Good question. Very good. Here's my stab thereat: Yeah, when I make an act of contrition, I guess I'm thinking that Hell is dreadful and if I keep this stuff up and don't have frequent and purposeful (and pious and the rest) recourse to the assured means of Grace, I could end up there.
Maybe I'm just in a nice period, and I don't know the meaning of aridity, or something like that. But while the Lord has done great things for me since before I converted, 14 years ago give or take, the whole experience has been an ever more wonderful, ever more rewarding progress deeper into, well love, newness, and, yeah, sometimes a more perfect contrition - a more perceptive horror of who I am and what I do when I momentarily turn away.
But I don't WORRY about it. Does that make sense?
Physical therapy is such an analogy for me. I hurt my shoulder because I used it wrong and I was weak anyway -- that is, I used my whole body wrong. Then I was diagnosed and brought into the process of healing. My shoulder is better, lots better, and it can get better still. Right now, I cannot imagine using it so badly or using my body so badly that it ever gets as bad as it was (hell-bound, in the analogy) before. I can entertain a hypothesis, I can imagine if, first I quit working out, and then I started doing what I did before, then I could re-tear the sub-acromial ligament.
But on the other side of the analogy, it's hard for me to believe that God would remove all the graces that keep me choosing and yearning to see HIm more clearly, love Him more dearly, follow HIm more nearly day by day.
AND I devoutly pray not to be led into any kind of trial. In any event, my confidence is not at all in me but in His care. He rescued me from deep and frankly, pretty nasty waters. I try to hang around Him as much as He lets me.
In related news, it's not so much the absence of God, it is the unmediated presence and love of God, if one would prefer to have things one's OWN way, that is Hell. Dante says, these gates were built by Love, and of course it's love that gives us the dignity of freedom and choice and all that. But I'm also suggesting that the Love of God to someone who hates Him, who has locked himself into perpetual hate of the good and of the Good, that might be Hell.
Just a thought.
“Maybe I’m just in a nice period, and I don’t know the meaning of aridity, or something like that. But while the Lord has done great things for me since before I converted, 14 years ago give or take, the whole experience has been an ever more wonderful, ever more rewarding progress deeper into, well love, newness, and, yeah, sometimes a more perfect contrition - a more perceptive horror of who I am and what I do when I momentarily turn away.
But I don’t WORRY about it. Does that make sense?”
Perfectly.
St. Faustine said it perfectly, “My Jesus, I trust in You.”
It’s all about trusting God even when things are horrid and you rail against fate. Even in those black hours where you beg, “God Help Me! Please” (and Opus knows of black black hours where help was not present) and the torment continues, deep inside you know that you still trust in Jesus who seems to be completely absent.
You just accept. Do the best you can with what you have until at exactly the point that He decides in His timeless, perfect way of creation to create the new and better thing in your life.
Phew....glad that’s over (-;, Until next time!
This ferreting out of everything in your heart and soul takes a lifetime and THAT has to be accepted too for Grace to act.
IMVHO!
I read that you have written:
“Yeah, when I make an act of contrition, I guess I’m thinking that Hell is dreadful and if I keep this stuff up and don’t have frequent and purposeful (and pious and the rest) recourse to the assured means of Grace, I could end up there. “
I had written asking if Hell would be separation from God, which I am thinking is occurring here and now as well as in the past and in the future. I am thinking that the “ending up” is the end of a path.
“when I momentarily turn away. But I don’t WORRY about it. Does that make sense? “
You are a very blessed person. Momentarily !! There is no fear that the fallen state might someday have interference perhaps unsuspectingly if not guarded against? Especially this would be when God is ignoring you?
But on the other side of the analogy, it’s hard for me to believe that God would remove all the graces that keep me choosing and yearning to see HIm more clearly, love Him more dearly, follow HIm more nearly day by day.
Is not the God of Christianity always loving His people? I am wondering how it is that the thought of God “removing graces” is a side of an analogy, if the sin is always coming from Satan, and the removal of graces is an impossibility. Have not these graces always been coming from God from all time? And yet, in my thinking, in the presence of graces people are turning away?
I try to hang around Him as much as He lets me.
I am not understanding this. God is limiting your access to Him? He is saying to you “not now” ? Or He is not saying to yo anything at all? In my thinking this would be God abandoning the person to Satan. I am thinking that would be putting a person into temptation, much harder for the person to remain loyal, very lonely for the person. Would that not be leading the person into temptation? A person might always wonder is God with me? The devotion of the person to God would never be completely because the devotion of God to the person would never be completely?
But I’m also suggesting that the Love of God to someone who hates Him, who has locked himself into perpetual hate of the good and of the Good, that might be Hell.
I do not understand. This is meaning that Hell is only when there is a permanent or perpetual separation ? Transient separations are not Hell?
I am not understanding the “might be” of this sentence. I am thinking that is Hell.
This is very different from how I am thinking about God.
May the Sabbath be Holy!
Thanking you,