/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

>>688101

>>688220

Thanks to both of you. It actually feels pretty incredible. For a long time, I avoided going to confession and as my sins kept piling up, my will to confess kept lessening and became it easier to allow more sins into my life. I went from petty theft to elaborated frauds, counterfeiting and (planned) drug dealing and blackmailing. The abortions of course constituted the gravest sin and have left a permanent scar in my heart.

This gradual spiritual decline damaged my soul and made my psyche susceptible to anger, jealousy and all other weaknesses. I was afraid of being abandoned, so I helped my girlfriend sin. I was jealous of other peoples riches, so I stole. I experienced suffering and injustice so I sought revenge on people and on society.

All this time, I always believed in God, I always hungered for Christ and I always believed that the church bears witness to the truth, but my will to love was weaker than my will to sin. Deep in, I knew it was wrong, but I kept trying to rationalize my behaviour, even trying to quote the Catechism to defend my thievery and fraudulent behavior.

During the last 10 years I have never been able to ransack my conscience, despite seeking spiritual guidence through reading the Bible, St Augustine, The Imitation of Christ, The Brothers Karamazov and countless more, as well as buying a rosary, attending some sporadic masses and occasionally praying. Although I think this did plant a seed that allowed me to gain courage enough to eventually call the parish priest and ask for counseling. Nevertheless, during all this reading, which I did for several years, my sinning continued and worsened.

It wasn't until experiencing the sacrament of penance that I could actually feel a will inside me not to sin anymore. No amount of reading and introspection could give me the will to love the truth, to accept in my heart what I already knew in my mind. Only through the sacrament have I been able to receive Gods grace.

The first 24h after my confession (which took about an hour but this also included some general counseling and spiritual guidance) were very emotional and I came close to crying several times. Within a few hours, I could feel my will to sin had ceased.

Although I've understood the concept of sin since first communion and confirmation, it is not until now, for the first time in my life, that I can actually feel how small sins pile up, distract the soul and lead to greater evils (today, for example, I caught myself bringing some office supplies home from my workplace and I immediately got tempted to steal more things).

My perspective of life has also changed drastically and while I have been close to making these realizations in past, I can actually perceive my spiritual strength growing (e.g. I am no longer afraid of letting go of the destructive relationship I had with my old girlfriend, I no longer feel the need to acquire massive wealth, I am no longer planning revenge on people that have wronged me.)

Aside from the pilgrimage I am planning to perform next year, the parish priest also instructed me some prayers and litanies, giving names to and praying for my unborn children, regular mass attendance (including receiving the eucharist), monthly confessions and a future large donation to our regional pro-life organization (my degree will allow for a relatively high salary).

I expressed a will to perform volunteer work but he advised me to do the pilgrimage to grow in spiritual strength before I start working with people (which is, as my future work also includes working with people in need, one of the reason I am doing the pilgrimage as soon as I graduate. I also have already enough money saved to perform it (none of this comes from my criminal life as it was mostly petty theft, and I abandoned the really lucrative ideas just prior to or during the confession).

Wow, this became a lot longer than I expected, I actually intended just to reply with a short paragraph but the reflections made during the writing of this are really helpful to me. I feel and act like a completely new person. The immediate and (hopefully) complete change in personality that I've experienced feels like a miracle. For the first time in several years, I feel ease of mind, peace in my heart, a sense of tranquility and complete willingness to submit and put all my faith and hope in to Gods will. Glory to God.

That's pretty cool, if you're able to actually make a classical Pilgrimage Journey on foot. Personally, if i had the time. I'd go for it. And it'd be an honor to make an on foot travel. To mount Athos. I've heard of a few groups in France, that still do on foot Pilgrimages. So, if you can, go for it man. You only live once.

>>688031

>I was advised

Yes … because walking 500 miles cures all spiritual ills.

That said, I *would* walk 500 miles, and then I would walk 500 more, just to be the man who walks a thousand miles to fall down at your door.

>>688975

>>688846

Sorry for the late reply. To be honest, it was kind of bad from the beginning. I grew up as an immigrant kid in a secular northern european society. Although this did create a strong catholic identity in me, it also brought alienation, loneliness and a feeling of being paria. I had a few friends and we shared interests but our values were very far apart and I had trouble relating to people in general. This was combined with some neglect from my career-driven parents (I was raised catholic thanks to my mother but she is not very religious today, my dads has always been an atheist) caused me some (minor and today fixed) physical illnesses that were not attended to. I can't blame them completely as they were struggling hard to establish themselves as immigrants but aside from neglecting things like my health, hygiene and never providing any social or emotional support, the most troubling thing was the mental decline of my sister who was also neglected by my parents. She was and still is suffering from mental issues and was barely given any support from our parents, rejected seeking psychiatrical help and her life is a complete mess. We haven't spoken in 10 years, I think. We fought a lot and I was blamed for her mental deterioration. I still love her, she was always an inspiration to me and one of the reasons I never lost interest for catholicism (she had a keen interest in religion which inspired me). I was also beaten by my dad, now this is very common in our particular demographics but being the only immigrant kid on the block, I was the only one experiencing this and as such I had no one to relate to which made me feel further isolated.

So this isolation and alienation together with the perceived injustice (mostly what was happening to my sister) fostered an antipathy and rejection of society and its values. I started to hade people. I also wanted to be hated and rejected as this felt like a confirmation of some kind of imagined injustice. I didn't want to feel happy, I wanted martyrdom. I wanted suffering and I couldn't allow myself to be happy knowing my sister had her life ruined, I felt shame and I felt that all I had was undeserved. I also started to try to rationalize her suffering by applying social-darwinist ethics, telling myself that life is a war and some people need to perish so that the rest of us can prosper. This did help my anxiety.

Starting university, I met my girlfriend. We took each others virginity and we shared values and heritage. We started growing into each other and became basically soulmates, people said we acted and behaved identical. After a few years, we started fighting more, she was becoming violent and indulged in various petty crime. As I was considering us as soulmates and having a general antipathy towards society and people in general (also having developed my social-darwinist morals), I assisted her in everything and I also initiated and performed several of our/my elaborated plans as I was the more diligent and creative of us (also I had much less of a conscience). We loved each other, she was a wonderful, conservative, trustful and loyal gf. Her only problem was the emotional lability and criminal behavior (the latter I think she has gotten from her family. While highly educated, they are avid opponents of catholicism, members of a prot. denom. and they are pretty immoral, support abortions and don't hesitate to take law into their own hands).

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>>688846

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So I kept helping her. I wanted to give her the world and some petty theft giving us easy money wasn't a big thing I thought. Needless to say, the damage done to our souls kept accumulating, our relationship became worse and worse and she started becoming jealous, spiteful and ended up hating me. I was thinking it would all become well once we graduate and have a stable income, as our only motivation to the thefts were to enrich ourselves with some spare cash. It kind of grew from there and we were elaborating more sinister and lucrative plans, most of which were never put into practice but it would have included blackmailing, fraud, forgeries, etc. Truth to be told, she was becoming more and more reluctant as the plans became more elaborated and I became the driving factor, instigator and ended up planning and starting to prepare for most things by myself, many times without telling her.

We've been together for 7 years and we are still seeing each other every day but I've told her that I'm rejecting all of our criminal behavior and we're not having sex any more. I've told her that I'm willing to commit if she wants to but I actually doubt this will happen. Regardless, I still love her and I still want to help her but I'm putting everything in Gods hands now and my separation anxiety is gone since the confession. There are a lot of things I could and should have done better in our relationship aside from the things mentioned above and I think that had I been an exemplary boyfriend and christian, she would have never developed this behavior and her being led astray was mostly my fault. There is nothing intrinsically evil about her, she is a product or our secular morally relativistic society. My parish priest advised me to consider to give up our relationship, and I understand that from what I've told you above, this seems reasonable. But she is actually mostly a very kind, loving and caring person (many times her jealousy was justified), she has always helped me, cared for me, etc. However, she was raised by a single mom and has been unable to develop a non-sexualized perspective on womanhood and it doesn't help that there seems to be a plethora of personality disorders (narcissistic, antisocial, etc.) in her family. Of course, she bears the blame and burden of her own sins, as do I for mine, but these are admittedly mitigating circumstances. And had I not failed her as a bf, things would have been different. I am confident that we can be together without repeating our past mistakes and that our relationship can lead us both to become better persons. It has also improved a lot the past month and especially after my confession. I am yet to discern Gods will for us but should it mean that I need to leave her, I will do it (albeit reluctantly). Of course, our past history bears a scar in our hearts, but so does my life in general, so it's not really a valid reason.

>>688910

Sure thing, I will keep you updated.

>>688944

Thanks.

>>691887

Thanks for the tips. I want to do the complete pilgrimage on foot from my doorstep. However, I live in Stockholm, so unless I'm going through finland and russia (this is not happening), I have to make a part of the pilgrimage by boat. My initial plan was to rush through 600 km in sweden (can be done in 2 weeks), reaching Denmark and Germany by boat from southern sweden (the bridges are uncrossable for pedastrians). Then I found out there are pilgrimage roads connecting to Santiago all the way from Poland, so instead of walking 2 weeks through secular sweden, I can take the boat from Stockholm straight to Gdansk where they have recently developed a polish connection to the Jacobs path, so I will basically start the pilgrimage trail on day 1, which is a much better plan honestly.

So my preliminary iternary is this:

Stockholm - Gdansk with the boat, about 16h.

"Via pomerania" - Gdansk - Usedum 700 km.

"Via baltica" - Usedum - Bremen. 167 km.

Bremen - Köln. 300 km.

"Via Coloniensis" - Köln - Trier. 240km.

Trier - Le Puy. 915km.

"Via podiensis" and "Camino Frances" - Le Puy - Compostela. Ca 1267 km.

Money and time are not issues. I also know polish fluently, decent german, a bit french (can practice it up) and I'm planning to maybe learn some spanish. So I hope to be able to attend masses and make regular confessions along the way. I also have relatives in poland and friends of friends in germany, so I will not be stranded anywhere. At best, I can keep a walking speed of 50-60 km per day, which puts the trip to 4-5 months walking there and back again. Given some rest days, it can be done in 6 months. I will keep my packing minimum and am starting physical and spiritual prep in september. This includes:

Physical exercises:

- walk in my boots 2h every day.

- wearing my weight vest as much as i can, at least 4h a day, increasing weight up to 25-30 kg.

- stronglifts every other day, ergometerbike w heavy resistance the other days.

- every weekend: at least 50-100 km of marching through trails.

While this will technically be my first real hike, we did several long marches in the army with minimal sleep, often high-paced, so as long as I can prep enough the coming 3 months and take necessary rest days along the way, this shouldnt be an issue.

as for spirtual prep, I will be reading through the new testament until january and maybe investigate som ignatian spirituality. Aside from the guidebooks-maps I will also bring a copy of the new testament and plan to have it as my sole reading the whole trip. I will ask my parish priest for some more advice about this and of course I will confess and ask for blessing before I leave.

I will keep packing to minimum, at most 15-20 kg. I'm also bringing a camera and can share pictures along the way should anyone be interested

Aside from the purpose of healing my soul and growing in spirituality, I feel obliged to do this as my future occupation will involve people in need and considering my past transgressions, I don't feel confident working with people at all in the spiritual state I am in still. While things have been improving a lot the lastest 2 weeks, I still feel broken and for the reasons stated above, I feel a stronge urge and desire in my heart to do this, I've actually never felt such a strong longing for anything in my life.