Interesting that the numbers are down on my blog as this series is not popular. I think most Catholics do not realize that following Church politics will not get them to heaven, but learning how to pray and gain purity of heart will.
I pray that those who are obsessed with Church politics will become more focused on Christ and their own salvation. I pray for those obsessed with whether their dead pets go to heaven or not. One needs to consider whether one will get to heaven or not and how.
There is nothing we have to do but love God and love others through Him.
We need to be, as Raissa's spiritual director said, "...over-driven and eaten-up to the limit" in pursuing God's love for us.
Now, Raisssa writes at length that a deliberate venial sin halts the progress to God. One venial sin..
Again, one must not interfere with persons who have given themselves to God entirely. Raissa states the same thing as St. Francis, that God never says enough to the generous soul who opens up the soul, mind and heart. Those who are mediocre interfere with those who are trying to become saints. I see this daily.
This is why some cannot be around their families, as those people reject the hard way to perfection.
Part of this way is the elimination of venial sin.
Venial sin can be automatic habitual sin, but the sin which is done on purpose halts the way to perfection. Many Catholics believe that it is fine to continue in venial sin. It is not.
Only must be vigilant regarding venial sin. Those habitual ones most likely reveal one's predominant fault-that weakness, that flaw which causes us the most sins.
To not consider being free of venial sins is to step off the way to perfection. Here is Raissa again,
"The attachment which constitutes deliberate venial sin make us behave, while it lasts, as if God does not exist. And that God cannot endure! The soul has not turned away from God the matter of the sin is not grave, it has not Satan's weight of mortal sin. But the soul has not referred its joy to God--either because this joy is, in itself, sinful, or else because the soul takes its rest in the very fact of not referring it to God, in the very fact of forgetting this terrible God with all his demands. Oh, this is intolerable to God! And he does not cease, if he loves us, to tear us away from it, and he hunts us down mercilessly until he has torn us away from this attachment which is too small for our soul, and too great for the liking of his jealous love."
Such attachments could be anything, even habits of speech or laziness. The point is that each person must submit to the purgation even of venial sins. This is a dying to self, daily.
Pain and suffering bring us into the light of these venials sins, whether done on purpose or out of habit. Raissa notes that we have to take "steps of pain", with "steps of love" to become holy.
to be continued....
