Suffering, Hell, Confession, & More
December's Reader Q&A
This is the free monthly issue of Through a Glass Darkly, a newsletter for those wanting a deeper understanding of Catholic teaching and Christian life. Every month, two issues go out: one, for all subscribers, in which I answer reader questions about theology, faith, and life; the second, for full subscribers, which features a long form essay on some aspect of the life of faith. If you’re a free subscriber, I am so glad you’re here, and welcome you to take advantage of the 7-day free trial, which will give you a taste of everything I’m sharing here, including our ongoing mini-Advent retreat. Thank you so much for supporting my work.
Reader Q&A
How do you know when to accept suffering and when to look for a way out of it?
In the Gospels, the whole broken parade of humanity comes to Jesus seeking healing. The blind, the lame, the deaf, the sick, the lost—they all seek Him out, looking for relief from their suffering. Jesus’ response to their pleas is not, “Be gone! Accept your suffering and offer it up!” It’s, “See. Walk. Hear. Be healed. Follow me.”
When we are the ones suffering, it’s important to keep that response in mind. Jesus wants to heal us. He wants us to be well. His desire for us is not suffering; it’s joy.
Accordingly, if there is a moral way out of our suffering, it’s good to seek it. If we’re sick or injured and there’s an ethical medical treatment which can help, we should receive the medical treatment. If we’re stuck in a horrible job with a horrible boss, it’s okay to look for a new job. If we have an abusive spouse, who is hurting us or perpetually cheating on us, it’s okay to separate. Again, God doesn’t want us suffering for suffering’s sake. He wants to heal us. And sometimes, He heals us through doctors or new jobs or us walking away from dangerous, destructive relationships.
So, when do we accept suffering? As we suffer. As we receive the medical treatment and hope it works, we offer up that suffering. As we look for the new job, we offer up our suffering. As we suffer the difficulties of leaving an abusive relationship, we offer up that suffering. We also accept our suffering when healing doesn’t come quickly or in the way we want. When the medical treatment isn’t working, when no new job presents itself, when people judge us unfairly, when life just stays hard despite our best efforts to find relief, we accept it and offer it to God, in union with the sufferings of Jesus on the cross.
No matter what you do, life will give you no shortage of opportunities to accept your suffering and join it to Christ’s. Sickness, disappointment, heartache, grief, loss, and death will come for us all. The only escape from suffering is dying in union with Christ. So, seek wholeness when you can and accept suffering as you do, knowing it too, by grace, can lead to wholeness.
If you’re looking to understand the Church’s teachings on suffering more, I recommend Saint John Paul II’s encyclical on suffering, Salvifici Doloris, along with the accompanying Endow study, which I authored in 2017.
When you were single, how did you discern that you were called to marriage and not just desiring it?
When I was maybe 30 or 31-years-old, I was working on a story assignment for a Catholic publication about vocations. At that point, although my desire was and always had been for marriage, I worried that maybe my desire was wrong. Maybe God was actually calling me to some form of consecrated life—to becoming a religious sister or a consecrated single? Mind you, I had zero desire to enter that vocation, and every time I thought about it I would cry, but there also was no husband presenting himself. Maybe I was missing something?
Anyhow, while working on that story, I conducted a half dozen interviews with different priests and sisters, who all spoke of the deep joy they experienced upon entering their vocation. At the end of one of my last interviews, I told the sister my dilemma—how I longed to be married and cried at the thought of entering consecrated life, but wanted to do God’s will no matter what. Her answer was this: “God never drags you kicking and screaming into any vocation. If the thought of becoming a religious sister makes you cry, that is a clear sign He is not calling you to consecrated life.”
That was a profoundly helpful conversation for me. It taught me that God speaks to us through our good desires. They are part of how He helps us discern His will. If you desire marriage—consistently and persistently—that is a good sign God is calling you to marriage.
It’s also helpful to remember that marriage is the vocation to which most people are called. It is, in a sense, the default vocation. You should assume you’re called to it unless and until God says otherwise. This is because, as human beings, we are made for marriage—to give ourselves completely, body and soul, to another person in a communion of life-giving love. In the New Covenant, God gives us two supernatural ways to fulfill that vocation of self-gift—the priesthood and consecrated life. But those are extraordinary calls, and if God is calling you in such an extraordinary way, He makes Himself clear. There will be a growing tug on your heart to give yourself completely and exclusively to Him. If that tug is not there, that too is a good sign that you should focus on finding a spouse, not a convent.
Finding a spouse, unfortunately, is the difficult part. We live in a fallen world filled with broken people who struggle to do God’s will. Because of that, not everyone who is made for marriage will enter into marriage. Other people will enter into it later than they had hoped they would (like I did). But, at least for me, it was easier to be single knowing I was made for marriage and that my desire for it was good. It was also easier to date, knowing that I wasn’t discerning a vocation for myself (that question was settled) but rather discerning a relationship: is this a person with whom I can enter into the vocation of marriage.
I talk a lot about this in my book, The Catholic Girl’s Survival Guide to the Single Years, written when I was still very much single. Definitely check it out if you haven’t read it yet.
If God is all loving, why would He create a place (Hell) to torture His children for all eternity?
He didn’t. God did no such thing. Hell is not a place where God tortures anyone. Nor does God torture anyone, anywhere, in any place. God is not in the torturing business. He is in the loving business. God is Love, and He wants nothing more than for every person He created in love to spend eternity in love with Him.
But that is not a choice He forces on us. Love to be love has to be freely given. And God truly wants our love. So, He created us with free will, which is the power to say yes or no to the good. It’s the power to say yes or no to Him.
Throughout our lives, most of us say yes and no to God at different times. Every choice we make to do good is a “yes” to Him. Every choice we make to do evil is a “no” to Him. Those choices shape us and remake us. They transform our desires. Ultimately, they determine who we worship: God or ourselves. And, at the end of our life, they lead us to make one final choice: Heaven or Hell. Which is another way of saying God or Not God.
And it really is our choice. It’s not God who decides where we spend our eternity. It’s us. We choose everlasting life with Him, which is Heaven. Or we choose everlasting life as far from Him as possible, which is Hell. God’s judgement is simply a confirmation of our free choice. He lets us have what we want most, even if that means He loses us forever.
It seems impossibly stupid that anyone would choose Hell. But people choose it all the time on this earth. Against reason and against sense, we say no to the graces God offers us and choose to do the very things that make us miserable. The more we make those choices, the more difficult it becomes to choose otherwise. Our reason becomes clouded, our hearts grow hard, and the good becomes repellant. God becomes repellant.
We don’t know how many people ultimately choose eternal separation from God. We hope and pray nobody does. But it seems unlikely that all those who spent a lifetime preferring Hell to Heaven, will change their mind at the very end. Some might. But, we humans are creatures of habit, and that’s as true of repentance as it is of anything.
Either way, the sufferings of those who reject God, of those in Hell, aren’t sufferings designed by Him. Dante’s Inferno is not a travelogue; it’s a story. All the images of hell fire, in fiction and in mystical visions, are just that: images. They are metaphors, which convey spiritual truths and are intended to help us understand how painful it is to spend eternity separated from Love Himself. That’s the pain of Hell—not lakes of lava or chains of steel, but being apart from God, not knowing the joy of His love or the peace of the Beatific Vision. It’s a pain freely chosen and freely inflicted on ourselves. God never wants us to choose it. But God never wants us to choose a lot of what we choose.
In his book The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis depicts what this process of choosing Heaven or Hell looks like. If you’re trying to understand how anyone could choose Hell or what Hell really is, I highly recommend it.
I struggle with Confession. I know I’m a sinner, but I haven’t committed any grave sins. What little things should I confess, without being scrupulous?
Before I answer that question, I want to back up for a minute for those who aren’t Catholic and explain a little bit about the Church’s teachings on sin and Confession.
First, the Church divides sin into two basic categories: mortal and venial. Mortal sins are deadly sins. They kill the life of grace in our soul (or harden our hearts in sin if we’re already in a state of mortal sin). In order for a sin to be mortal, it has to involve grave matter, be freely chosen, and be committed with full knowledge of its sinfulness.
Venial sins don’t kill the life of grace in the soul, but they do diminish it. They weaken us in charity and make us more susceptible to committing future sins. We commit venial sins when we violate the moral law in a less serious manner (when grave matter is not involved) or when we commit serious sins but without full freedom or knowledge.
The ordinary means by which we receive forgiveness for mortal sin is sacramental Confession. That forgiveness comes from God, through one of His priests, and restores the life of grace to our soul. For venial sin, the ordinary means of receiving God’s forgiveness is the receptions of Holy Communion, which repairs the damage done by venial sin in our soul and strengthens the life of grace in us.
Although we can obtain forgiveness for venial sin without sacramental Confession, it’s still a good idea to include those sins when we go. It’s also a good idea to go to Confession regularly, even when we don’t have a mortal sin on our conscience. Not only because the graces we receive through the sacrament help us to avoid future sin, but also because the act of examining our conscience for Confession helps us identify root sins and habitual sins. For most lay people not in a state of mortal sin, monthly Confession is ideal.
Okay, now back to the original question. Which venial sins should you confess without being scrupulous (excessively concerned over very minor sins or failings)? In other words, how do you make a good Confession without tying up the priest in the confessional for 30 minutes at a stretch while you belabor every mild failure of charity over the last month?
If you struggle with scrupulosity, a good spiritual director will have better advice than I do. You need someone who can help you differentiate your actual habitual sins from the normal struggles of being human, and a stranger on the Internet can’t do that for you.
For the rest of us, it can help to know that every single minor failure does not need to be recounted and explained in depth in Confession. We just need to confess the kind of sin we committed (which can be summed up in very few words: anger, pride, vanity, slothfulness, lust, greed, detraction, gossip, lying, selfishness, not fulfilling our religious or family obligations, neglecting prayer, failing in charity, etc.) and the number of times we committed that sin. If we don’t know the exact number of times because it’s a habitual sin (like engaging in gossip or driving recklessly), we can just say “frequently” or “regularly.” We also don’t need to worry if we forget a venial sin. We can just end our confession with the wonderful phrase, “I ask forgiveness for these sins and any other sins I might have forgotten.” Those forgotten little sins will then be forgiven, too.
In the end, the most important thing to remember is that Confession isn’t magic; it’s a sacrament. Receiving the graces of that sacrament doesn’t depend on us remembering exactly how many times we judged someone unfairly or knowing if our outburst at our husband was freely chosen or the inevitable result of changing hormones and sleep deprivation. Just don’t intentionally withhold any serious sins you’ve committed, sincerely tell God you are sorry for any ways you know you’ve failed Him, and trust that is enough. The graces will be given. Not because you did such a bang up job of recounting your sins. But because God loves you and longs to extend His mercy to you. He is the one who makes the sacrament work. Not you.
If you need more help identifying your habitual sins or understanding what needs to be confessed, doing an examination of conscience like this one can help.
Why do you think the Church pays educators so poorly?
It’s not a problem exclusive to teachers. The Church in America pays everyone poorly. Except for the lawyers. But everyone else—youth ministers, catechists, directors of evangelization and faith formation, parish and chancery secretaries, music ministers—subsists near or below the poverty line.
As for why the salaries are so low, it’s no one thing. There are many reasons, starting with the Church’s long history of people doing the work of teaching children and running parishes for free (or almost free). At least in America, for the better part of 200 years, that work was done by religious sisters and priests. Now, there is a scarcity of both, and lay people are doing the work instead. The Church hasn’t yet adjusted to this change. And by Church, I mean both the priests and bishops setting salary levels and the lay people giving the money.
While this is not true across the board (there are always exceptions), many priests and bishops have no idea what it costs to live in the world as a lay person and raise a family. They don’t have all the expenses that their lay employees have and many of the expenses they do have are covered by the Church. Many also went straight from high school or college to seminary, which only compounds the problem. I’ve known more than one priest who can’t fathom why a father of five can’t support his family on a salary of $30,000 a year. When the people managing the money don’t understand money—or why people need it—you end up with drastically underpaid employees.
At the same time, most dioceses aren’t exactly rolling in dough. Between the scandals, a decline in Mass attendance, and a decline in overall trust, parish giving has plummeted. What money does exist often goes to paying the lawyers, and in many dioceses most excess property or security funds have been drained by settlement payments to victims of abuse.
The lack of funds is made worse by the failure of the Catholic Church in America to cultivate a culture of tithing. Some Catholics in the pews don’t want to give to their parish because they’re angry, but many others don’t know, understand, or care about their obligation to support the Church. Studies by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate show that Catholics consistently give less to the Church than Protestants. Way less. The average Catholic gives only half of what evangelical Protestants give and less than half of what mainline Protestants give. Dioceses, parishes, and schools can’t pay people money they don’t have, and unless Catholics start giving more, nobody will ever get paid more.
Last but not least, I think there is often an expectation of poverty for those who work for the Church. Many Catholics believe that Church employees—teachers or not—should be poor, and that the reward of working for the Lord should be enough. In effect, they expect everyone who works for the Church to live like religious brothers and sisters, practicing a kind of holy austerity.
It's absolutely true that no one should be getting wealthy off the Gospel. No one wants people pursuing a career in the Church because it’s a lucrative way to make a living. That creates its own set of problems, which damage the integrity of the Church.
At the same time, not paying lay employees a living wage and not providing their families with health care also creates problems. All too often, the best and most capable employees end up leaving Church work for the secular world. They have children to raise and bills to pay and the priest’s generous offer to make use of the parish food pantry doesn’t quite cut it. This is why so many Catholic parishes and schools end up being staffed by the young and inexperienced (who need less to get by), the mediocre (who can’t get better work elsewhere), or women (whose husbands are the primary bread winners). The few talented men who do remain, usually have family money, wives who work, or wives who are very good at living in poverty. Either way, the talent drain has a negative effect on the work being done in every level of the Church.
In sum, it’s all a mess, and I don’t know how long it will take for the problem to sort itself out. Some dioceses, parishes, and schools do a better job than others, particularly in parts of the country where the Church is growing and thriving (which often happens to be in the traditional Bible Belt), but here in Pittsburgh and the rest of the Northeast, I don’t foresee anything changing anytime soon. Old habits die hard, and the habit of expecting families of Church employees to live on food stamps and Medicaid is strong here.
What is an easy recipe I can make for a crowd (20 or more)?
My favorite soup in all the world: Sausage, Kale, and Tomato Soup. I featured it years ago on my old blog and included it in the cookbook I wrote to help fund Becket’s adoption (and as it turned out, Ellie’s, too). It’s super fast, super easy, and doubles, triples, and quadruples without much fuss. It’s also a huge crowd pleaser, including with kids. Serve it with some warm bread and red wine, and you’ve got yourself an easy dinner party menu. (Note: Now that I’m serving it to little ones, I chop the kale fairly small in a food processor, so it’s easier for them to eat.)
How do you manage to cook amazing meals for your family, while working and taking care of small children? Do you ever just serve frozen pizza?
I think you are overestimating the quality of the meals I cook for my family. Most weeknights, I don’t make anything that takes more than 30 minutes to cook. Fast soups, pasta dishes, and Aldi’s ravioli are all staples here. So, is Aldi’s Take and Bake Pizza. And the only reason I can do that much is because Chris is always home from work by 4:30. I have no idea how women whose husbands work late cook anything.
I do love cooking, though, and try to make the time a couple nights a week to cook something that requires a little more than boiling water or turning on the oven. I usually do that on weekends when Chris is home to manage the kids or on a weekday when I don’t have a ton going on.
This is never easy and not always possible—like now, when we’ve all been battling the stomach flu—but when it is, I do it because it’s good for me. It brings me joy, helps me to relax, and makes me feel more like myself. This is important. Not the cooking. But doing something for me—something that isn’t totally necessary, but is life-giving just the same.
I also would say it’s not just important for me, but for every mom. Again, not the cooking, but the taking time to do something you love. Sacrifice is good, necessary, and almost constant in motherhood. But you will be able to make those sacrifices more readily and joyfully if, at least once a week, you make it a priority to do something you love just because you love it. That might be cooking. Or reading. Or going for a walk. It could be organizing a closet or thrifting or gardening. Really, it can be almost anything. You just need to make the time to do it.
I know that can feel impossible or crazy in the midst of life with littles and the demands of work and home. But if you don’t do it, you will suffer, and your whole family will suffer. You will grow bitter, resentful, and miserable, losing the joy you should have in your family, and they will come to share your misery.
In a culture that glorifies self-care and mothers putting themselves first, it is easy for those of us who want to put our families first to swing too far and too hard in the opposite direction. But virtue is almost always found in the mean. If you’re struggling to find that mean, ask your husband or a trusted friend for help. Identify one thing you love and find one hour a week to do it. Just that one hour can make a huge difference in your sanity in this season.
Links and Recs
Both when we were dating and on our honeymoon, Chris and I traveled to Quebec City to visit the Basilica of Saint-Anne-de-Beaupre, Canada’s beautiful shrine to St. Anne (Mary’s mother),. The first time we went we asked for help discerning our relationship. The second time, we asked for her prayers for our desire to welcome children. Ever since the babies started arriving, we’ve wanted to go back and thank her for her help. Now that all the travel restrictions are lifted in Canada, we’re hoping to finally do that. As we start making plans for that trip, I’m rereading Shadows on the Rock, my favorite Willa Cather novel. Set in seventeenth-century Quebec, it’s a gorgeous story of faith, fidelity, and courage. If you haven’t read it yet, it’s a great winter read (it will really help you appreciate indoor heating and plumbing).
The most interesting podcast interview I’ve heard this month is an old one, from last summer. It’s called “Does Glorifying Sickness Deter Healing,” and it’s a fascinating conversation between Bari Weiss and Freddie deBoer about mental illness, identity, and our cultural fixation on rooting ourselves in what is wrong with us. It’s a secular conversation, so they miss some huge points on sexuality, then the last ten minutes goes off the rails on a Marxist tangent (literally, it’s a tangent about Marxism), but it is definitely worth a listen and some thought.
Chris is all excited about this new book which teaches children Gregorian Chant. It’s on backorder, so we haven’t gotten it yet, but if you get it before we do, let me know how it goes.
In the Fall of 2016, Chris and I were deep in a “Newly Married, Selling One House, and Buying Another” hole. Which is the only excuse I have for completely missing the wonderful Julian Fellows’ adaptation of Trollope’s “Dr. Thorne.” We stumbled upon it a couple of weeks ago, and it is excellent in every way. For days afterwards Chris kept accidentally praying for the repose of the soul of one of the fictional characters. So, that tells you something.
What’s Cooking?
For decades, my family has cooked this Beef Tenderloin recipe on Christmas Eve. This year, however, some friends and I have decided to attempt the Italian tradition of the Feast of the Seven Fishes on December 24 instead. I’ll let you know how that goes. Because it wouldn’t be Christmas without beef tenderloin, though, I’m making it for Christmas lunch with Chris’ family.
Christmas Beef Tenderloin
Serves 8; Prep time: 10 minutes; Cook time: 40 minutes
Ingredients
Beef tenderloin, 6 lbs., trimmed (i usually buy two smaller tenderloins as they cook more evenly this way)
Butter, 1 cup, softened
Italian parsley, 2 bunches, roughly chopped
Dijon mustard, 1 cup
Black peppercorns, 1 cup, freshly ground in coffee grinder
Kosher salt, 4 tsp.
Instructions
About 60 minutes before cooking, remove meat from refrigerator and bring to room temperature;
Preheat oven to 450° F;
Mix together butter, mustard, parsley, pepper, salt, and dijon mustard; slather over the tenderloins, coating on 3 sides (don’t worry about the bottom);
Roast meat until the center reaches 130° f (30-45 minutes depending on if you are cooking two smaller tenderloins or one large one); let meat rest for 10 minutes; slice and serve warm or at room temperature, with horseradish and horseradish cream sauce.
In Case You Missed It:
“Why the Devil Wants Women to Do It All” (Full Subscribers Only)
“Smashing Idols: The Deadly Danger of Being More Catholic Than the Church” (Free)
“A Faith Like Honey: On Parish Switching and Liturgical Living” (Full Subscribers Only)