Tag: #temptation

Thoughts about confession, mass, Satan and God

Have you ever felt like the whole world was conspiring against you to keep you away from God? Maybe I am over dramatizing here, but that is exactly how I have felt these past couple of days. I have felt like God has been so far out of reach, and everything I try doesn’t bring Him any closer.

https://www.franciscansisterstor.org/about/spirituality-and-charisms/father-of-mercy-chapel

I awoke early this morning and was ready to leave the house well before my normal 6:30am departure. I jumped in the car and headed to the Father of Mercy Chapel for morning mass. This is where I normally attend Monday morning mass. However, when I arrived this morning, the doors were locked. Needless to say, I was taken aback.

I had spent that morning drive pondering how I would pray morning prayer. I had left my prayer books at work over the weekend. They were lying on my desk. I had been making a mental plan of how to approach morning prayer for the past 20 minutes. Never did I image that the doors to chapel would be locked. I knocked. No answer. I stood dumbfounded wondering if God knew I was standing outside, wondering why I could not get in.

With an air of desperation, I turned and walked down the stairs and back to my car. While doing so, I checked the emailed mass schedule that I had received for the month of October. Mass wasn’t being held today until 8:15am. I drove to work.

This was the second, third or fourth time in the past 24 hours in which I had felt alienated from God (not alienated by God).

Yesterday evening, I had this incredible desire to go to confession. You should know, this is not something for which I ever have a yearning – ever. Confession is a challenge for me – extremely difficult, yet yesterday evening I had this “pull” or felt this need to go. And I really wanted to go immediately, but that wasn’t possible.

I contacted a few of my priest friends hoping to be able to go this morning, fully expecting this to be possible. Only it wasn’t. Nobody was hearing confessions on this dismal, gray and drizzling Monday morning. It was kind of like, three strikes and you’re out. I had contacted 3 priests. I was truly dumfounded. I mean, I actually wanted to go to confession, and I couldn’t. God felt so far out of reach last night and there was no light at the end of the tunnel.

I worried that my longing to receive the sacrament of confession would wane as time passed. I went to bed, contemplating this and what it really meant. Still, I planned to attend mass, but for the first time in a very long time, not receive the Eucharist. All because of this great need to confess my sins to a priest and receive absolution.

As I awoke this morning from one of the deepest sleeps in which I have been in a very long time, I felt a renewed sense of the need to attend morning mass. To discover only an hour later, the doors locked and no one answering my knock, deflated me. I left the hilltop, defeated. As I was descending the hill from the monastery, I began reflecting on how I had been intending to not receive communion this morning. Then I began wondering why getting to God was so difficult these past few days, I mean really difficult.

Satan is real and evil permeates our society. These things you can clearly see if you just look at our world today. All you have to do is turn on the news or read the paper. There is too much evil.

I began to think that this was the devil trying to undermine my relationship with Christ. I mean, I couldn’t find a priest to hear my confession this morning – not one, not two, but three were unavailable. I had left my prayer books at work, lying on my desk. And then the doors to the chapel were locked. LOCKED! I was locked out, away from God.

But as I pulled into my parking space at work, I had a different realization. I realized that perhaps, all of these things were a blessing, and all of these things were orchestrated by divine intervention. Sounds weird, right? But not being able to find a priest to hear my confession today has given me a greater opportunity to examine my conscience, to reflect on my sins and to better prepare for absolution. And yes, I still intend to go, it just might not be as soon as I would like. And the doors being locked and mass being at a different time, I think that was to help me avoid the temptation to receive the body of Christ while not in a state of grace. Yes, I would have been tempted to do that. I probably would have gone to communion had I gone to mass this morning, even if I was thinking that I wouldn’t. It is difficult to explain, and I am sure there are many who understand where I am coming from. But I truly believe it was God’s gentle hand protecting me from falling even further from grace.

Just moments before I arrived at the chapel, I had been listen to the song Fallen, by Sarah McLaughlin. It was almost prophetic for how I have been feeling lately. But I know there is redemption and there is grace and that God does work in mysterious ways. By all accounts, my Monday morning did not go as I had planned, it was a bit mysterious the way in which it unfolded. It seemed obvious that someone or something was trying to undermine my peace. But, in the end, I truly believe it was in my best interest. I just had to look beyond the obvious to see the extraordinary love of God.

So today, look beyond the obvious and find the extraordinary. Everything does, indeed, happen for a reason. And Today, please pray for me and I will continue to pray for you.