
He says, when we do these things, we will please Him and He will start to bless us by giving us more graces in our souls.
When we are resting on Sundays, we will have much time to read about Him and learn things about Him and think about Him.
And then we will have new information to think about all during the week.
And so she will do this.
And she will learn many wonderful and powerful prayers that will draw her closer to God and God closer to her.
She will learn the Rosary, too, which is a powerful prayer.
And then God’s grace will really flood her soul and transform her from who she was, into a new creature of God's grace.
And she will be led by God towards Himself and towards all that He loves, and He will be able to shower her with all the graces He wishes to lavish upon her.
She can pray and discern that if God is calling her to a relationship, that she can ask Him for a relationship that will enable her to grow in her love of God, so that she can be ultimately happy.
God is love – when our relationships are in God, they are a greater and purer love, endowed with very much virtue and joy and depth. They are not selfish and impatient, and they are not disappointing the way they would be if they were false idols because we are not depending upon human relationships for our deepest fulfillment – we are already fulfilled and sustained from God.
The human relationships become fruitful ways for us to express our love of God, Who said we ought to love our neighbor like ourselves out of love of God.
We, people, can love each other heroically and deeply and lastingly when we love one another out of love of God.
We can only love one another really when we have the charity of God in us, which we have through prayer and turning away from sin.
Because God is eternal, and God is love, when we love someone with God, our love is eternal – it's not fickle and selfish and impatient and so willing to discard people, like the "love" of the people who aren't seeking God.
Humans can really only love one another out of our love of God, out of God's grace in our hearts. Without it, we can't love each other. And in the love of God, our relationships are so peaceful.
But the focus must still be on God first and foremost.
Then everything in our lives is in relation to our relationship with God. Everything becomes in the context of God. And then things become deeply peaceful and deeply joyful, because we are loving God in return.
And then the human relationships aren't idolatrous and disappointing, aren't above God, so they aren't empty, because human relationships, although strengthened and lifted up, become secondary to our relationship with Love Himself, with Holiness Himself – with God.
And then, she will be happy and not idolatrous and empty, like the other people in the world who constantly seek after empty idols.
It happens that when we have spent our whole lives in worldly relationships, with people who aren't sincerely seeking God and who aren't seeking to love one another out of their love of God, and we have also not been aware of doing that in our lives, either, we may realize that – our whole concept of what a relationship even is, how it is supposed to look, how it is supposed to feel, how we are supposed to act, has been defiled by the corruption of our society which really usually only depicts sin and idolatry.
They're not very good relationships, those in the world. They're usually discouraging, and controlling, and bitter, and selfish, and painful, and accusing, and envying the abilities of one another, and full of trying to prove oneself or build oneself up while demeaning the other, manipulation, impurity, insincerity, ridicule, disregard, gossip, disrespect, joylessness, bragging, showing off, lying, cruelty, sometimes even physical violence, taking advantage of one another sexually, and full of betrayal on both sides.
A real relationship, the way God meant it to be, might be... really foreign, difficult or impossible to imagine.
We may have never seen one before.
We may have no such positive experience with our parents or family members, either.
Don't worry! We have only to rely on God our loving and merciful, generous Father!
She can pray to Him to help us understand what authentic human relationships look like, feels like – what one even is.
She can pray for a relationship that won't cause her great suffering from abuse or cause her to lose her soul.
So often I tell this true information about God's generosity and the people go deaf to everything they had just heard, and forget all the fear for their souls they just had, and get intense about what their idol is, thinking, "ah-ha! I can get this idol now!"
They say to themselves, "I already love God," and they will forget the holy fear they had for their souls reading the above, they willfully listen to the temptation that their souls are "fine," and then begin long prayers for their idol [whether it's a relationship or physical health or worldly success], trying to try to make God to serve their idol instead of seeking Him.
I've seen so many people clamoring so intensely for relationships, worldly success, and all the like, and how it just smashed their lives to pieces.
So many people I grew up with are dead, from drug abuse, suicide, and stress, and I'm not even 30.
Normal middle class and upper middle class kids.
They're all dead or their lives are smashed to pieces from idolatry, blasphemy, occultism, fornicating, and other sins...
I knew an atheist, she didn't believe in her soul or in God or that fornicating was a sin, and she started, and she had nightmares of worms eating her soul, and her mother (who never baptized her and encouraged her sin) was examining her dying with great cruelty.
She got involved with spells and other occult things, because one sin leads to another, (as we see in another post on this blog too, when the woman, though legally married, was still fornicating because she made a false idol out of sex and went to a witchdoctor and became cursed).
This "friend" (because out of envy she was cursing everyone because their backs, although smiling to their faces, so she was betraying everyone and was no friend) had disturbing things happening in her house that she couldn't explain, preternatural phenomenon.
And then she lost everything – her family, all her friends, got stuck in a miserable job, which she then lost, ended up living in a run down slum even when she had the job (who knows where she is now), then lost her sexual partner...
Everything crumbled around her. And she cursed everyone, causing death and insanity in people around her. Working to damn everyone around her.
It didn't matter that she didn't "believe." She didn't believe because she rejected God, she wanted to be God, and redefine good and evil, so that evil was good and good was evil.
And it all fell apart.
I know countless stories like this. I could fill up books... long, long books, just full of all these people I've known, who are dead now, or their souls are dead and they're dying... So many people striving desperately after what will destroy their souls, and what does destroy their souls...
I have to try to not think about them, because otherwise, you develop this survivor's guilt...
Our generation, in public school, taught: idolatry to government (socialism and communism, both condemned by the Catholic Church, both that Mary warned about at Fatima, both that caused millions of deaths – 100 million deaths by communists, communists who call themselves "militant atheists," who school teachers largely sympathized with, and the Nazis, which are the socialists, causing millions of deaths, although school taught against nazis they were certainly pro-socialist from day one, and they tried to feign a distinction between them and other socialists, but there is no distinction, because they both was global domination and atheism or a religion so watered down that it is no "threat" to them; and teaching the French Revolution, the Mother of Communism and Socialism, that was based on lies, and resulted in the rounding up and beheading of thousands of Catholics in Paris in a blood bath, the first act of modern terrorism – they taught this atrocity as... enlightened... "the Enlightenment," they taught in school – praiseworthy, when humanity killed God in favor of being relevant to what "the people" wanted) – and the public schools also institutionally taught blasphemy of Mary.
At Fatima, Mary mentioned 5 points of blasphemy by which God is offended and by which we are to make reparation by means of the daily rosary and the First Saturday devotion.
Those blasphemies are (from Marian.org, Fatima Timeline) First: blasphemies against the Immaculate Conception; Second: against her Virginity; Third: against the Divine Maternity, refusing, at the same time, to receive her as the Mother of mankind; Fourth: those who seek publicly to implant, in the hearts of children, indifference, disrespect, and even hate for this Immaculate Mother; Fifth: those who revile her directly in her sacred images.
Our public school teachers taught us all these blasphemies.
Without any fear of God, they taught us these things as facts, full of ridicule and contempt.
The only "religious" topic they taught was heretical "creationism," which the Church opposes because the Bible doesn't actually say that.
And that is the result – deadly idolatry, deadly hatred of God. Literally. Deadly for soul. Deadly for body. Insanity. Cruelty. Sociopathy. Narcissism. Destroying minds. Destroying lives.
I converted after public school, which I talk brief of in the depression healing post (I'm the one who was saved from suicide by the rain when you get to the "rockbottom" stories), and after converting by so much grace and reading so many holy saints' works, it was so disappointing and confusing to see so many Catholics (worst of all, priests and deacons) falling into this, believing and wanting to believe and teaching – worst of all teaching – empty worldliness, lies that there really isn't any sin or anyone intentionally hurting each other and the lie that there isn't any spiritual effects from being sinned against, New Age, Protestant culture, narcissism (worshipping the "self" in the place of God), Nietzschism, sex, drugs, and other forms of materialism (I say "teaching," but they teach these things even by not preaching against them, by being silent about drugs and fornicating and porn and spiritual devotions and spiritual consequences of being sinned against and sinning).
Ignoring Fatima, ignoring Akita, ignoring Divine Mercy, ignoring the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts, – ignoring God.
Pushing God to the back, rather than climbing the spiritual mountain towards Him.
I sort of knew Catholics in High School. Catholics who went to "youth group" events, considered "active" in their churches, even. Put on pageants and the like.
They never talked about anything spiritual. They gossiped (which is a mortal sin). They never were devoted to the Sacred Heart or knew about Divine Mercy or why anyone would ever even need Mercy; they knew nothing of Mary, not that she was the head of God's army, that God would even have an army.
They didn't know anything at all, and they were going through CCE and all of that at the time. One who was even an instructor of children going through catechism.
Their religion was an accessory to them, that they used to enhance themselves, to feel superior to others or to have a sort of false security blanket – "Jesus loves me." But they didn't love Jesus, in a concrete way, in a mystical way, in a way that was incorporated into their lives. They didn't live their religion, they didn't pray, they weren't seeking God.
(I don't think those "Catholics" are dead, maybe spiritually dead – but if they are spiritually, they wouldn't realize it.)
It's shocking to think about – when being attacked, you'd think a better strategy would be to become more religious, to have stronger and holier Masses, to be more united, to preach ceaselessly the message of Fatima and Akita, focusing so much on both of them. In short, to fight back mystically, rather than to give in to the spiritual darkness...
Seeking the Light of God, rather than the light of the world...
God gave us an organized religion (Catholicism) because – evil is organized. Organized against us, to destroy us.
Those people I know are dead because of this push from within themselves, from society, and from their parents, to run after all these things you're "supposed" to have, and "supposed" to want, to "live life to the fullest" as society defines "life" (but in fact, it is the emptiest), and ignore God, or just put Him to the side, blaspheme Him, or only turn to Him when they were at the end of their rope rather than all the time; to not fear Hell or Judgement, not fear the consequences of their actions, pretending sin doesn't exist and that there will be no judgement for sin and so no need to repent.
Repenting is what gives us hope.
We only have hope when we turn back from the dark abyss, from sin, from idolatry, from distrust in God's goodness and trust in our own ways or the ways of the world.
I can recall how many years of prayer I wasted, praying for these things that led to so much emptiness and stress.
I did pray to save souls, I did unite my suffering to Jesus', but my faults were only given grace out of God's Infinite Mercy – that doesn't mean they in themselves were good. They weren't.
I wish I had prayed that I was pleasing to God, and that God felt loved, instead of praying really at all for worldly success, money, health, relationships...
Worldliness is so unspeakably empty and meaningless in the end.
I learned, don't focus on those things (I mean, as part of what God wants, you have to focus on doing the best and most careful job you can with whatever job you are doing, but – success, money, relationships, even "friendships," fame, whatever – if that's the focus, the drive, then it's empty). If they happen, they happen, but they're ultimately not worth a lot of focus or attention.
Just, God.
God feels so lonely, and it's so tragic when God, Who not only has literally everything, but can create or destroy anything and everything, and has created everything, is literally omnipotent, and is deserving of all love, is... sad.
How can God be sad? It's baffling. God is amazing.
But I know why He's sad, because He says so – because of such an emphasis on these false gods.
I think if I had prayed to be pleasing to God, and let Him take care of me instead of grasping for all these things I thought I "needed" or "wanted," and to pray for God to be loved and to feel loved (not just to make me more loving of Him, but also as a call to raise up the souls He chooses to love Him, wherever in the world those souls may be), and just prayed to separate my soul spiritually from the influence of the world and people living in the world, .... how much better my life would have been... how much simpler, how much less... awful.
I would have had a lot more comfort. I would have been a lot happier and a lot more fulfilled. God would have been a lot happier.
I don't want other people to have to suffer the same regrets that I have, or waste any more of their lives on this... emptiness that consumes the world and is tearing it apart, at an ever-increasing pace.
Saint James says to this, to encourage us to come close to God: "Draw close to God, and he will draw close to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners: and purify your hearts, you double minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into sorrow. Be humbled in the sight of the Lord, and he will exalt you." (James 4:8-10)
You really must seek God first and get rid of your mortal sins (including idolatry) with God's help, by asking Him to purify you and asking Him for the grace to love Him.
Your main focus is your soul.
Your main focus is not just using God to fulfill your wishes, but getting closer to Him.
Because that is the deeper wish of every soul, the longing has just been translated to worldly things because of human spiritual blindness – the fall of man – caused by original sin.
I have seen so many people's souls who need to love God, and when I say that's what they need, they smugly, proudly cut off this guidance by saying, "I already love God."
This must be the same way they brush God off, and He walks away sadly, His arms full of the graces He would have given them.
These people need to seek the grace of inner conversion from God, asking Him for help.
Their hearts are not on fire for love of God.
He would mercifully give them the fire of His love. All they have to do is ask.
(Linked at the end of this post are some resources for learning how to love God, how to advance in the spiritual life, but it all starts with the prayer to have a desire to love God. Even the desire to love God is a grace from God, given to us through prayer.)
Loving God doesn't mean feeling superior to others, and it doesn't mean trying to control the world so that it is right, and it doesn't mean showing off to everyone how outwardly pious you are.
That's worldliness. Pharisees are worldly.
That's idolatry, trying to control others and showing off and feeling and acting superior to others. It's empty, it's death.
Matthew 6:6: "But when you shall pray, enter into your chamber, and having shut the door, pray to your Father in secret: and your Father who sees in secret will repay you."
That's why I wrote this, to try to convince people to stop serving their idols and start loving God, Who is so sad that His love isn't returned, or sought.
God, who is so easy to love, and so willing to help us love Him.
People think, "oh! God is loving! I can ignore Him now, I know He'll always be there, I don't have to struggle for His love so it isn't worth anything."
But this isn't true, we do have a tremendous struggle, so that we can be pleasing to God.
And God will help us in that struggle, help us so much. Because He does love us – He wants us to struggle with Him.
We have to struggle against the world and sin and idolatry to people and idolatry to worldly success and idolatry through fear and idolatry of pleasing the world, and that struggle is a more fierce and exciting struggle than anything else.
If you don't think it's a tough struggle, it means you haven't truly tried yet.
Or if it's overwhelming, you haven't yet tried with God's help.
When God is so unhappily ignored, treated like a dead object, the people go off in misery (with false hopes for their idols) to throw their devotion at the feet of some false god, to receive nothing for their efforts but pain and destruction, while their own God Who loves them and would reward them beyond imagination, sighs and weeps.
We must — must — ask God to lead us to Him, and beg Him for wisdom and understanding and the grace to truly love Him.
Even if we have hitherto convinced ourselves that we "already love Him."
We can't make ourselves love God without asking Him for the grace to love Him.
If we try to run away and achieve change in ourselves on our own, God will lament: "Why would you run away privately and not acquaint yourself with Me, that I could bring you on your way with joy, and with songs, and with timbrels, and with harps?"
(Meaning, an inner rejoicing, rejoicing in the soul – your soul itself and all Heaven will be singing with joy.)
God wants to lovingly carry us to loving Him.
He wants us to not be lonely within ourselves, ever.
And then, what happens when she's closer to God, is her heart will no longer stop and her breathing will no longer stop, as if she were dying, when she thinks about not being in a relationship, or not having the idol.
She will still feel deeply peaceful in God, despite outward circumstances.
And she will want to seek Him more, want to be even closer, because seeking God with God's help was so fulfilling.
This is when the idols will have been smashed by the grace of the love of God.
She will no longer feel like a "loser" and she will no longer look down on others but instead be the one to pity those around her because they are so enmeshed in their idolatry, and they think it gives them something but she will understand in her soul, in a profound way, that it makes their lives much, much emptier.
And she will understand that they will have to stand before God, too, at the end of their lives. And their boyfriends and husbands and social status will not stand next to them on the judgement day of their souls – only how much they sought God and loved Him still or their sins will stand with them.
And she will understand that her exes will also have to stand before God. And only how much they sought God and loved Him or their sins will stand next to them.
And she will end up being the one who plays a big role in saving their souls because her prayers will become holy and no longer idolatrous or superstitious. And God will start to hear her prayers because she no longer has mortal sin in her soul. So she will be able to pray that people do not lose their souls, and many souls (that she either knows or does not know) will be able to avoid Hell when they die because of her prayers.
And she will be their great hero for all eternity in Heaven.
And a true brethren to the other people in Heaven, and they'll all be united together with her in God's infinite love and mercy.
Mary’s 15 Promises to Those Who Recite the Rosary:
- Whosoever shall faithfully serve me by the recitation of the Rosary shall receive signal graces.
- I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the Rosary.
- The Rosary shall be a powerful armor against Hell, it will destroy vice, decrease sin and defeat heresies.
- It will cause good works to flourish; it will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God; it will withdraw the hearts of men from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire for Eternal Things. Oh, that souls would sanctify themselves by this means!
- The soul which recommends itself to me by the recitation of the Rosary shall not perish.
- Whosoever shall recite the Rosary devoutly, applying himself to the consideration of its Sacred Mysteries shall never be conquered by misfortune. God will not chastise him in His justice, he shall not perish by an unprovided death; if he be just he shall remain in the grace of God, and become worthy of Eternal Life.
- Whoever shall have a true devotion for the Rosary shall not die without the Sacraments of the Church.
- Those who are faithful to recite the Rosary shall have during their life and at their death the Light of God and the plenitude of His Graces; at the moment of death they shall participate in the Merits of the Saints in Paradise.
- I shall deliver from purgatory those who have been devoted to the Rosary.
- The faithful children of the Rosary shall merit a high degree of Glory in Heaven.
- You shall obtain all you ask of me by recitation of the Rosary.
- All those who propagate the Holy Rosary shall be aided by me in their necessities.
- I have obtained from my Divine Son that all the advocates of the Rosary shall have for intercessors the entire Celestial Court during their life and at the hour of death.
- All who recite the Rosary are my Children, and siblings of my Only Son Jesus Christ.
- Devotion to my Rosary is a great sign of predestination.
Many people don't have the grace to understand any of these words or concepts because they are still seeking to serve their false idols instead of seeking to serve God.
That is why it is better to pray for people than preach to them (or, 99% praying for them, 1% giving a testimony of your own experience to them). They need grace to accept God and rise out of their current situation, and grace comes from prayer.
Prayer is love. Jesus tells us to love our enemies by praying for them. By saying this, He is saying that prayer is love itself.
He wants us to love our families and friends in this way, too.
Prayer is love because it brings people closer to God, Who is Love. It brings down grace for their souls, so they can give up the misery of false idols and sin and seek God, and avoid being lost forever.
When she does this, she will no longer be competing with people, or idolatrously striving after them, but hoping that God saves them.
God will be very pleased with her, and she will be happy.
So she will no longer be sad, and seeking after empty things, but she will become filled with graces, and seeking after God and praying to God.
She will have fulfillment, because she will have begun seeking God, and God is ultimately the complete fulfillment of the soul, and the only One Who can deeply fulfill any human heart and allow us to love others.
In this way, she and God will have spiritually conquered all her idols and her enemies and all her sorrows, and replaced them all with the true meaning of life, which is to seek the God that created her out of His Infinite Love, and for the purpose of His Infinite Love.
She will be fulfilled and joyful.
Sometimes, it keeps us locked in the past to continue thinking about people of the past.
Sometimes, thinking about people of the past is like "a dog returning to her vomit." And sometimes, it can make us spiritually sick.
We may still want to pray for these people, but without thinking of them specifically because it is bad for us.
If you have wronged someone, you can also pray for that person, and when you confess your sins against that person, God will help reconcile you (if it is spiritually safe – if it isn't dangerous for your soul to reconcile with that person), or you can ask God to give that person what he or she lost because of how you sinned against that person, and God will hear your prayer.
This way, you can make up for your sins against others, out of your love of God, and this will be so pleasing to Him, very pleasing, very dear to Him.
Then, after making up for your sins through penance, prayer, and possible action, you can stop thinking about people of the past, and reach out towards the future.
We can pray for everyone we have ever known, regardless of who harmed who, by waking up in the morning and praying this formula: "Eternal Father, I offer my day to You, united to the life of Your Son on earth, for all those I know and who know me."
God knows who those people are. When we pray this way, we are putting it all in His Hands and He is using our relationship with Him to mystically save souls. It's all happening spiritually, beneath the surface.
We have to have confidence in God's mercy. More than we could want to save souls, God wants to save souls.
We have to trust that He will hear our prayers if we are asking that He bring us closer to Him and are sincerely asking that He give us love for Him and understanding of Him, and is working to save souls, even when we don’t see it.
Think – many years you spent away from God, and all of a sudden, you decided to turn away from idolatry towards God wholeheartedly.
There was no indication you would for years and years, but there were many many people – people you don’t even know – praying for you all that time.
Amazing how we are all connected when we are in God, isn’t it?
And how we are all disjointed from one another when outside of God.
We have to turn wholeheartedly towards Him.
It is important to always ask and pray, "God, where do I have an idol, or a sin?" so that we can confess it to God and ask Him to replace it with His Love.
Sometimes people think they have no sin, not even a little one, and that they have no idol. So they don't ask God to get rid of it.
This keeps us from getting closer to God.
God is Love. We must always want more, more Love, closer, closer to Love Himself!
We must always, our whole lives, even if we are no longer committing or living in mortal sin, ask God to show us our small sins, and take them away.
We must always be brave our whole life, and always face ourselves, so we can have God richly in our lives, so we can be fulfilled and happy and not miserable and empty.
This will indirectly help many other souls, as well.
And we will be happy and peaceful in our lives and for all eternity, for being very close to God.
--
If you are tempted to go back to seeking idols, remember the story of this famous European rock star who converted.
The story of Paddy Kelly, a famous European musician who had everything (wealth, fame, talent, fans who would do anything for him, the desire of women, a supportive and loving family, approval of millions, envy of millions) but was still empty and suicidal:
In 1994 his album “Over the Hump" sold more than 4.5 million copies throughout Europe. In Germany it is the biggest selling album of all time. His group is bigger than the Beatles.
The group has sold over 50 million records worldwide.
At twenty years old he was a teenage sensation, a huge rock star and lived in a 17th century castle in Europe. He had all the riches, fame, fortune and the adulation of millions.
His name is Paddy Kelly.
He and his group the Kelly Family sold out the huge Westtaleanhalle in Dortmund, Germany, nine times in a row - a feat no other musician has since accomplished. They filled football stadiums, some shows with over 250,000 in the audience.
He was born in Ireland to American parents. He was the star of the incredible singing group “The Kelly Family.” He has eleven brothers and sisters and most sing in the band. They started out singing in the streets of Europe but quickly their incredible singing talents took them to the top.
Paddy Kelly became a huge idol with adoring female fans. He needed body guards in public. He was hounded by paparazzi where ever he went and traveled by private jet and helicopters. He was recognized everywhere he went. He had it all... this amazing young man had everything, but despite the fame and money he began to feel empty, isolated..
He felt lost... He felt his soul was dying. He had lost his mother when he was five years old but toured the world with his family that gave him love and support.
Even with the love of his family he began to fall into depression and even despair. It all began to break down for Paddy Kelly. He lost the sense of who he was and all his ideals and false securities began to break down. He felt like he wanted to end his life.
Nothing made sense to him anymore. Material goods and money, not even music made him happy.
This was when a deep search for the truth began. He asked himself “If all this doesn't make me happy then what is the sense of life. Why do I exist?” He then asked the question “Who can tell me who I am ? Who has the true answers to my questions?" As he began to ask these questions, he realized he had no real friends. He felt alone and empty.
At a moment of deep crisis, standing on a ledge [outside] of his room, he sensed in him a voice telling him to “Hold on, hold on..." and after this moment passed he wept bitterly at what he almost had done.
Soon after he began to search his spiritual side.. He read about eastern religions [and texts] like Buddism and the Koran, but it was the Gospels that seemed to pull him in a new direction. He felt the Gospels were alive.
At a chance meeting with a gathering of priests near his palatial home the 17th century castle he felt his spirit grow. Still he struggled with depression and sadness and then one day...he was [flipping through the channels on] his television and by chance he came across a program about Lourdes, France, which houses a shrine dedicated to an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
His first thought was that it was “Only for blue-haired grandmothers and naïve people who believe anything.” But he felt pulled to Lourdes like a magnet.
He decided to go. But he was certain that the town would be filled with “horrible plastic statues” and would be no place for a “rock star” to find God.
So he went and to his surprise not only were “gray-haired grandmothers" praying the Rosary, but so were many young people he thought dressed 'cool' and they liked rock and roll. He therefore joined the youth program.
Then that evening with the youth group there came a moment of “Prayer and Silence” and during that moment he felt a simple yet a deep peace in his heart. He was experiencing a deep presence of someone inside of him. Wow! He thought, God is accessible and came to him through the Blessed Virgin Mary. He realized that Mary was not some Christian myth, but no she was a person.
He felt she was asking him to give life a second chance. He felt she wanted to help him and he no longer felt alone. He had grown up Catholic but now he knew that he could meet God and that night he gave life a new chance.
He was to live his life according to God's will. He knew Mary had planted the seed of faith in Lourdes and now he also knew only through prayer could his faith grow. As his spiritual quest moved forward he found his brothers and sisters also saw that money and fame did not bring happiness.
And in the summer of 2000 he and two of his brothers and sisters decided to go to the Youth festival in Medjugorje. There he met Father Jozo and quickly through his words, counsel and abundance of graces a deep movement of conversion with God came to his brothers and sisters and in the months and years to follow.
He believed that God existed but he had not yet experianced the Holy Spirit in a deep and powerful way. He wanted to know if [Jesus] was truly the Son of Man. He wanted to believe it and not just tell himself so or because the Church said so. He wanted to feel the interior confirmation of the Holy Spirit.
Then one morning the Holy Spirit entered his heart in a real way.
He called his brothers and sister that he loved so much and said to them “Jesus is God, Jesus is God, Jesus is God.” [The completion of the Holy Trinity.]
---
His lyrics before his conversion and after his conversion mark the great upheaval that took place in his soul and the beautiful work of mercy God worked in him.
Before his conversion, his group performed the song Million Flies; here are the lyrics: Wake up afraid / nightmares again / haven't slept for three days / the parasites attacking me again / tormented by night / paranoia about them
Oh nononono I'm losing my senses / Oh nononono I'm building up fences / talk to myself / what's so ever the case / no commonsense / now imagining all kinds of things / so lie on my floor / locked in this room / tearing up in the cokes / see the world through a kaleidoscope
Chorus: a million flies are on their way / and they won't go go away / a million flies are here to stay / and they won't go go away [etc]
I wanna go back / back in the womb / see the grave digger / smiling to me waiting at the tomb / I'm caught in the trap / so help me to laugh / cause I'm sick of fighting / come and pinch me / tell me I'm just dreaming
Versus the songs he wrote post-conversion, for example Thanking Blessed Mary:
Such a beautiful site
Entered into my life
My interest conquered the fright
To meet the Mother of all Light
My pounding heart rose in speed
When She planted a seed
In the deepest essence of me
It was the day my spirit was freed
Oh I'm thanking
Blessed Mary
For light Divine
Thanking Blessed Mary
For light Divine
Thanking Blessed Mary
For light
Temptation messed
Me around
She picked me up
From the ground
And taught me to never let go
Of your God given soul
But sometimes I still lose my mind
When life is cruel and unkind
But it's when I suffer that I learn
In a repenting heart love will burn
Oh I'm thanking Blessed Mary
For light Divine
Thanking Blessed Mary
For light Divine
Thanking Blessed Mary
For light
Oh my faith has been renewed
She guides me to
Eternal life
And to the truth oh oh oh oh oh
Yes my faith has been renewed
Oh I'm thanking
Blessed Mary...
And now I've met Jesus Her Son
With the Holy Spirit
I've begun
A pilgrimage to heaven above
To our Father's kingdom of love
Ave, ave, ave Maria
Gracia plena, gracia plena
Ou sleep
Neither songs, the Flies one nor the Mary one, were fake or to impress – they were both raw sets of sincere emotion.
He wasn't faking his distress when he was still lost and he wasn't faking happiness when he wrote the Mary song – they were both real, sincere, true, honest.
His song Hope talks about his conversion from a state of suicide to a state of love of God.
Other songs include Pray, Pray, Pray and Rain of Roses (in honor of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, who answers prayers to her with a visible rose, book of testimonies, and the website for Society of the Little Flower which is about Thérèse).
You can see how his soul went from dark to the light of God, and from despair to hope, peace, and thanks in God.
And how he gave up all of his fame, wealth, and even public life (as he stopped writing songs publicly to avoid idolatry) because all of that made him ultimately empty.
He didn't try to make God serve an idol, but instead prayed to love God and have true peace because he remembered the distinct pain of being idolatrous, without God.
---
One of the most important devotions to look at is the Divine Mercy Devotion – already mentioned but important enough to mention again – in which Jesus speaks to a mystic, Saint Faustina, and this is recorded in her diary (a free copy of the Diary in PDF form, which you can open at random and read bits and pieces, or start from the beginning – both are good devotions). After thorough examination, it was deemed that everything Jesus said was in line with what was in the Bible and the Catechism.
Jesus: Write this for the benefit of distressed souls; when a soul sees and realized the gravity of its sins, when the whole abyss of the misery into which it immersed itself is displayed before its eyes, let it not despair, but with trust let it throw itself into the arms of My mercy, as a child into the arms of its beloved mother. These souls have a right of priority to My compassionate Heart, they have first access to My mercy. Tell them that no soul that has called upon My mercy has been disappointed or brought to shame. I delight particularly in a soul which has placed its trust in My goodness.
Jesus: Encourage souls to place great trust in My fathomless mercy. Let the weak, sinful soul have no fear to approach Me, for even if it had more sins than there are grains of sand in the world, all would be drowned in the immeasurable depths of My mercy.
Jesus: I wait for souls, and they are indifferent toward Me. I love them tenderly and sincerely, and they distrust Me. I want to lavish My graces on them, and they do not want to accept them. They treat Me as a dead object, whereas My Heart is full of love and mercy.
Jesus: The flames of mercy are burning me. I desire to pour them out upon human souls. Oh, what pain they cause Me when they do not want to accept them!
Jesus: Let the greatest sinners place their trust in My mercy. They have the right before others to trust in the abyss of My mercy. My daughter, write about My mercy towards tormented souls. Souls that make an appeal to My mercy delight Me. To such souls I grant even more graces than they ask. I cannot punish even the greatest sinner if he makes an appeal to My compassion, but on the contrary, I justify him in My unfathomable and inscrutable mercy. Write: before I come as a just Judge, I first open wide the door of My mercy. He who refuses to pass through the door of My mercy must pass through the door of My justice...
Jesus: My mercy is greater than your sins and those of the entire world. Who can measure the extent of my goodness? For you I descended from heaven to earth; for you I allowed myself to be nailed to the cross; for you I let my Sacred Heart be pierced with a lance, thus opening wide the source of mercy for you. Come, then, with trust to draw graces from this fountain. I never reject a contrite heart. Your misery has disappeared in the depths of My mercy. Do not argue with Me about your wretchedness. You will give me pleasure if you hand over to me all your troubles and griefs. I shall heap upon you the treasures of My grace.
The graces He wants to offer us are freedom from sin, getting our lives in order before Him, and the grace to love Him and thank Him and obey and heed Him, which are salvation and peace.
Saint Faustina herself went through many struggles with grasping God's Mercy and so her very humble words are very encouraging and enlightening for us to read on our own spiritual journey.
There is another book, that is very easy to read, called An Easy Way to Become a Saint by Father Paul O'Sullivan. (It's copyrighted, I don't have a copy to give you for free, but it's available at amazon and tan books and is very cheap, inexpensive.)
This might seem out of reach or not a goal you considered, being a Saint, but a Saint is simply someone who loves God in deed and with very great sincerity, and these are graces that God is willing to give a soul, any soul, that asks Him.
The work is based on the works and lives of countless Saints, main among them Saint Thérèse, Doctor of the Church, whose "little way" of being a Saint raised her to the greatest heights of love of God.
From the back of the book: "The 'secret' is to love God–since one act of love is worth a thousand acts of any other virtue. Fr. O'Sullivan gives us the keys to obtaining love for God–even if we feel cold and dry towards Him now."
It's a very inexpensive book, but well-made and one that is like a manual that you can keep using for years and years because of it's practical, every day information.
Here is an audio copy (mp3) of Story of a Soul by Saint Thérèse, from a free audio books site. Listening to one of the primary sources for "An Easy Way to Become a Saint" might also be very helpful when reading the book.
Thérèse is one of the most important Saints in the 20th century (and into the 21st century). She teaches her "Little Way" to God, and having confidence in God's Love.
She's brilliant, but speaks so simply that anyone can understand.
Thérèse is very inspirational.
Even if you haven't had an abortion, I think reading about people who were spiritually healed by God from this will be encouraging.
It can also help us so much to see someone going through what we are going through:
This is a WONDERFUL testimony by a man who was so so far from God, and how God brought him back to Him, and will be very encouraging to you if you find that you are far from God, and even if you aren't in that situation, you will still find it so beautiful and interesting and educational (he is also very funny and a good speaker)
He also explains about "the economy of graces," how you can help save other souls by wholeheartedly seeking God's grace (spiritually, in private, through prayer and a personal conversion, how that will allow God's grace to mystically and spiritually flow out of you, like a point of grace in the world, almost like a geyser that shoots water into the world, only taking place in the spiritual world and effecting people spiritually).
Be brave and be comforted – watch it! :
If the above embedded video doesn't work, you can watch it on YouTube by clicking here – very positive, wonderful and instructive, watch it right now
I think everyone would benefit greatly from reading the book Interview with an Exorcist by Father Fortea.
I recommend that book and people cringe – they become very afraid because they think 1) the book is filled with scary exorcism stories and 2) it is filled with information that will cause a panic attack, like when you realize that your life isn't in order with God.
These two things are not true, and you ought to consider fear of such a comforting, straightforward book (with no scary stories) to be a temptation from the devil to keep you from the comfort and advice that good priest who wrote it will give to you by you reading it. It is a very beneficial and helpful book, especially for spiritual healing, and if the book is read prayerfully (by asking God to help you and guide you as you read it), you will get a tremendous benefit from it. Even the forward is very good, very positive, about how God wants us to help Him conquer evil and how we should not be afraid, but trust in God and do as He tells us.
It is a very positive, helpful book, I do recommend it (among many other books that I mention in these posts).
Why reading? I have never been one for reading. ... But I do make time to read books by Saints because every great God experience that people (including great Saints) have had, usually start with reading a book by another Saint, or about Saints. It's true – horrible sinners have become great saints, and it began with an encounter with God that came about through reading.
By reading the works of Saints, or a very good Catholic exorcist like Father Fortea, you will begin to have experiences with God, if you pray in your heart that you want to know God and please Him and live with Him, and beg Him to come to you.
I had my first God experience (after reading a bit about Divine Mercy and sort of learning to pray the Chaplet, as best I could learn) from reading How to Converse Continually and Familiarly with God by Saint Alphonsus Ligori – a very brief little... almost pamphlet.
Yet the writing was so connected with God, that it opened up God to my soul and my soul to God in a way so profound that there are not words for it in the human language.
I had nothing, I was nothing, I was alone, desolate, despised, and then – there was Light. I have not been alone within myself since. I would recommend any writing by Saint Alphonsus Ligori.
(A free copy of How to Converse [Continually and Familiarly with God], PDF download – use Foxit PDF viewer if Adobe PDF viewer doesn't work on your computer. It seems kind of hard to come by. It's about 30 pages – small, brief pages.)
Here is an audio copy (mp3) of The Secret of the Rosary by Saint Louis de Montfort, with many stories about the power of the Rosary, to instill you with great confidence in God's intercession through the Rosary. This is another one of the most important works of humanity, for the people of our century.
It might help to read a hard copy (an actual book) of "The Secret of the Rosary," for figuring out how to recite the Rosary according to various methods laid out by this Saint. But there are many testimonies in the book that an audio copy would be good to listen to.
There are some stories of people who have hit rock bottom on the depression post and other articles I've written in the prayer request post. I don't think any of those articles are really as blunt as this one, but they still contain good information and links.
This is probably the last post I will be writing because I was told to focus on making religious art for a while, by my spiritual director.
It is always important to make time to read books by Saints. Thank God that there is such a high literacy rate, and the internet for obtaining these books, and printing presses that make these works inexpensive, and people willing to keep these works in print or available digitally.
(Final note about exorcisms and curses: People are most susceptible to being cursed by witches and the occult who have no spiritual armor, such as those who have false idols and those who live in mortal sin. And after they are cursed, they cannot drive out the effects of the curse because of their sins, because through our sins – with or without a curse – we open up a connection to Hell. Here is a video about Fr Amorth, a famous late exorcist, discussing the dangers of using "psychics" rather than Christianity to drive out evil. For more complete information, read "Interview with an Exorcist" by Father Fortea.)
It's so important to have holy people pray for your soul on your spiritual journey:
Click a few (doesn't have to be all of them, there are quite a lot) of the below links, these prayer request links include our prayer request but are also just a couple of the Catholic nun and monk prayer requests that I've found from a quick online search. I focus on the Poor Clares because they are nuns who live separate from the world, lives of silent contemplation before God in the Eucharist, day and night interceding for the world, and their prayers are immensely powerful. These nuns are some of the most powerful people on the entire planet because of their devotion before God.
The life of the cloister (doing humble work in a monastery in a religious community while praying to save souls) is an imitation of the 30 years that Jesus spent before His public ministry, as He grew and lived with Saints Mary and Joseph. – From Poor Clares' daily life
(Also, the Benedictines and Carmelites live lives of contemplation.) (I only link to the one where they wear the habit, the sort of nun's or monk's "uniform" – I tried to weed out "reformed" monasteries as best I could because many reformed religious of any order, not just Poor Clares or Carmelites or Benedictines, but any reformed ones, were under investigation under Pope Benedict XVI for ... bad things. And the reform ones don't like the habit, the really really sincere, holy ones tend to gravitate towards the habit.)
You will feel SO GOOD in your soul, when you feel God's peace envelope you because of these holy people's prayers! "May Almighty God bless you. May Almighty God look upon you with mercy and give you peace..." – Blessing of Saint Clare
Go to these links and add your first name (only, no last name) and ask them to pray for your soul to love God and be freed from sin and idolatry, and then thank them for their prayers. You can copy and paste your intentions into the various prayer requests. (If you can spare a couple of dollars to donate, maybe sometime, consider it, because Poor Clares and the others live off of only what they receive in donations, they are quite literally very poor – very very holy people. If you can't spare money, please be sure to pray for all of these holy and wonderful people – prayer is more powerful and helpful than money!):
- BoldRadish prayer request
- Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration
- Franciscan Poor Clares
- Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration – these sisters are interested in receiving updates on what happens after they start praying. Perhaps in a year or couple months you can say if you became more devoted to the Rosary or started honoring the Sabbath or went to confession or something else that happens in your spiritual growth. They also have a ton of Saints' relics!!! So you're getting a lot of intercession.
- Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, Our Lady of Solitude Monastery
- Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, Our Lady of Angels Monestary – Mother Angelica's monestary. The prayer request is in the top right corner, if you hover your mouse over "Connect," then "Contact –> Prayer Request"
- Saint Ann Shrine – (I think candles cost money, but the prayer request is free) Saint Ann is the grandmother of Jesus. Just as Jesus obeys His parents (because God commanded that we honor our parents, and God, taking human form, subjected Himself to this law), so Mary obeys her Mother (St Ann) and Jesus also obeys St Ann, out of humility, so her devotion is extremely powerful! Devotion to her will help you grow in holiness. (She's also fun, I've had the most fun "misadventures" of my life after praying to St Ann and she helped my mum get a job and she looked after my soul... She's great!)
- A different Shrine of Saint Ann, located in Canada (she is the Patron Saint over all of Canada). This statue contains a very miraculous statue, and the Shrine building itself is shockingly beautiful... The most beautiful I've ever seen, ever. As is the miraculous statue of Ann holding the child Mary. Website contains good information and big beautiful pictures.
- Saint Anthony Shrine – powerful patron Saint of lost things – including people who have lost their way and are not on a spiritual path! His intercession will help you find God.
- Saint Jude Shrine – Saint Jude is the patron Saint of Impossible Causes who lived in the time of the Apostles. He also wrote an epistle that made it into the New Testament.
- Saint Rita Shrine – Saint Rita is another patron of Impossible Causes. If you feel you are an impossible cause, don't despair!
- Shrine of Saint Pio (Padre Pio) – Padre Pio is a truly remarkable saint of the 20th century. There were so many miracles surrounding him during his life that whole books have been written of them. He also had the stigmata. He has been very active even from Heaven in helping people.
- Saint Thérèse Prayer Request – St Thérèse is one of only 33 Doctors of the Church, which is a saint whose teaching is so important and so inspired that it literally doctors the theology of the Church. Interestingly, she wrote very simply and plainly, so all could understand her, despite her enormous intellect (she was genius), and she wrote on the topic of how to love God in our daily lives, and to become a Saint by doing ordinary things out of love of God. St. Faustina (who might soon become the 34th doctor of the Church) prayed to this saint in her youth. You can hear a free audio recording of her book, Story of a Soul, here. Her teaching also inspired the book An Easy Way to Become a Saint, which is probably among one of the most beneficial books you could read, especially when starting out on a path to holiness, and one that you will continue to come back to over the years because it is so beneficial and straightforward and information-packed, explaining clearly how to love God.
- Saint Philomena Prayer Request – another patron of Impossible Causes. Saint Philomena was hidden for almost 1600 years, until her tomb was revealed to the world in the 1800s. She was such a powerful Saint that those who are devoted to her are pretty sure the world fell apart in the 20th century (known as the bloodiest century in human history) because devotion to her waned. She definitely will help bring souls closer to God and fortify them in their devotion to the Rosary, as well as enjoy the benefits of purity and sincerity. I have personally been to her shrine in Mugnano, Italy, where I was cured of a very crippling disorder, and I have also written a book about her and built a statue to her. Philomena was a martyr who was brutally murdered by a Roman Emperor. She turned down owning literally half of the entire Roman Empire, which would have made her one of the most powerful and wealthy women in history (as far as worldly power and worldly wealth are concerned). She would have had to basically sell her soul and be defiled by the Roman Emperor in order to achieve this worldly power. She instead chose Heaven and God, at the cost of great abuse and public humiliation by the Emperor. She was only 13 years old. All that she gave up and all that she bravely faced for love of God is what makes her so immensely powerful an intercessor. She will gladly help for any problem, big or small. She is a very, very good and nice girl. The Official Shrine of Philomena in Italy also has a prayer and Mass request, however, they cost money and are expensive. ... Many people lie and say St. Philomena is no longer a Saint, but, as said, that's a lie. And a diabolical one, at that, considering how beneficial her intercession is for the salvation of souls. She was approved of by numerous popes and many saints were devoted to her. The best book detailing this is actually incredibly short and easy to read, and is the best St Philomena book I have read, it is called It Is Time to Meet St. Philomena by Mark Miravalle. I think it's important that it's short – when I first read it, I was having a breakdown. If it had been long and complicated, like other Philomena books I read, it couldn't have helped me. This is even the book I took with me to Italy. It has the address to the shrine in the back and I was able to point to it to the taxi driver when there was a language gap. It's a very dear little book for a very dear little Saint, and I couldn't have gotten through so many things without her.
- Servants of Mary – in association with Saint Peregrine. St Peregrine is patron Saint of cancer – physical cancer and also spiritual cancer. Spiritual cancer is when our souls are diseased. A man I didn't know at my Church gave me some Saint Peregrine holy oil because he had been healed by the Saint through using the oil and asking for forgiveness from Jesus from his sins every day. I was struggling greatly at that time and he could see that my soul was afflicted even though I didn't say anything. God was working through him. I didn't use the oil because I didn't understand that our souls get diseased like our bodies. My soul was under attack at that time. It is a bad thing to pass up graces that God tries to offer to us – I should have used the oil. I think others would benefit from St. Peregrine, even if they aren't suffering from physical cancer.
- AMM – very good website, knowledge about the Miraculous Medal (Immaculate Conception Medal), and a great prayer request. I have had miraculous things happen when I have a candle lit at this shrine (which costs money), including starting a business and having time to work on other things (including this blog).
