Feeling the loss of sanctifying grace

[GladTidings]

Can a person feel the moment when they have lost sanctifying grace through sin? Can it get to the point where people feel it leave? I have been going to confession almost every week for the last 5 months and many sins have fallen off completely, but I still struggle with some sins. Have you ever felt the moment when it left?

 

[EmeraldOak]

I have never felt the moment it left, but I have felt it the next day. This one time I committed a mortal sin at night. Then the next morning I had to help my husband paint our house. I prayed like I usually do before starting big projects, but it was like my prayers just fell back down onto me. I knew God wasn’t hearing me, I just knew it in a way I had never experienced before. It scared me and I went to confession that day.

That was an awful feeling and it gave me compassion for people in the world who walk around in mortal sin cut off from God day after day, year after year sometimes. No wonder people are so desperate and lost. I wish I could tell them all “Jesus is waiting for you in the confessional!”.

 

[Nelka]

Yes and it is awful. the realisation that you are alone. It feels like depression and everything that was helping you from being angry, sad and despondent with life itself.

Everything suddenly feels like “what’s the point!”

Have you ever been in a room with a fireplace as the only heating? You sit there and you can feel the warmth but when someone stands in front of you the warmth is immediately lost but you know the fire is still burning. You are now cold and need to be warm again so you ask the person to move.

In the past it wasn’t so much with me, maybe I didn’t realise then how much I lost when I sinned mortally or maybe I didn’t care as much?

I do have a tendency to worry and therefore search all over for confession and fell I cannot rest until I have.

 

[spiderweb]

Sometimes yes. However we shouldn’t base our objective state of grace (or lack thereof) on feelings which may originate from ourselves. There have been times when I knew I was not in a state of grace, but didn’t have any negative “feelings”. Those times, based on those feelings, I would have seen no reason to go to confession and could have received communion as well. But that wasn’t reality.

Feelings come and go. Sometimes I think God allows us to “feel” his absence, but other times not.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

Yes I have felt it along with all the negative things that took place with it.

Confession relieved me of the sin and it’s consequences. Praise Jesus Christ!

Jim

 

[sudy]

I know when I’m no longer in a state of grace because mortal sin is a conscious act, and I find that one sin very quickly leads to another sin …so, before a very short time has passed, I’ve sinned multiple times and in multiple different ways. I’m not sure that I’ve felt the moment it leaves, as such.

I’ve felt great sorrow, of course… I definitely feel that, just not necessarily at the moment that sanctifying grace leaves me; the sorrow doesn’t always come immediately …at least for me

I find that when I’m in a state of grace I can remain in that state for quite a long time, but as soon as it’s gone, sin spreads like wildfire.

 

[Mary_Ellen]

Faith is not a feeling, neither is grace. We worship a God who sometimes gives us consolations, not the consolations of God. If you have made your confession trust in the Mercy of God that your sins have been forgiven and that grace has been restored.