Am I going to hell?

[mnbhjk]

Ok so ive struggled with personal impurity for a long time. And i’d been doing much better recently and I’ve been always having good times with my wonderful friends and living a holy life and I was so happy. but last night I remembered something I always tried to not think about. A while ago I committed that sin in a church. Not in the church bathroom. In church. You could see the tabernacle from where I was standing and everything.

I was rehearsing with my choir one night and I had a sexual urge. I tried to go into the bathroom but it was locked. So I just stood there and you know the rest. It’s my absolute worst memory and I’m so humiliated. I think I probably deserve to go to hell for it. I’m so scared.

well after that I found out I was sick. I had to get a semi-serious surgery so my mom thought I should get the anointing of the sick. but the priest said its only for serious stuff. I’m pretty positive this wasnt a life threatening situation. So we went to a priest who put a sacred or holy oil on my forhead and i think my hands too. and said all my sins were forgiven. I was ok with that for a while. But then I figured out that this same priest had told my brother that he wasn’t sure whether such impurity was a sin or not. And how can I be absolved for something if i didn’t even tell him what it was. and how can god forgive me for something i can hardly forgive myself for? Please understand Im a young man. I am not a pervert I am a good person and I would give anything to take that back. Do I need to confess for this? please help

 

[Fr.Vincent_Serpa]

Dear friend,

You are not a pervert and you are not going to hell. The Sacrament of the Sick which you received does absolve the person from sin. You may very well have succumbed because of your medical problem or because of the stress you were in. I encourage you to spend regular time before the tabernacle. Below is a reflection to help you focus on the Lord and all that He was willing to go through for you because He loves you. If you want Him more than anything–or want to want Him more than anything, He will keep you pure. You are in my prayers.

Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P.

Reflection on the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ +

The agony in the garden was really the agony in His mind. He suffered the passion in His mind before He suffered it in His body—to the point of actually affecting the latter by sweating blood. But from then on, it was His bodily suffering that affected His mental suffering.

At the base of all His suffering was the one thing that human beings dread the most: rejection. He was betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter and abandoned by all the rest of His Apostles; those He had hand picked as His closest intimates. He was most rejected by those who put Him to death. They not only wanted Him dead, they wanted Him to suffer. They not only considered Him to be worth nothing, they considered Him to be worth minus nothing! This significance was not lost on Him. He felt fully the rejection as each physical agony reminded Him.

So we thank Him for joining us on our human journey and actually choosing to experience what we fear the most.

We thank Him for enduring the arrest and the cruelty of the guards and the Sanhedrin. We thank Him for enduring the cruelty of Pilate who allowed Him to be executed rather than risk his own political ruin—and for the cruelty of Herod who wanted to be entertained by having Him work a miracle. We thank Him for all the time He spent satisfying their preoccupation with themselves, just delaying His ultimate death. We thank Him for the anxiety of that night in a cell.

The next morning He was brutally scourged with such intensity and violence that He became as an aged man in a matter of minutes. His multiple wounds bloodied His entire body. The loss of so much blood not only severely weakened Him; it also caused a severe, throbbing headache that remained with Him for the duration.

We thank Him for this and for the mockery He received when they put a purple cloth on His shoulders and pushed a crown of thorns down into His head which intensified His headache. They blindfolded Him and slapped Him, insisting that He ‘prophesy’ who had hit Him. They spat on Him and beat Him.

He stood at the praetorium in utter disgrace according to the attitude of the crowd—while in reality, He stood in utter glory: almighty God, being present to every person who has ever suffered rejection, joining them in their moment of pain. It was there that He was sentenced to death by crucifixion. Physically, He was utterly miserable. He revealed to St. Bernard that carrying the cross was His most painful agony. He was so weak, He could hardly walk. Nauseous and thirsty, He found the weight of the cross on His shoulder almost unbearable. It most likely dislocated His shoulder. It is not surprising that He fell down on the stone streets that were filthy with animal dung—with the cross on top of Him. And He got up each time.

It was only with the help of Simon of Cyrene that He made it to the top of Calvary. There they drove the nails into the carpal tunnels of His hands, causing pain throughout His upper body. The nail in His feet registered great pain through all the sensitive nerves there. When the cross was righted, His up-stretched arms squeezed His lungs and He began to pant for lack of oxygen. So He had to push down on His crucified feet to push His body up in order to fill His lungs with air. This took great effort because He was so weak. Yet He managed to maintain such effort for three hours of agony which increased gradually as He became weaker moment by moment. By the end of the third hour, His agony was at its peak

He had come to the point where His lack of strength simply was no match for what is known as Sepsis, where the bloodstream is overwhelmed by bacteria, and in this eternal moment He died, giving us His life. Transcending time, this moment of divine love is present to us in the tabernacles of the world. Thank you, Lord. We adore you O Christ and we praise you. By your holy cross, you have redeemed the world.