Not feeling better after confession

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Has anyone else ever had this problem?

I went to confession last Saturday and finally confessed a sin I held for 3 years.

I did my penance, but still dont feel “forgiven”.

Am I being too harsh on myself? Should I pray more to help get me through this?

I am forgiven by Our Lord arent I???

I just sort of thought that I would suddenly feel relieved but I dont.

Love Kellie
 
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kellie:
Has anyone else ever had this problem?

I went to confession last Saturday and finally confessed a sin I held for 3 years.

I did my penance, but still dont feel “forgiven”.

Am I being too harsh on myself? Should I pray more to help get me through this?

I am forgiven by Our Lord arent I???

I just sort of thought that I would suddenly feel relieved but I dont.

Love Kellie
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“By the power bestowed on me by the Holy Mother Church … I absolve you from all your sins!”

you are certainly forgiven and reconciled, take heart to that fact.

Pray more for your consolation, I’ll pray for you.
 
Martin Luther had the same problem…Sacraments are not about feeling but about faith. Much like in marriage you do not have to feel very loving in order to be loving…

There is a condition known as scrupulocity where no matter how often once goes to confession one still feels guilty…relax you are forgiven…:bowdown:
 
That’s what’s so great about being a Catholic. Our faith is based on the promises of Jesus and not on our personal feelings. As long as the priest said those words, “I absolve you from your sins” then rest assured, your forgiven. Remember Jesus himself said to the apostles…“Whoever sins you forgive are forgiven…”
 
Yep, the priest placed his hand on my head and said “i absolve u from your sins”

Ok ok ok i will place my faith in God.

Thanks everyone for your help 🙂
 
I don’t want this to sound harsh at all, but there’s no other way to say it:

It’s actually sinful to believe that you were not forgiven.
It’s okay to have an emotional feeling that you cannot control - that’s simply evidence that the devil is working you, so get to confession often! I’ve had that nagging feeling myself. But you cannot doubt the healing power of Christ and those appointed to serve in persona christi. Consciously, you must believe that you were forgiven completely.

There may be a legitimate reason you did not feel forgiven. Did you give a good confession? Did you really examine your conscience? Did you perform the pennance given you by the priest?

If that confessor did not do a good job in listening and conveying God’s forgiveness, then you ought to find another confessor. But in the end, Smack Daddy is absolutely right - if you were absolved, and you gave a good confession, rest assured you were absolved.
 
I guess Im not really questioning whether I was forgiven or not, as my priest was great and I did my penance.

I just really have a bad self esteem problem that I am trying to overcome, and just really wish I had never done this sin.

Thank you Barrister for being so harsh.

I needed it.

I do feel better now.

I will pray for more help to overcome this problem I have

Thank you
Love Kellie
 
Maybe you are suffering from low self esteem or maybe scrupulosity. Here’s a web site dedicated to those who surrer from this terrible affliction.

www.liguori.org
 
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kellie:
Has anyone else ever had this problem?

I went to confession last Saturday and finally confessed a sin I held for 3 years.

I did my penance, but still dont feel “forgiven”.

Am I being too harsh on myself? Should I pray more to help get me through this?

I am forgiven by Our Lord arent I???

I just sort of thought that I would suddenly feel relieved but I dont.

Love Kellie
Click to expand...
The last few times I’ve gone to confession I’ve not felt any better. I remember, as a child, walking out of the church after going to confession and having the feeling of walking on air. I would love to get that feeling back about confession.

Maybe when I finally break free from the sin I confess over and over, because I commit it over and over, I will feel free and loved.

Yes, I think it is only that I have sinned so long and so extreme that I have felt that I have hurt God so much He can’t, or won’t love me as much as I would need Him to love me.

Oh well, I can only try harder and really keep to my vow of amending my life.
 
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WarriorForJesus:
Maybe when I finally break free from the sin I confess over and over, because I commit it over and over, I will feel free and loved…
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If you’re continuing to commit the same sin perhaps you’re not being sincere in your confession. You truly must be sorry for offending God. If you are truly sorry why, or how, can you continue to do the same sin? You need to evaluate what makes you do this and avoid the things which lead to it.
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WarriorForJesus:
Yes, I think it is only that I have sinned so long and so extreme that I have felt that I have hurt God so much He can’t, or won’t love me as much as I would need Him to love me…
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Read the CCC on sin.
 
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Tom:
If you’re continuing to commit the same sin perhaps you’re not being sincere in your confession. You truly must be sorry for offending God. If you are truly sorry why, or how, can you continue to do the same sin? You need to evaluate what makes you do this and avoid the things which lead to it.

Read the CCC on sin.
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With all due respect, Tom. I am trying to break out of the habit of committing this sin. It is not that I am not trying.

However, when I go to cofession, I had one priest tell me that I was already being weighed down by my conscience that he wasn’t going to add any penance. And others just tell me to pray of wisdom or really and truly pray the Our Father.

I’m sorry, what I need is a swift kick in the pants and the priest to tell me that I had sinned greatly. I need to be told that my sin is keeping me away from God.

I should have been born in the middle ages when they made you publicly answer for your sins. Perhaps then I would understand how serious it is. I already have knowledge that it is wrong. But I have to understand WHY it is wrong and HOW it can be overcome.

Yes, I think a bit of counseling would be a good thing. But only with a Catholic counselor. I’ve run across some weird non-Catholic counselors.
 
I wasn’t trying to be judgemental, sorry if it came off that way. I understand quite well your problem, I have had the same problem. The only way I overcame my problem was to avoid the occasions which lends itself to the sin. For example, IF the sin were sexually oriented, avoid sugestive movies, books, thoughts, concentrate on God, think of the virgin mother of God. That’s a real good one for sex sins… lol, nothing will take you out of the “mood” faster than praying to Mary… lol
When you are tempted, begin your prayers, God will help, but, He won’t force. It is up to you. You can do it, have faith in God and yourself.
 
Tom,

Thanks for that. I know I can do it, but not without Jesus. It has been a terrible pattern that I have gotten in, but I can change that pattern, if I am sincere.
 
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kellie:
I just really have a bad self esteem problem that I am trying to overcome, and just really wish I had never done this sin.
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Kellie - one thing I have found about some terrible sin in our past that we hold onto even after we’ve been forgiven it in the confessional, is that it helps to look at the first commandment.God has forgiven you, right? You accept that.
By holding onto the sin anyway, you are holding it up as an idol…
Looking at it, worshipping it, saying “I know God has forgiven me, but look at this terrible thing… am I sure that God’s grace is greater even than this?”
When you see it in that perspective it makes it so much easier to let it go.
Of course **God’s grace is so much greater ** than anything we can do. We are not and never will be more powerful than His grace…

God Bless you for sharing. Nothing can separate us from the love of God, but we have to be willing to **let go ** of the sin in every sense of the word. The less we think about it, the better off we are. God would have our focus be on Him 😃 not our forgiven sins of the past 😛 .
 
I also held a sin I ‘could not’ confess for a long time, and after confession I did not feel great. In fact I felt worse, because it was the first time I have relized the sin.

My advice is go and do a station of the cross. And pray a lot. Eventually you’ll be over it.
 
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kellie:
Has anyone else ever had this problem?

I went to confession last Saturday and finally confessed a sin I held for 3 years.

I did my penance, but still dont feel “forgiven”.

Am I being too harsh on myself? Should I pray more to help get me through this?

I am forgiven by Our Lord arent I???

I just sort of thought that I would suddenly feel relieved but I dont.

Love Kellie
Click to expand...
You are forgiven, but you must also forgive yourself.

This is done with with faith in God.
 
I have a demon temper. Had been working on it for many years without much improvement when finally I had a reversion back to our Faith.

Confessed over and over w/o much improvement. I did, however, discover Philippians and found MUCH support there–about not looking back, but always forward toward Christ, and don’t forget that Peter was successfully walking on water until he took his eyes off of Christ.

I also was reading about some of the saints, and discovered one (St. Joseph Cupertino?) who used to take God to task–he said that left to himself he would sink into sin every time, and when he fell, he would chide God for not giving him enough grace. Now I know that God sends the same grace to all of us, but I did learn to pray for the grace to respond to His graces so as to remember Him BEFORE I lost my temper rather than afterward.

After much time, and SLOW, incremental improvement, It occurred to me that I could offer Jesus my temper during the Offertory. I told Him that I could not control my temper and that I therefore offered it to Him. After that I made great strides.

The best part of all of this, is that while I worked for many years on this sin area, when I finally made great strides and began focusing on thanksgiving and praise, I began a new examiination of conscience to find the next area to work on, and…God had miraculously healed me of many of my other secondary sin areas. I am convinced that they must all stem from the same capital sin, but it was encouraging to see that while I thought I was struggling with only one sin for so long, and often felt hopeless about ever improving, even sinking towards despair sometimes, (This is where Philippians was such encouragement for me!) that when I began to come out the other side of the tunnel, I realized how much God had accompished in me without my knowledge.

Sorry for the length, but I just wanted to share my encouragement with you. I am once again struggling, but now I know that if I continue to struggle God will walk along side of me and lead me to a better place.

In Christ’s peace and joy, even in the midst of self-disappointment,
 
I’d like to remind everyone of The Divine Mercy image and Chaplet. The Image shows us just what Our Lord’s Mercy is all about. The red ray is the Blood of our Lord and the Pale is the waters of Baptism. Our Lord knows that the most hardened sinners will come to this image and his mercy and He is still blessing us…Praise the Lord for His Mercy. Jesus promised St. Faustina that even the most hardened sinner with the blackest soul will find forgiveness in the Chaplet, Reconcilliation, and Trust in Our Lord obviously trusting Him first. The Lord has wonderfull graces for us in His Mercy, we don’t need kicks in the pants, to live in the middle ages or anything like that. Trust in Our Lord’s Mercy, frequent (I try to go weekly) Reconcilliation, frequent the Eucharist, devotion to Our Lady, and daily prayer are the key’s for me. Overcoming habitual sin is difficult and is only conquered by Jesus with interssessions of Our Heavenly Mother. For today anyway, I am resisting my temptations.
 
Dear Kellie,

I can count on a finger or two the number of times I have really “felt” forgiven or had a very good feeling after confession. It just doesn’t happen for me. I take it to be another part of the penance…

As Jesus said to the father of the possessed boy, fear is useless: what is needed is faith. Just having faith that we have been forgiven can leave us feeling quite in the dark but we should see that as another opportunity to tell God we love Him even though we don’t feel like it (in other words, we don’t get anything out of our love for Him, not even good feelings).

You’re a good person. Keep trying.
 
Dear Kellie, and any others still feelng guilty:

You are loved, you are loved, you are loved! You agonized over the sin and finally got up the courage to go to Confession. Whatever it was, the priest has surely heard worse because he did not jump up and shout “begone, ye devil.”

We just had Pentecost, “whose sins you bind on earth are bound in Heaven, whose sins you loose on earth are loosed in Heaven.”

You are free! You are free! You are free of that sin!

Spiritually you are cleansed, but maybe there is some emotional healing you need, I wonder if talking to a counselor or friend might make you feel better?

You are good! You are good! You are good! You are trying, you are seeking the Kingdom of God, you are following the Church and it is your mother.

Rest you mind, forgive yourself, think about why this bothers you so much and maybe make up some own little penance that will be healing. Draw a picture of your feelings. If the sin involves sex or abortion, do something for Pro-Life. If it involves theft or illegal activity, donate some goods or money to charity. THAT IS NOT NECESSARY OF COURSE. But could help you ‘feel’ better.

Again, Jesus loves you. Anyone who agonizes like this over a sin is surely pure of heart and sincere. God bless you. Also, ask Mary to help you. See how she holds Jesus her little baby, with such tenderness and devotion? So she holds you, dear friend. Mary our Mother also understands what you’ve been through, and that you want to do better. Jesus forgives you, Mary loves you, you are on the right track. God bless you!
 
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