You say that forgiveness from God is there waiting for my

acceptance. I believe that is true, to some extent. If I say today,

Well, my past is no longer an obstacle, I have been forgiven. I
would feel as if I was fooling myself into thinking that I got away
with the horrible things I did in my past. Whos to say, that as long
as I accept Gods forgiveness for my past, that I wont do something
just as horrible tomorrow and ask for forgiveness and then say the
same thing? I know I am not explaining myself well at all. I am trying
to say that I think my past matters a great deal to God. If I dont
suffer the guilt and horror and literal revulsion of what I did, I dont
think God would forgive. Then the question is, How much is
enough?
Outline of the Answer
Self-guarantee
The Mockery Made of Baptism
God Forgives Anything
Reparation
Repentance is Love
When is Enough Enough?
Sorrow and Guilt
Perseverence in Love

ctually, youre asking the same sort of question that Martin Luther asked, and we
know what he ended up doing. He couldnt tolerate the uncertainty and hard work of
ardent devotion, so he formed his own church in which he guaranteed himself salvation
just by saying he accepted Christ as his savior. Neat, simple, and painless. Protestants today
still believe it. But its all wrong.
The Mockery Made of Baptism
Yes, Christ paid for our sins through His Passion and death, and each of us enters into that
redemption at baptism. Most often this is infant baptism, however, and most parents
whether through outright disobedience or through ignorance and apathydo almost
nothing thereafter except indoctrinate their children into popular culture and a life of
continuing sin. So it is almost inevitable, in most modern families, that children will imitate
their parents hypocrisy and commit a multitude of sins after their baptism. What then?
God Forgives Anything
Well, if you repent and confess your sins and ask God for mercy, God forgives anything
and He forgives any number of times. When His disciples asked how many times they had

to forgive someoneone? two? seven?Christ told them to forgive seventy times seven.
Peter denied Him three times, and still Christ forgave Peter.
But notice that after the Resurrection Christ asked Peter three times, Do you love Me?
(John 21:15-19). Peter was obliged to answer three times. And each time Christ told him,
Feed My sheep.
So what is this all about? Its about reparation.
Reparation
Forgiveness is one thingit means that God wont push you away for doing bad things if
you turn back to Him with heartfelt sorrow for the evil you have done. But you still have to
pay for the evil that you, as Gods own anointed, have brought into the world through
your sin.
When you commit sin, you defile love. And when you defile love, you blaspheme the
name of God, who is love.
Now, please be careful not to think that God is like some irrational, angry parent who has
to be appeased out of fear. The point about penance is that once we recognize the great
damage our sins have caused, we become motivated by love itself to help others achieve the
same understanding about their sins. Christ sacrificed Himself to save us from our sins,
and in turn He asks all of us, just as He asked Peter, to feed My sheepthat is, to love
othersin perfect imitation of Him as the path to spiritual purity.
The best penance to pay for your mistakes now, before you die, is to spread the seeds of
spiritual fruit. Its similar to alms giving, which is a traditional penance. Just as giving alms
requires a giving of money from your resources, spreading the seeds of your spiritual fruit
is also a giving of yourself. Without arrogance and pride holding you back, you can start to
produce spiritual fruit, and the seeds that you spreadthat is, the holy influence you have
on othersis a fitting penance for having previously stifled your spiritual development
and for cheating others in the process.
Repentance is Love
Moreover, Saint Catherine of Genoa showed us that, if we do repent our
sins and seek spiritual purity now, the price we pay for purification in this
life is nothing compared to the price we would have to pay in Purgatory.
That is, if you repent in this life, and if you spend the rest of your life in
sacrifice and prayer for the good of others, thats true love. Thats what it
means to feed Christs sheep.

On the other hand, if your repentance is imperfectthat is, if its largely intellectual rather
than profoundly experientialthen (assuming you avoid mortal sin and die in a state of
grace) you will learn perfection through the fire of Gods love in Purgatory.
When is Enough Enough?
But what about that reparation in this life? How do you know when is it enough? Well,
theres no way to know.
In this life, we must always dwell in the vast gulf between the satisfaction of the
good we have done and the unknowing of what we have yet to do.
Some of us dont like that answer. But its really the only answer. And ultimately it doesnt
matter, and heres where many of us miss the point.
Some of us are correct in perceiving that, for many Catholics, confession is just an
intellectual superstitious ritual: despite repeated confessions, some persons keep repeating
the same sins over and over, and their behavior never changes.
Some of us are also correct in realizing that repentance for sin has to come from the heart,
not just intellectually, and that real love is the key to mans relation to God.
But all are wrong who hold the belief that once a person experiences this repentance from
the heart, guilt is removed, and from there on the person is guaranteed salvation.
The truth is that your openness to love must be understood as a continuous process of
growth, a process subject to temptations, doubts, and the danger of failing to persevere to
the end. Consequently, the success of love in your heart cannot be guaranteed; it must be
nourished with constant prayer and sacrifice. Love must be protected with the sacraments.
Love must be defended with sorrow, especially the sorrow that comes from seeing Christs
Sacred Heart constantly wounded by sin.
Love, therefore, can never be enoughat least, not in this life. Only in Purgatory can
love attain the purification necessary to stand directly in Gods presence.
Sorrow and Guilt
Notice here that sorrow and guilt are two different things, psychologically.
Guilt results from childhood psychological wounds of family dysfunction. Parents all too
often fear real love themselves and shrink from the time and hard work it takes to teach
their children real love. So the parents resort to using guilt to control their children,
constantly telling the children that they are bad and threatening the children with the
fear of punishment in hell.[1]

Now, if this happened to you, in your inability to understand just why your parents were so
mean, you most likely came to believe that something must really be wrong with you and
that you really deserved everything that happened to you. Thus you cultivated a secret
shameand guiltyearning to be punished for being defective. Furthermore, you would
have become angry at your parents because of their dysfunctionand then you would have
become so terrified of your anger that you secretly desired to be punished for your anger.
Call it a sort of double masochistic whammy.
Thus whenever you do (or feel or think) something bad you dont want to admit it or
seek help because you are terrified of the scorn that will be inflicted on you if anyone
discovers your secret. And so you do anything to hide from discovery, while your secret
festers in the dark depths of your heart. Moreover, in this forlorn state, you are far
removed from real love because all the good you do for others is motivated unconsciously
by the desire to appease others to keep them from abandoning you if they should discover
your real thoughts and feelings.
Some psychological disorders have their own peculiar way of seeking protection
from guilt with their own means, rather than by turning back to God and seeking
His mercy.

Individuals with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) hold the belief that

guilt must be neutralized with ritualistic behaviors.
Individuals with paranoia suppress the awareness of their own guilt by
projecting it onto the environment, thus creating the belief that others are out
to get them.[2]
Individuals with depression identify with their guilt, thus getting stuck in the
belief that they are bad.[3]

Sorrow means that you feel the pain of all the hurt you have inflicted on others, that you
acknowledge all of your inadequacy that you have hidden from God, and then, willing to do
anything to remedy the mess youre in, you throw yourself into Christs unfathomable
mercy.
Feeling true sorrow, you open your mind and your heart to move past your mistakes into
purification: to learn, to grow, and to be formed by God.
With guilt transformed into sorrow, then, instead of doing good for others to make them
like you, you can do good for them for their own sake, because of your humble joy for what
they will gain.
So when you say, No more sin. Im sick of it, something in your heart changes, even if
your behavior doesnt change instantly because of it. You simply start a process of change
by which you learn to surrender yourself completely to divine love, so that desire for the
holy becomes your primary desire.
Perseverence in Love

Theres no way to know how far you will get; that is, how much will be paid in this life and
how much will remain for Purgatory. All that matters, as in the example of Mary
Magdalene at the empty tomb, is perseverance. Feel the pain and dont run away. Trust in
Gods love to do with you what needs to be done. Let real lovelove of God and love for
yourself and othersbecome your primary desire, make the Blessed Sacrament your
nourishment, and turn to the communion of saints for companionship. (And it will be of
great benefit if you consecrate yourself to the Blessed Virgin [4] so as to help you trust in
nothing but Christs mercy.)
Children who grow up in dysfunctional families often have a hard time with this. In
compensation for all the abuse they suffer in their families, they create the mistaken
idea that love has no limits or rules and essentially means total unconditional
acceptance of anything they do. But, as the Bible makes clear, Gods love has very
clear rules and commandments. Why? Because God is mean and arbitrary, like a
bitter, irrational parent? No! God doesnt do anything for vengeance; on the
contrary, He does everything to lead us to our ultimate good and purification. In the
end, Gods love has a purpose to itto free us from our slavery to sinand our
response must be unconditional love for, and acceptance of, that purpose.
Some of us, too, have a hard time with this perseverence into real love. Instead, they put
their trust in common love and throw the Blessed Sacramentalong with the Blessed
Virginout of their churches into the gutter. And then they proudly declare themselves
saved.

Notes
1. Fear of hell does nothing to inspire love for God, and so the children end up being wounded
byand hatingtheir parentss hypocrisy.
2. When really it is their own guilt that condemns them.
3. Rather than accept the theological truth that they are essentially good beings who have done
bad things.
4. Complete instructions for the Consecration to Jesus through Mary can be found in Saint Louis
Marie de Montforts book, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin.

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