Let me begin by saying that I am a convert of about 3 and half years. I usually go to Mass about twice a week and to adoration once a week. I took my conversion and my Catholic faith very seriously. However, recently I did something that is now bothering me.
I recently had lunch with a former coworker, a retired gentleman who is a Southern Baptist. At lunch he wanted to say grace, which was fine. When he was done with the prayer, I made the sign of the cross in sort of a quiet and discreet way which he didn’t seem to notice. My rationale was that I just didn’t want to spend our lunch together defending the Church and its doctrine to a man who I know is very set in his ways. Now I am beginning to feel as if I have committed a very serious sin, almost a form of denying the faith.
I am somewhat scrupulous, but I would like to ask: Was this mortal sin? Thanks in advance.
A number of thoughts occurred to me on this. Your having committed a mortal sin by executing a “too small” sign of the cross
not being one of them.
First: If you are scrupulous,
no matter what you did you’d be worried that you:
did wrong, possibly mortally, and that hence
God has for the moment at least, has struck your name from the book of life
and placed it on the roll call for the goat line. :bigyikes:
BIG ol’ sign of the cross? Why, you’d be a hypocrite like those who prayed on street corners “to be seen” that Jesus criticized. Why didn’t you THEN do a small, humble sign of the cross as a gentle witness to your friend?
NO sign of the cross? Are you then ashamed of the Gospel? The Lord will be ashamed of you on Judgement Day!
And on it would go. No matter what pitch Satan threw he could strike you out almost.
What’s more, this rather presumes a God who is all justice and no mercy; not the kind of God who’d take GREAT pains to redeem you by dying on a cross for you. Or the kind who considers you (and he) His beloved, precious, little lambs - and who is full of joy at joining you for lunch together “in His name …” and your mutually inviting Him into your midst! :extrahappy::yup:
Second: Scrupulosity is not the worst of sins, nor even necessarily a sin at all (but for the distraction it causes) in its particulars. The very GOOD thing about it is it shows your conscience is not dead – but QUITE acute! Your desire is NOT to sin. If FEAR isn’t the predominant reason for your being in that state … but pleasing God is … you could be quite a holy person, and are being tempted to THIS to keep you from being more fruitful.
Here’s what I mean. You did what you did - then worried about it for the rest of lunchtime.
Your friend sees you so worried and concludes that you have not found peace in the Catholic faith (which would be an understandable, if false, impression – and one the devil would surely encourage him to deduce). As much as he’d encourage your own feelings of doom versus feelings of confidence and joy – which would usually be a better witness.
And the devil never lets up anyway. We must have armor to resist his fiery darts (Ephesians 6:10 - 17). If he couldn’t get you to scruple about the sign of the cross,
he’d tempt you to scruple about having anything to do with a Southern Baptist!
Had the apostles so scrupled they would never have become fishers of men but would have remained huddled in the upper room, avoiding less holy people.
To answer your thread question “How serious is this?”: You would know better than I since you have more particulars on the details - but generally, it looks to be much less
serious than anything I confessed on my last trip to the confessional.
Rather than dwell on this negatively, perhaps consider yourself insightfully blessed, and ask yourself – how shall I do better if that same thing occurs again?
That “how shall I do better?” is something we can always do - and does not lead us to a
spiritual or practical paralysis in our “walk”.
And per:
1 John 4:1 Beloved, do not trust every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they belong to God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
test positively as well as negatively. Could it not be that performing the small, humble sign of the cross was led by the Holy Spirit? Especially since He knows both you and your friend and you were gathered in His name and He is in your midst?
That said: if it is STILL bothering you … go ahead and confess it (as either the sin you think you might have committed … and you could put it that way, I have done such … or as over-scrupulosity that is causing damage to your naturalness and witness). The important thing there is to “put the guilt of it behind you” … while retaining the benefit of the lessons).
It could also be that this friend, knowing about your “conversion” is curious about it. Perhaps resolve to show him your confident, peaceful side next time (presuming you have one
) for instance.
And thank you for this witness. In “answering” it (as is often the case) a little light shines on my own path. And I see some things I need to do in a similar vein. :sad_yes:
