Category Archives: Forgiveness

Day 3 of Novena to the Holy Spirit for Alcoholism and Recovery

Posted on by

On this third day of the novena, we pray for the gift of understanding.

As usual we say the beginning prayer (actually an old, common prayer for the Holy Spirit):

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Your faithful and rekindle in them the fire of Your love. Send forth Your Spirit, and they shall be created and you shall renew the face of the Earth.

As alcoholics we were seriously misunderstood. That’s one reason why we drank, to escape from those around us who didn’t understand us and to escape into a fantasy world where everything made sense. And we mattered.

Let us not in our sobriety do unto others what had been done unto us. We perhaps deserved being misunderstood. Perhaps we expected others to just get us and just allow us into their lives. We wanted to be accepted for ourselves on our own terms and that was that. When we didn’t fit in to other people’s expectations (or we refused to) we ran off and drank.

We pray today for the gift of understanding. We do not know what is going on in someone else’s head or heart. We do not know what is going on in their life. We shall not judge from outward appearances what could just be a snapshot of a momentary period in their life.

We let it go, or perhaps don’t pick it up.

Oh, Holy Spirit, enable us to see others as the Father sees them. That all whom we meet are children of the Father like us, and just like us are broken and wounded though perhaps in ways we may not understand. We ask this in the name of Jesus, our Lord.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Novena through St. Maximilian Kolbe – Day 4

Posted on by

Once again, we continue with this, the 4th Day of our Novena through St. Maximilian Kolbe. As usual, go here and read the prayer while thinking about a loved one who is struggling with addiction, and then contemplate the following:

This would have been my father’s 95th birthday. He died in 1995. I didn’t really grieve over him as we didn’t get along much, plus whatever”grieving” I did was drowned or expressed in alcohol. He was not an alcoholic. The honor of being the “family drunk” goes to me.

My last conversation with him was an argument. It doesn’t matter what it was about. But about 2-3 weeks later I received the phone call from Mom that he had died. I was asked to call a brother of mine as they were having trouble reaching him.

My brother and I hadn’t been on speaking terms ever since I moved out on him 2 1/2 years before. He had been upset that I did unto him (moving) what he was planning on doing unto me. I left a message on his voice mail to “Call home, it’s about Dad.”

This led to a reconciliation of sorts between us that lasted for a decade. We don’t talk much now, but that can change. There was never any reconciliation between my father and I, but that really doesn’t matter anymore.

The reason that doesn’t matter anymore is I do feel that my father is in Heaven, and that he has been observing events in my life and the family’s life as a part of that “great cloud of witnesses” described in Hebrews;

Hebrews 12:1-2

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith. For the sake of the joy that lay before him he endured the cross, despising its shame, and has taken his seat at the right of the throne of God.

He knows what’s going on and he understands why I’ve done things that I did. Plus, any flaws or imperfections of the self that he retained at death were purged from him in Purgatory (as nothing impure can enter Heaven) and there is no longer any reason on my part to hold any resentment against him for anything he did.

The thing is, one shouldn’t wait until after the finality of death to “reconcile” with a loved one. The person that you are praying for in the Novena is a loved one (or once was). That person could die in their addiction, and no chance of a happy life with you would be possible. As hard as it is, it is acknowledged that trust may be hard for you to grant that person. So don’t trust them for now. Wait until they’ve earned it. You do have the right to withhold trust until you feel safe enough to grant it.

But you can love that person. Never withhold that. Love conquers all things, or so I’ve read somewhere. It can heal. And it can heal both ways. To the addict it can be a lifeline, and for you it can heal the wounds inflicted upon you by the addict or alcoholic.

So, take heed the writer of Hebrews admonition to “…let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus…” Jesus can help you love. Gaze upon Him on the Cross. That’s love. You needn’t get crucified, but you can nail your anger and resentments to that Cross.

Go to the sidebar and under “Labels” and look up “Forgiveness”. Read those posts at your convenience.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Month of the Precious Blood

Posted on by

July is dedicated to the Precious Blood of Jesus. It is a symbol of our Redemption by Jesus’ sacrifice and death. It is among the oldest Christian devotions.

One moving scene in Mel Gibson’s epic film, “The Passion of the Christ” depicted Mary and Mary Magdalene taking rags and cleaning up Jesus’ blood after His scourging at the pillar.

There is a special prayer one can say in this devotion.

“Eternal Father, I offer you the Precious Blood or your Divine Son Jesus, in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass said throughout the world today, for the Holy Souls in Purgatory, for sinners every where, in the Universal Church, in my own home and within my family.”

The Precious Blood is the symbol of God’s mercy, as it was spilled to pay for our sins. It is part of the Eucharist (whether you partake of the wine at Mass or not, its redemptive and spiritual significance is in the Bread as well).

Imagine yourself swimming in the blood-red sea of God’s mercy.

More on the Precious Blood here.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

A New Creation

Posted on by

I’m not sure if this is from a recent Mass Reading that I forgot to write about on the relevant day (it’s been sitting in draft mode for a while) or just something I picked up in a blog or Bible perusal, but ponder this from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians:

2 Corinthians 5:16-18

…from now on we regard no one according to the flesh; even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer.
So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.
And all this is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
So we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

We are “in Christ” when we live out our Christian vocation. Being Christian isn’t something you do for an hour on Sundays or when its convenient or inoffensive. It isn’t something you turn on or off. No one is perfect in the ideal, but you try anyway.

When you are “in Christ”, you’ve cast off your old self, the self that belonged to the World and its shifting and changing “anything goes” corruptible moral and social values. By being Christian and living according to Jesus’s teachings, you are a new creation, a new person, one who has been reconciled to God through Jesus by His sacrifice on the Cross.

We have been reconciled for our sins, no matter how scarlet, no matter how often committed. No matter what the transgression was, reconcile yourself to God, and be “in Christ.” Confess your sins to a priest and be made new.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Our Father

Posted on by

In light of my past few blog posts, as well as a few upcoming ones, a nice coincidence that today’s Gospel reading (Thursday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time) has Jesus teaching his disciples how to pray. And He teaches them the Best Prayer Ever:

Matthew 6:7-15

In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
“This is how you are to pray:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread;
and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors;
and do not subject us to the final test, but deliver us from the evil one.
If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”

Study the prayer, and try to say it as if you’ve never said it before. Sometimes when we’ve said a prayer or a popular saying too many times, it loses its meaning as it has become too familiar. Say it slowly and prayerfully, meditating or praying on each word or phrase.

Another thing you can do is to go over to the sidebar, and look up this prayer in the New Jerusalem Bible and the Douay-Rheims Bible. The translation I quoted is from the New American Bible (the “official” Bible for American Catholics.) Studying a passage in different translations may help to get a better understanding of it, by way of the slightly different perspective of the translations.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Forgive

Posted on by

On Monday I went for a drive to visit my parent’s graves and just as I was heading down the street I had to stop to avoid this other driver going the opposite way. He had briefly swung into my lane to get around a line of parked cars. I think that I had the right-of way as my lane was clear and he was obligated to stop and wait for me to get past him before he moved into my lane. Not a big deal as it wasn’t a near collision, we were far enough apart along the road. But a little bit of irritation with him rose up briefly that was squelched by the word:

Forgive.

It sprang up unbidden, just wafted up from my unconscious and hung there. Not that there was much to forgive but it was interesting nonetheless. Perhaps if I was more angry the word never would have had a chance at breaking through the emotion. But it saw an opportunity and it took it.

My usual automatic reaction would be one of annoyance or irritation or a whole host of nasty thoughts. The dark detritus just emerges and hangs around like toxic waste just poisoning my mood. Frequent negative thoughts fight through and hang about, and from what I gather this is common to most people.

But I was curious as to why the word forgive just popped up and nestled in my brain instead of the brief annoyance or irritation just planting itself, taking root and growing into a monster vine of resentment at other people and how dumb they are.

So I took it upon myself in this drive of which the original destination (the cemetery) turned out to be a brief stop and not the destination, and pondered the notion that forgive was my reaction, and not something meaner, despite the minor offense of the other driver.

I ended up thinking that maybe I can embark upon yet another round of focused spiritual development, of interior conversion centered around training me to have forgive as an automatic reaction rather than a negative one that normally festers. I’ve done this before successfully in my 5 years of sobriety. The AA “Big Book” mentions some things about anger and resentment being “red flags”. And so I, over the course of time, tried to recognize these “red flags” as they arose and strike them quickly. It works. It took time and effort, but eventually I became a less outwardly angry and irritable person. At least I think so. Working on “impatience” as much the same way. As before, when I felt rising anger, irritation and resentment building up that I tried to get rid of, feelings of impatience also were dealt with similarly.

I still get angry, annoyed, irritated and impatient, but they don’t define me. At least I hope so.

Anyway, back to forgive.

So I thought about the effects of going about the day keeping in mind that in any given instance I might have my feathers ruffled, for real or imagined. This post has been bouncing around my head since Monday’s drive, time to get it out on paper. Or electrons. 🙂

It seems to work. Whenever there is an instance where someone bothered me (again, specifics don’t matter, just go about your day and reflect on how many times people seem to irritate you, and they probably aren’t even aware.) It was like a mantra, just thinking forgive.

It has a healing effect. It immediately soothes. Instead of a rising negative attitude that may be sustained for a few minutes or hours, it quickly quiets them. All this repeated negative detritus just accumulates and poisons your soul. Repeating forgive gets you over it quickly.

I am melancholic. Which means I have a tendency towards being sensitive and dwelling on things, along with a certain bit of nostalgia. That sometimes makes for an unhealthy combination in which things from the past get dredged up and dwelt upon. Sometimes from the faraway past. Just repeating forgive helps soften the pain. To me, it was as if I was automatically releasing it (whatever it was) to God.

The repetition of forgive also helps interrupt the flow of the negative thoughts. This is related to something I had posted before, I forget which post, about why AA’s attend meetings when they feel like they may be about to relapse. The idea is that you relapse sometime before you actually take that drink, but meeting attendance, if that’s the best tool you have, interrupts the sequence of thoughts leading to the drink. Even if all the AA did was attend the meeting, regardless of the topic, the environment was enough to stifle the continued flow of thoughts which would have led to the action of taking a drink.

Same for thinking the word forgive. It immediately interrupts the self-righteous, indignant feelings that arise when you are wronged, regardless of how serious, regardless of whether the injury was intended or just accidental, or real or imagined. (You know what I mean, someone looks at you the wrong way, or they’re talking quietly to themselves and you think the muttering is about you. You’re not as important to the World as you think, they may not even be aware that you were passing through their field of vision when a stray thought of theirs caused them to do whatever it was they did. And maybe it was an upsurge of negative thoughts! HA!)

Just let it go. It isn’t worth mulling over. It isn’t worth wasting time holding onto the resentment of a momentary irritation, or some wrongdoing someone wrought upon you the other day or some time ago. Just forgive.

We Christians know how to forgive. Turn it over to God, let Him deal with it and you just cut the emotional ties to the event. Stop feeding the monster. If you persist in nurturing the resentment, it’s as if you are climbing up on God’s judgment seat and condemning the other person. That’s God’s job, assuming He agrees with you. He might not. If you are a Catholic Christian, in your examination of conscience that you do prior to Confession, analyze what you may have done in your relations with the other person to have caused the incident. (That’s part of humility. Never assume you’re entirely innocent.) Then confess it and work on your firm purpose of amendment to not do that ever again. Don’t feel self-righteous about another’s behavior towards you. “How dare they?” You’ve probably caused your fair share of unintentional and unwitting grief as well.

This repetition of the word forgive whenever something irritating is done by somebody is also done unconditionally. You don’t debate who’s right or who’s wrong. It’s easy enough to sweep away the garbage when the rising emotion comes from a routine going on about the day and there’s a host of attitudinal and emotional bumping and grinding. (Like the driver way back in the beginning of this post. Wow, that’s way back up there!) It’s another when there is a rupture of some degree and there is genuine hurt. This was touched upon in yesterday’s post.

You may refer to Matthew 18:21-22 “Then Peter approaching asked him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?”

Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.”

Jesus was using a common Hebrew shorthand of using multiples to mean “a lot” or, “a long time”. You forgive as often as you need to. As often as you are wronged.

Forgive anyway. It is tough, and o
ften might not be immediately possible, but is necessary eventually.

There is also something perhaps uniquely Christian about just saying forgive. It is self-sacrificial. This is the unconditional part from 2 paragraphs up. You are not counting the cost to yourself, nor determining who’s right or wrong. In any rupture, both sides can be held accountable. Even the person wronged, perhaps. (I mean interpersonal conflicts, slights, offenses. Not crimes.)

Think of Matthew 5:38-45 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on (your) right cheek, turn the other one to him as well. If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”

Therefore, you are in essence, “turning the other cheek” when you think or say forgive. You are not making an accounting to settle with later. You are turning it over.

Forgive is healing in another way. As you go about the day uttering to yourself forgive automatically whenever the heat of rising irritation begins to bubble towards the caldera of your mind, and those times when you forgive the really big hurts that have been inflicted on you, you notice that you heal in another manner.

You begin to forgive yourself. Sometime by this weekend I plan to post something I thought of during the priest’s sermon last Sunday. The post (title unknown yet) concerns concupiscence (look it up) and self-esteem. Anyway, we all hurt. Much of it is self-inflicted. Many times we are harder on ourselves than we are on other people. We tend not to forgive ourselves. As we repeatedly utter to ourselves the word forgive it gets easier to ignore slights, real or perceived, committed against us by others. But it also should make it easier to forgive ourselves. For anything. No matter how long ago. As long as you also take care of it in sacramental confession, presuming it’s a sin, jettisoning the negative emotional dreck should become easier.

Forgive, then, works then simultaneously on inside, as well as on outside, threats. As you learn to forgive others, and become more accustomed to it, you get used to doing it for yourself. This doesn’t absolve you of any responsibility towards making amends to people you’ve hurt, but in the possibility of no reconciliation, it’s a good way to complete the healing.

Don’t forget some of Jesus’s final words spoken from the Cross:

Luke 23:33-34

When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him and the criminals there, one on his right, the other on his left.

Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” They divided his garments by casting lots.

He was dying, up there. God, a common criminal. And yet he forgave them. Of course, He’s God, He can do that. But it was a lesson to us. An important one. If He can forgive what was done to Him, who are we to decide that we cannot?

Forgive.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Reconciliation and Forgiveness

Posted on by

An excerpt from the Gospel of Thursday in the Tenth Week of Ordinary Time: (yes, I know it’s Tuesday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time, but I’ve been busy. This Gospel passage triggered some things to think about, and I had to go about and think of them before writing this post. There will be 2 more posts on the subjects of forgiveness and reconciliation that I hope to get to today, or if not, then tomorrow. Besides, the Church exists partly outside of Time, that being the “Church Triumphant” in Heaven. And since we are connected to the saints in Heaven by way of the Communion of Saints, it doesn’t really matter that sometimes I’m late with a reading from a particular day. 😉 )

Matthew 5:23-26;

Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you,leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court with him. Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge, and the judge will hand you over to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison.
Amen, I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.

This concerns reconciliation with a person who has a grievance against you. For the purposes of this post, it doesn’t matter if the grievance is legitimate or even who is guilty. There exists a situation between you and another, and that situation must be cleared up before you can make an acceptable offering to God. An offering of prayer, or of yourself, whatever. You need to engage in something with God, an that will be impure and unacceptable until you have cleared the slate with another.

This is incidentally the basis for the Catholic teaching that you must confess all known mortal sins in sacramental confession before receiving Holy Communion, and why you must, if you’re thinking of returning to the Church, meet with a priest so he can help clear the way.

You reconcile. There is a thing between you and another, and that situation also would cause harm in your relationship with God. It must go. It is “clogging the pipes” through which grace flows to you. You meet with the other (when you can) and settle the difference. If the offer is rejected, and you’ve made and honest and sincere attempt, then you forgive and move on. You’ve done your part. The failure is now between the other and God.

Forgive means to break the emotional hold something has over you. In the previous paragraph, you tried to settle with the other and it was rejected. The hurt remains, the situation still exists. The other refuses to accept your offering to settle, nothing more can be done. You’ve been wronged, but it still has a hold on you. Get over it. It’ll take time, but to forgive means to release the situation, it is out of your hands and exists in the pasts. To not forgive means that the situation will still remain a part of you, although it existed back in the past. It becomes a resentment, a wrongdoing nurtured and sustained by the wounded.

It serves no useful purpose. It hinders your forward spiritual development and harms your developing relationships. It wears you down.

Turn it over to God. Let Him deal with it. By whatever means necessary, whether by prayer, some symbolic action, or just not thinking about it, try and no longer enable the event or transgression to have a hold on you. Divorce your emotions connected with the memory from the memory. No regrets, you’ve done all you could, it’s time to let go and move on. It will take time. Keep trying.

Another Gospel excerpt: Matthew 6:12, 14-15;

and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors…
If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.

This is part of the Lord’s Prayer, as told in Matthew. It simply means that if you do not forgive others who have wronged you, do not expect mercy from God for any wrongs you have committed. It makes sense. You have no business asking for mercy if you are not willing to extend it. This is related to the first Gospel excerpt concerning the need to reconcile with another before attempting to enter into something with God.

Forgiveness and reconciliation is healthy, mentally. All sorts of junk is tossed away.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

A graceful diadem

Posted on by

Today’s Daily Wisdom Dose, from Proverbs 1:8-9:

Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and reject not your mother’s teaching;
A graceful diadem will they be for your head; a torque for your neck.

This may be difficult for those of who have had problematic relations with parents. (Mine were OK. No complaints. Not perfect, but everything worked out.) So for those who regard the very idea of respecting your parent’s instructions and advice to be difficult, if not impossible, read on. Other male and female iconic figures in your life can be picked to serve as “parents”, if needed.

Aside from a being a follow-up to the Commandment on “Honor your Father and Mother” this can be considered a plea for respecting legitimate authority. Parents are the first authority figures in a child’s life, and perhaps their relationship with parents form the basis for their relationship with authority overall. Perhaps a generalization, but how parents exercised their authority determines a child’s attitude toward authority later on.

We alcoholics notoriously have a challenged relationship with authority. In our recovery from alcohol, we can no longer use the excuses of a childhood environment to defy authority or run from it. In our recovery from alcohol, we now have an obligation to govern our lives with responsibility. One of the positive outcomes of the 12 Steps is that it allows us to clean up the wreckage of our past, or at least come to terms with it. One of the marks of our responsible living, if it is still possible, feasible, and necessary, is to repair and rebuild our relationships with the parents. Once they die, it is too late. Once gone, the opportunity is forever lost.

The Fourth Step involves the individual making a “fearless and searching moral inventory”. This is identifying those areas of the past that need to be cleaned up. This is what we did wrong, and now we are going to redress it. Even when we were wronged, we analyze the events to determine what, if anything, we might have done to contribute to the situation. This is personal responsibility, we committed serious wrongs (“sins”) in the past and now we shall try and clean those up. Later on in the steps, (The Ninth) we make our amends to those we have wronged.

Granted, by the time we are old enough to make these amends to parents, we may be well past the age where we need instruction and advice from them. (Personally, I don’t think anyone is ever too old for this.) Nevertheless, we do have the Commandment to “Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother”, and if repairing and restoring a relationship with ones’ parents puts us in accord with that Commandment, then we are showing our willingness to carry out God’s will in our lives. We are also restoring a more balanced relationship with authority, or at least legitimate authority that exercises its power with due consideration for the rights and privilege of those under it’s purview.

The relationship with parents, if it can be restored, now opens up the promise of the passage from Proverbs. “A graceful diadem” will they be. A repaired relationship with parents is a major healing in an individuals life, so great an influence (for good or for bad) have parents had in early life that the promise of a more equitable and healthy relationship later in life may bring tremendous benefits.

Parents are the pillars upon which out life is built. They formed us. It is only right that a conscientious and sincere effort be made to repair the relationship with them. If possible.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

Bruised reeds…

Posted on by

Isaiah 42:3

A bruised reed he shall not break, and a smoldering wick he shall not quench…

This excerpt from The Book of Isaiah from yesterday’s Mass (Monday of Holy Week) speaks of the mercy of Christ.

This passage is an important one for anyone to remember, but particularly for us alcoholics.

For we were bruised reeds and we were smoldering wicks. Caught in the grips of alcoholism and perhaps at the depths of despair, we were on the verge of breaking or winking out.

And yet we did not break; our light, however dim, was not quenched. How we managed to grab onto whatever lifeline that pulled us out of our misery may be a mystery. It might have been a family member calling the local AA hotline, or a clergy rescuing a lost soul, or some other seemingly coincidental or improbable event, but whatever it was, we had enough hope left in us to grab onto that lifeline.

Some of us pulled on that lifeline and entered AA. A lot stayed there, content to remain with the comfortable and easygoing spirituality and friendships it offered. Some of us were not satisfied and kept on searching. We needed something deeper and more sustainable and somehow entered the Catholic Church.

Perhaps our hurt was not fully healed by the 12 Steps of AA, and we responded well to the Church’s teachings on God’s mercy and forgiveness. That despite whatever our past, God still loves us and desires us to be close to Him. We heeded the sacramental call and drank of the deep waters of the Eucharist and Penance. And we were satiated like alcohol never could do for us.

There was a “hole in our soul” that we thought could be filled by our addiction, and we were eventually disappointed and wounded. But upon entering the Church, we became whole again, healed by the sacraments and an invigorated, deeper prayer life.

Rest in God’s mercy.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)

"Remember me…"

Posted on by

Luke 23:42-43

Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
He replied to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

The person asking Jesus to remember him in Luke’s Passion Narrative from Palm Sunday is the so-called “Good Thief”, the criminal hanging on the cross next to Jesus, and being crucified for some crime he did commit. He believed in Jesus (how he arrived at his faith is never explained, but immaterial) and asked that Jesus remember him in the afterlife. Legend holds that his name was Dismas.

The word Luke used in his Gospel “anamnesis” for “memory” does not merely mean to recall something. It means to remember it so intimately that it becomes present to you, rergardless of the passage of time. Dismas was aking Jesus not to remember him fondly, after all, both were dying. He was asking Him to be saved, to bring him, Dismas the Thief, into Jesus’ heavenly kingdom.

The Church usually uses Dismas as an example of the mercy of God, and how it triumphs over the judgment of God. This relates to the recovering alcoholic is a great way. Dismas was a thief, and apparently lived his whole life as a thief. Yet despite that, he still asked Jesus to save him and Jesus did. Right there on the Cross, Jesus told Dismas that essentially he was going to Heaven after he died. Jesus granted a plenary indulgence to someone right then and there.

While you shouldn’t wait until you’re dying to convert or revert to the Faith, or to ask Jesus to save you (why gamble on eternity?) it does serve as a useful reminder that no matter how bad you have been in your alcoholism or addiction, you ask Jesus with faith for forgiveness and redemption, and He will give it to you. As a Catholic, you can get this in sacramental confession. No matter how bad your sins are, no matter how long you committed them, no matter how long its been since your last confession, they’ll be wiped clean off your soul and you will be new again. There is no sin so great that He cannot forgive. In fact, believing that your sins are so great that He cannot forgive them is a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Your evil (or cumulative sinful acts) cannot be greater than God’s mercy.

Ask Jesus to “Remember you.” And then proceed to live out your new life. Go to confession.

I have a new book! "The Sober Catholic Way" is a handbook on how anyone can live a sober life, drawn from over 17 years of SoberCatholic posts! It's out now on "Amazon," "Apple Books," "B&N" and and others!"!

My two other books are still available! "The Stations of the Cross for Alcoholics" and "The Recovery Rosary: Reflections for Alcoholics and Addicts" (Thank you!!)