I think that people on this board need to think about who they are addressing, what age, what level of knowledge of the faith, and other things. I know that I have read things that make me sad, because everyone on the boards thinks that something is a mortal sin, and it may be something that I don’t think twice about, as I have grown up in a different time. It is hard to deal with other people telling you are in state of mortal sin, when you are just trying your best. Sunday school always said if you died with a mortal sin on your soul, and did not confess it, then grave things would happen to you.** Is that a way to live?**
It’s the way Our Lord tells us to live - ‘if you love Me you will keep My commandments’. We are not telling anyone that they are in a state of mortal sin - it would only be mortal sin if you knew its gravity beforehand and wilfully did it anyway. You, it appears, didn’t. But you do now. Just as someone who progresses from pedestrian to licenced driver needs to learn and abide by a whole new set of rules - the traffic laws which are appropriate to their new situation.
Read the Gospels - He spoke of sin, of Hell, and of the reality of eternal damnation (‘the outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth’) frequently. He taught us the responsibility as well as the joy and love and inestimable privilege that comes with serving Him - ‘to whom much is given, of him will much be expected’.
Yes it is difficult for anyone coming to these things for the first time - whether as a child, teen or adult, not that age matters. I certainly knew and understood about the Sunday obligation from my earliest memory - not that fear of Hell was especially impressed on me in its teaching, simply the idea that this is what God wants and expects of us, and since we love Him we will do what pleases Him and not ourselves.
The martha9 is concerned about her relationship with God, and all anyone has to say about it is that she will commit a mortal sin if she misses mass this once because of a field trip, unless she does all these thing to either get the dispensation from a priest or try to find a church wherever she is going. She is a teenager, and does not have the ability to make things happen that are around her.
Again, we’re not telling her she is in mortal sin, rather we are helping her to avoid mortal sin. if someone told you they were contemplating stealing, or murder, would you not try to talk them out of it if you could? Try to find ways that they could achieve what they wanted WITHOUT resorting to sin?
All she has to do is spend literally half a minute with her pastor - either on the phone, or before or after Mass, ask for permission to miss Mass next weekend because she’s on a schooltrip, he says yes verbally, and that’s it. It’s the least complicated thing in the world to do - yet how sad if she were to a) show so little interest in the commandment to keep the Sabbath Holy and b) show so little disdain for the guidance of Christ’s Church, that she failed to do such a simple thing.
A lot of particularly great saints have been teenagers and young people - St Maria Goretti, who died rather than submit to rape. St Dominic Savio who willingly took the blame for something his classmate did rather than tell tales. Bernadette who at the age of 14 was gifted with apparitions from Our Lady - and who came across much stiff opposition, even from her own parents, church and secular officials, but overcame it all. The young children of Fatima had similar difficulties getting authorities to believe when Our Lady appeared to them. Teenage is not too young to begin forming a strong moral character by any means.
