Accidentally prayed thinking Jesus was present in the tabernacle

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So my Priest, after confession allowed me to pray inside of the empty Church for a while. I went up to the front of the Church where the tabernacle was and, thinking Jesus was truly present in the most Blessed Sacrament, kneeled and showed reverence to Jesus as I do typically. I bow frequently before it and as soon as I stood up, I saw behind the altar that the red candle was unexpectedly not lit! Immediately I stopped everything then realizing He wasn’t in there.

Did I commit a sin by doing this?? I didn’t know previously it was empty
 
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Are you sure it wasn’t even remotely sinful? Venially sinful?
 
Nope. Not sinful. 🙂

If you find yourself often wondering things like this there’s a great book called Understanding Scrupulosity by Fr Thomas Santa that has helped me a great deal.
 
Study sin in the catechism. You cannot cannot cannot accidentally sin!

Cannot!

You have to intentionally decide to sin, knowing that it is sinful. Did you do anything remotely like that?

No!

You know what? There is an altar stone placed in the altar which contains a relic in it. You may genuflect to the altar/altar stone even if the tabernacle is open and empty.

Talk to Father about your worries. You may need a bit of counseling to put them behind you.
 
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Prayer and reverence to God are virtues, not sins and definitely not grave sins.

Jesus isn’t physically present everywhere, but he is spiritually present everywhere, and even that is beside the point because you had no wrong intention when you prayed and genuflected to an empty tabernacle.

Peace.
 
We get this kind of question too frequently on CF, and it makes me very sad. One of the most basic things you need to know as a Catholic is the nature of sin. You cannot commit a sin unless you are willfully culpable. Please make sure to take the time to learn about the nature of sin. Otherwise, you are doing a great deal of harm to yourself and will continue to do with, with guilt, scrupulosity, etc. Fellow Catholics, please learn the truth of the faith! We do no good to anyone in the world, no good to ourselves, if we persist in ignorance.
 
po18guy said:
Study sin in the catechism. You cannot cannot cannot accidentally sin!

Cannot!

You have to intentionally decide to sin, knowing that it is sinful. Did you do anything remotely like that?

No!
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This a thousand times over! We see so many “was this a sin” threads here, and I’ve often wished something like this could just automatically reply to those instantaneously.

Also, OP… when you kneel or genuflect and show reverence like you describe, where is it directed? To the tabernacle itself or the One you believe to be inside? Intention is so immensely important. All of our actions of reverence are directed toward the Godhead, not the earthly container. As another poster alluded to, He was still there, even if not in the form you expected.
 
Maybe the candle burned out. In either case; you have to have knowledge that something is sinful for it to be a sin.
 
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