Once again, the Scriptures connect us with our own human experience. Who of us has not agonized over decisions, actions, or omissions that caused pain to others and ourselves? Feelings of guilt are not necessarily harmful and can even be healthy because they can lead us to change and to deeper self-knowledge. And spiritually they can move us to repentance and the experience of God’s loving forgiveness.
People sometimes tell me, “I know God has forgiven me, but I can’t forgive myself.” I refer them to the prophet Micah, who says that God “will cast into the depths of the sea all our sins” (7:19). Once they are confessed and forgiven in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, they are gone. As I once heard a pastor say, “And God puts a sign there: No fishing!” Don’t keep going back into those waters.
—from St. Anthony Messenger‘s “The Flip Side of the Joyful Mysteries“
by Martin Pable, OFM Cap
