Also, I do not not doubt that it will be the fullest most complete understanding of my sins ever, I am just saying that it will not be exactly equal to God's understanding, for he knows everything and every detail to its fullest.
I was just thinking what an amazing grace this will be for saint-building afterwards. Though it will be horribly difficult to go through, it is the kind of mystical gift God has usually only given to those much advanced in spirituality. Just imagine afterwards that we will all be able to reflect on how God sees sins every time we step to do something wrong. I don't remember the exact quote, but St. Faustina was given this gift after many years of humility and she was astonished at how even the most minute things will be held accountable.
...Yah, if we don't die of a heart attack. Think of the people you've cut off in traffic, those you have walked by, snubbed or snickered at, from the age of reason! We would be hard pressed to remember even our mortal sins methinks. I have asked for a mini-gentle illumination and awareness of my past sins and those of my nature that I hide from myself...the seven deadlies' are shockingly common and I fear contain many of my weaknesses.
The Seven Deadly Sins Pride Greed Gluttony Sloth......(can mean depression or hopelessness) Envy Jealousy Lust yikes
Your life flashes before you...many people have gone through this with near death experiences. I think we will see all our sins...confessed and not confessed. Then we will see all the worlds sins. And if we are lucky, after we have reached our lowest point (humility opposite of pride)...God might allow us to see the positive and beauty of life. I understand many here think that confessed sins are forgotten but i think they are forgiven but never forgotten until we unite with Our Lord. Brother al
One of my friends used to joke that the only think I really needed to know about God was that I was not God. When Thomas Aquinas reached the 13th volume of Summa he had a moment of clarity and realized he knew nothing. He put his pen down. ...but then again it could be argued that in realizing he knew nothing he actually knew something. Ha! Ha! Thanks for your post Advocate and including us in your pursuit of truth. Right there with you, Advocate, perhaps not in full accord but in full pursuit.
It seems to me the most horrifying thing about the illumination will not be just seeing our sins, but seeing the effect of our sins on others, especially how our sins contributed to the passion of Jesus.
I love this! It should be the motto of our forum: "Together in full pursuit." May we all be in heaven together one day, in full accord.
This does not mean we are "equal to God ", it just means for a brief moment, you will understand the truth ,as he does. After the Warning, I promise not to say " I told you so ".
I'm so grateful for all of the responses here. What have been my experiences that relate to the comments? Again, this is in response to the dreams I have had following praying that the Illumination of Conscience could come to me gradually so that I may be in a state of Grace when it happens. 1. I don't see the world as God sees it, but rather as an objective observer of my own actions. 2. I see the evil entrails of my smallest missteps spreading throughout my life and the lives of others. 3. I feel the pain I have caused to Christ. 4. I am motivated to confess, although these little actions never occurred to me before. 5. When I confess things I have long forgotten, I feel physical pain that makes it difficult to speak in the confessional. I consider the prayer for a gradual illumination of conscience to be a great grace. I hope you will join me. My Pastor has posted inside the confessionals a rubric for confession. After recalling all I can, I am to say, "For these and ALL the SINS of my past life, I am truly sorry." I think that is essential to a good confession.
#5 is soooooooooooo true!!! I always say "For everything I forgot....", but your priests directive seems much better.
There was a saint (I can't remember who at the moment, though it was a woman) who when she was young went out one night to dance with the locals in a festival. I don't know what she did, but by today's standards it was probably pretty tame. She returned home and had a vision of the face of Jesus and it was very badly bruised. She exclaimed that she didn't know that he had been hurt that badly during the Passion and he said "No, this is just from what you did tonight".
Maybe I am missing something but is this thread saying there is a difference between the Illumination and Correction of Conscience as presented in the prophecy of the Aviso/Warning from Garabandal. The Aviso we have been told, will be experienced at the same time by every soul on earth. There is no suggestion of a gradual build up to it. Without exception it will be experienced as terrifying. There will be no doubt that it is directly from God. It will visit us like the dawn from on high. Each day the sun usually rises gradually as the earth revolves. Not so with the light of the Warning. The fullness of the midday sun will be upon us before we know it. The illumination will happen by being shown our sins as they really are and their true consequences, the correction by being shown the good we should have been doing. Thus we will be put back on course should we so wish. It will be as if time stands still so time will be no constraint. It will happen outside of our normal experience of time. It will be private. No one else will see our personal revelations. This isolation may be hard to bear. We will be shown what we need to be shown. What God wants to show us. Our only choice will be in our response. There is no doubt about these details. this is what we have been told. We cannot make up our own version of the prophesies about the Warning. When it happens my old mum says she will bow her head and make an act of contrition. God love her!
Just this past lent I was doing the stations of the cross in adoration and pondering the physical weight of the cross with the world's sins on top of it. I asked Jesus to for a brief instant, let me feel the weight just my personal sins added to the cross (not all world sins, but just my personal sins), and the request had barely finished in my head when I got the response "you are not strong enough". That answer helped me to realize the gravity of my sins and I better understand why saints like st faustina refer to themselves as miserable creatures and similer names. I used to chuckle when reading her diary and thinking, my goodness, this poor woman was so hard on herself and I also thought it was more or less expressions they used back then but in reality I think it is because she understands the gravity of even small sins and how much it hurts our Jesus. So, as St. Louis de Montford calls us, this slug/goat/food for worms is a little nervous for the illumination of conscience since I am a horrible sinner.
Yes you are right. But all prophecy is subject to reason and interpretation, especially private revelation. We can not interpret it inside a vacuum. We have to hold it up to the three pillars of the Church: Tradition, Scripture, and the teachings of the Magisterium. Also, I have found it is helpful to compare it to other true prophecies and look for correlations in order to come to a better understanding. I know everyone here knows this, I am just thinking out loud, forgive me for I spent most of my time after my conversion reading about the intellectual side of things, i.e. Doctrine, moral theology, the principals of eschatology, etc. I joined this forum partly because I saw that I was lacking on the mystical side of things, I figured I could learn about that from the members here.
I think this "gradual" illumination of conscience is a great grace, to drive us to the confessional and clean up as best we can before the universal illumination, that will happen simultaneously to every person on the planet.
Of course but the three pillars will have nothing to do with it until after the event. All we have to go on until then is what has been revealed and affirmed by the saints.
Actually, I would argue that the event of the Warning is found in Scripture, at least implicitly, possibly explicitly. Particularly in the twelfth and thirteenth chapters of Zachariah. Also, I hold the opinion that Paul's conversion experience on the road to Damascus was a foreshadowing of the Warning (Illumination). Argh, I had more to say but it got deleted somehow, basically since the idea of a global warning is not oppossed or contradicted by the three pillars we can believe in it. Basically if the idea was condemned by the magisterium then obviously we could not even consider it. so along with that plus the other saints that have mentioned it, i.e. St. Edmund Campion, Blessed Anna Maria Taigi, Servant of God Maria Esperenza etc.. Also, after all this time the magisterium cannot find any theological errors in the apparitions at Garabandal, and the fruits appear to be very good. This all lends credence to the Event of The Warning being true. So the three pillars do have something to do with it. Ah! I need to go to bed, goodnight.
