Do we know ourselves?

How many people are conscious that gluttony is a MORTAL SIN?

That when we eat more than we need, or eat food because it 

tastes good and not for the reason of keeping the body healthy, 

we follow our own will and not the will of God?

It is a revolt against God, a sin that needs to be confessed before 

one can receive Holy Communion.  

 

How many people are aware that laziness is a MORTAL SIN?

It removes us from the presence of God, because again we follow 

our own will; our own inclinations, rather than the will of God.

 

How many know that if we have lashed out at someone in anger 

we should not present ourselves for Communion until we have 

confessed this MORTAL SIN to a priest, because by this lack of 

self control we have removed ourselves from the presence of God.

 

How many people confess the poisonous and MORTAL SIN of 

jealousy in their heart to a priest? The existence of jealousy, which 

most humans experience at some stage of their lives, creates a 

barrier between God and us, it is most definitely poisonous and 

deadly to the soul. 

 

How many people are aware that we offend God every time we

boast about our own achievements or those of our family, when 

we take pride in anything at all and claim it for ourselves? 

Pride is a MORTAL SIN, the only antidote is to practice humility.

Each one of us belong to God and thus whatever capacities we have 

belongs to God too. Being blown up with self importance is 

obviously an obstacle to the presence of God, which is soft

and gentle. Think of The Virgin Mary; the Mother of God; humble, 

quiet, soft, gentle, at all times faithful.

 

Lust, or concupiscence, like gluttony, has it's root in the physical, 

biological body, and both hunger for food and sexual desire 

needs to be controlled by our own will power, which is within 

human capacities. To fail to do so is a MORTAL SIN.

Greed is like gluttony in that it is an abandoning of moderation. 

Wanting more than we need, the mindset of accumulating things 

or money, is an ego trip, an inflation of the self.

It removes us from the presence of God, therefore it is a 

MORTAL SIN.

 

When we only think about ourselves, when we refuse to forgive 

others, when we are afraid of the future, when we do not trust in 

God, when we are impatient, we step away from Him. 

It is a move that WE make, not God.

 

Anyone who calls themselves Catholic and thinks of themselves 

as virtuous  and not in need of contrition, repentance, confession 

and doing penance, is deluded. We are ALL sinners.

 

  

We are the contents

 

The content is contained in the container;

The small is contained in the larger:

 

In the same way as a microscopic cell which is contained in our 

bodies, has the entire material and code for the making of a human 

being, 

in the same way as an unborn baby  is contained  in the body of it's 

mother,

 

in the same way as a child is kept in a unit of adults who are 

responsible for them,

 

in the same way as we live in societies with rules and laws

to which we are submitted, etc etc,

everybody and everything is contained in something bigger.

It is God who contains us, we are His contents.

 

 

 

We are at all times and at every single moment, kept alive by Him.

We can not do anything without the force that He is, not even take a 

single breath. We simply could not exist without Him.

 

God is Perfect and Infinite in Power, we are imperfect, faulty and finite.

However,  He made us in His image and likeness. 

A human has such a capacity to delude itself, to believe it's own lies, and

to justify it's actions because" everybody else is doing it", but the moment 

of Truth comes to everyone, even if it is just a few moments before death.

The Sacrament of Reconciliation; the Sacrament of Confession, removes; 

takes off, the deadly amount of place; energy; space, that sins leaves in our 

bodies and minds.

Considering that these things hinders God's presence, which He Himself 

placed in us in the beginning, from developing and growing, it is of utmost 

importance to be concerned about it. 

Envisage the strong energy of anger and fear for example, it is not difficult 

to understand how left unattended, they actually can destroy the mental and 

emotional health of a person. If it has been there since childhood, 

it will almost necessarily have "gone underground", become so suppressed, 

that it can be very difficult to find them, because the symptoms that arises 

manifests as an effort to hide them.But they have never gone away, they have 

instead become stronger.

Bitterness is unforgiveness, it creates a wall between us and God, (although 

it does not mean that we are ok with sins committed against us), because 

 everything that separates us from God are called sins. 

A psychotherapist or a counselor has not the tools or skills to heal this, you 

can talk and talk about it, even for decades, but substantially there is nothing 

they can do, the problem might decrease for a while, but it will come back in 

some form or other.

It is because humans are limited creatures, there is little we can do.

 

God however; there is no limit to what He can do.

And when we confess the truth of our sins to a priest, the real and 

unvarnished truth about how we think, speak and act, which hurts 

Him, others and ourselves, it is not the priest, who is himself a sinner, 

but God who forgives.

Because we have fallen so low and so far from grace, we continue to 

commit sins, often the same ones, but the good news is that in proportion 

to our desire to be healed, we do improve.

The more we rid ourselves of sin, the more we resemble God, who, I repeat,

created us in His image.

 

We are products of our background, upbringing, culture, education etc 

=

conditioning

=

we are conformed to the world in which we live.

 

But to be christian we can not live according to the standards of the world. 

^"And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of 

your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, 

will of God."

Romans 12:2

 

We ought to put all our trust in Him who created us and who sustains us in 

every moment of day and night.

We ought to have a healthy skeptical attitude to all humans, INCLUDING 

ourselves;

because we so often delude ourselves and unconsciously or consciously do 

anything in order to avoid the truth. 

People very often just repeat what they have heard, and what they believe 

themselves.

 

We live in a world that says that whatever painful or inconvenient 

event and situation we find ourselves in, we must get rid of it ASAP.

If we have a pain, we have to take a tablet straight away to get rid of it.

But what if that pain is a signal, what if it signifies something underlying?

Thus by always taking a pill, the calming medicine, we anesthetize ourselves, 

and we put a stop to finding out more, this is especially the case when it 

comes to emotional and psychological conditions, like acute panic not 

provoked by real danger, for example.

 

Everything in life  is based on faith; faith in our parents, faith in our friends 

and spouses, faith in the usefulness and value of our work. 

 

This faith can easily be broken, but the pain that it provokes can lead you to 

realize that we can always have faith in God.

 

 

.  

 

 

The Church will continue, with us; her militant soldiers

 

 

It is easy to be influenced and carried away into depression by 

concentrating on what is wrong in today's Church.

To say; but things have never been as bad before, surely this is 

unprecedented?

What with the Synod and their plan to ordinate women priests, 

married men, promotion of abortion and homosexuality, being 

"inclusive" instead of instructive, etc etc.

 

The "good" news, (because it gives a bit of perspective) is that in 

almost every century of the history of the Church, there has been 

heretical teachings coming from priests and bishops; and to here 

to mention but a few:

  

Jansenius; Bishop of Ypres, France, took it upon himself to redefine 

the doctrine of grace (17th century)

 

Nestorius; Bishop of Constantinople, was responsible for nestorianism;

a heresy regarding the person of Christ (5th century)

 

Arius; a priest from Constantinople, responsible for the theological 

heretical doctrine of arianism which denied Christ's divine nature (4th century) 

 

and of course 

 

Gnosticism; whether it originated outside or inside 

Christianity, infiltrated itself in the Church. They believed that matter; 

Creation, was evil and they denied the Incarnation of Our Lord Jesus Christ. 

 (1st - 2nd Centuries)

In the infancy of the Church there was also for a while the false belief that 

men had to be circumcised in order to be saved, which stemmed from the 

Jewish faith.

 

We can even go back to the Passion, when Our Lord was arrested, Peter, 

the Rock upon which the Church is built, denied  3 times that he even 

knew Jesus.

Today the Church suffers much from the confusion from infiltration of 

concepts stemming from

 

Protestantism 

and 

Relavitism

 

But you and me, we know the Faith, we love the Church, because she holds 

the Truth. The Truth can not die.

 

The best way to participate in the spiritual battle, as good foot soldiers in the 

great battle between good and evil, is to sanctify ourselves. 

It is the goal of the Catholic Church to save souls, she calls us to holiness, 

just like God is Holy.

The fastest way in this process is to frequently go to Confession.

Our sins are forgiven, it strengthens us individually, it strengthens the Church,

it strengthens the priests.