Traditional Ang:
Probably your own Doubt - I think we tend to blame a lot of stuff on Satan and his minions that we actually do to ourselves.
One thing I have learned about being “obsessed” with satan, as opposed to “possessed,” is that anything can be turned around to mean just the opposite.
For example, I can read your sentence with many different twists, such as the following, and there may be any of these thoughts about the matter in your very typing…
“Probably your own Doubt … blah blah … we actually do to ourselves.”
“Doubt … we tend to blame … satan … ourselves.”
“Satan … minion … do to selves”
I’m sur Satan had a hand in keeping me out of the Church for all of those years, but I’m just as sure that it wouldn’t have happened if I had been unwilling to cooperate with his program.
I have recently revealed to a woman who works with holistic health and neurobiology, that I believe “satan” works even through our typos – gives confusing messages such as, was this person a bad speller? Bad typist? doesn’t care enough to proofread? Proofread it but didn’t see the same mistake? Don’t know it’s a mistake? Hey, they were trying to imply another word here that loads the meaning … or not?
Yes, “satan” as I’m describing him, with a lower case “s” and “h” certainly did have a hand in keeping you out of the Church for all of those years, because you know one way or another if you die you will wind up in the Church and not walk out under your own power. If you think about it, the very conquest between “satan” and everyday struggles of life endured with fruits of the Holy Spirit, is enough blessing to make you enter into the Kingdom, and according to my calculations once one of us go we all go; we will each get the sense we have been there all along and have just finally gotten up the confidence to proclaim, “as surely as the Savior if born, I am in the Kingdom on this very day.”
After all, do you think Christ meant to give the thief privileges over all the good people who were too confused to see that He was God? It isn’t like they weren’t trying. The thief himself put Christ about himself, and therefore this exchange teaches us that all will be saved, even non-Christians and non-Catholics IMO.
The sin against the holy Spirit is probably being so sure that God would never forgive you that you not only don’t ask, but you even reject the offer of forgiveness when it’s made.
Thank you. It’s basically despair, but then again when we despair what is it of? We despair of our attempts to keep a plan operating after others have given up on it – whether it needs to be changed is yet a whole different matter entirely.
St. Michael, IMO, but than again I just got done playing some particularly soul-haunting music with my daughters and their friends, two violins, bells, and I played alternately organ or piano. The name of my home Church in Wichita? All Saints, of course. I’m supposed to be updating their website, among other things, instead of posting here.
PS I was once impressed by this “obsession” when I heard about how Pio did it, but then I realized he was not obsessed because he wanted to be, but as a gift to him, and after his death new for the rest of us. The problem I had was if Pio was so close to God, then why would he take ostensibly repentant confessees and run them out when all he should have to do is change them from ceremonial repentance to TRUE repentance? It takes a “whole” person to do that, and Pio was limited from being one in so many ways his expressions of love literally oozed out like Christ’s.
Alan
