Those who live in this moral twilight between faith and lack of faith have rarely a clear notion of the purpose of life. Yet a person must have a goal before he or she can live. In making a journey, one must first decide the destination and then the intermediate steps; this is what the Scholastic mean by, "The first intention is the last in execution." The choice of Paris for a holiday is the first step in a long series of preparations for the trip, but Paris is the last place one reaches in the journey. People who lose sight of the purpose of living - namely, to attain perfect happiness - begin to concentrate on means. 

Like the fanatic, as once defined, they "redouble their efforts after they have lost sight of their goal." Their actions become staccato, jumpy, a crazy quilt of conflicting patterns. Possibility, in the sense of a progressive development and enrichment of personality, disappears. When possibility is lost, one of two things happens to a mind: Either it immerses itself in trivialities, with an accompanying cynicism, flippancy and superficiality, or else it tries to avoid responsibility for the inanity and foolishness of its life by denying the existence of human freedom and responsibility and subscribing to determination of the Darwinian, Freudian, or Marxian variety.

But there are some men and women who admitting their sins and faults, are still unhappy. Where there is a genuine sense of guilt, release can come only from Divine Mercy confronting human misery. Unless we are ready to ask for the forgiveness of our sins by God, the examination of conscience may be only a vain form of introspection, which can make a soul worse if it ends in remorse instead of sorrow. For the two are quite distinct: Judas had remorse. Peter had sorrow.

Judas Iscariot "repented unto himself" as Sacred Scripture tells us; Simon Peter, unto the Lord Jesus Christ. As a psychic malady sometimes results from a failure to adjust self to the right environment, so a moral evil results from the failure of the soul to adjust itself to God. Despair is such a failure - Judas despaired but Peter hoped. Despair comes from unrelatedness, from the refusal of a soul to turn to God. Such a soul opposes the order of nature.

For instance; When there are seven people in a room, few ever refer to the fact that there are fourteen arms present. But if we found a detached arm lying in a corner, it would create consternation; it is a problem only because it is detached. A soul isolated from God is like that arm. Its conscience (to take another example) is like a broken anklebone; it hurts because it is not where it ought to be. The final stage of this sadness resulting from a person's unrelatedness to God is a desire to die, combined with a fear of death - for "conscience doth make cowards of us all."

But if remorse is a sense of guilt unrelated to God, it is well to consider other states of mind and conscience from this single aspect. We find that there are several classes of souls, ranged according to the degree of their relatedness to God.

There are those who killed their conscience by sin and worldliness and who have steadfastly refused to cooperate with the Divine Action on the soul in order to amend their lives, confess their sins, and do penance; there are those who have awakened from a state of sin; there are those who followed conscience and the laws of God for a time and then turned away from God; and finally, there are those who kept their baptismal innocence and never defiled their conscience.

The second and the fourth classes are very dear to God. There are thus two ways of knowing how good God is: One is by never losing Him, and the other is by losing Him and finding Him again. Souls who have strayed and returned, Our Lord Jesus Christ said, rejoice the Angels in Heaven more than the steadfastly faithful. This is not difficult to understand; a mother with ten children rejoices more in the recovery of the single sick child than in the continued possession of health by the other nine.

For the sinner to be made well, then, confession and sorrow are required. And the sorrow must have in it an appeal to God's mercy to distinguish it from remorse. Saint Paul makes the distinction in writing to the Corinthians: "For the sorrow that is according to God works penance, steadfast unto salvation; but the sorrow of the world works death." - 2 Cor. 7:10 - Remorse or "the sorrow of the world" results in worry, jealousy, envy, indignation; but sorrow related to God results in expiation and hope. Perfect sorrow comes from a sense of having offended God, Who is deserving of all our love; this sorrow or contrition, felt in confession, is never a vexing, fretful sadness that depresses, but it is a sadness from which great consolation springs. As Saint Augustine of Hippo put it, "The penitent should never grieve, and rejoice at his grief."

The experience a repentant sinner undergoes in receiving the Sacrament of pardon has been well described by Blessed Angela of Foligno. She tells us of the time when she first took cognizance of her sins.

"I resolved to make my confession to him. I confessed my sins in full. I received absolution. I did not feel love, only bitterness, shame and sorrow. Then I looked for the first time at Divine Mercy; I made the acquaintance of that Mercy which had withdrawn me from hell, which gave me grace. An illumination made me see the measure of my sins. Thereupon, I understood that in offending the Creator, I had offended all creatures... Through the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the saints, I invoked the mercy of God, and on my knees, I begged for life. Suddenly, I believed that I felt the pity of all creatures and all saints. And then I received a gift; a great fire of love and the power to pray as I had never prayed... God wrote the "Pater Noster" in my heart with such an accentuation of His Goodness and of my unworthiness that I lack words to speak of it."

It is very difficult for the world to understand.......

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Faith . Hope . Love - Welcome donation. Thank You. God bless. 

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Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -