Conscience: A Gift to Human Beings
St. Paul says, “Conduct yourselves in a way worthy of the Gospel of Christ” (Phil. 1:27). This is part of our call as Catholic Christians. Life is many things, but above all it is a test of whether we will choose the way that leads to life or the way that leads to perdition. Do we take the high road which leads to heaven and Jesus or do we follow the low road to hell and Satan? Of course, we want to choose the road to heaven. One of God’s gift to us in this journey of life choices is our conscience. John Henry Cardinal Newman colorfully referred to conscience as “the aboriginal Vicar of Christ,” meaning that even before Jesus founded the Church on the Rock of Peter, the Vicar of Christ, early man had his conscience to guide him through the difficult moral choices that present themselves in any life.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says “moral conscience, present at the heart of a person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and avoid evil. It also judges particular choices, approving those that are good and denouncing those that are evil. It bears witness to the authority of truth in reference to the supreme Good to which the human person is drawn, and it welcomes the commandments. When he listens to his conscience the prudent man can hear God speaking” (CCC 1777).
As St. John Paul II reminds us, “man has in his heart a law written by God” (Veritatis Splendor, 54). Saint John Paul II also points out that conscience formulates moral obligation in the form of the natural law. Natural Law allows man to discern with his reason that stealing, murder, assault, etc. are wrong. St. John Paul II writes: “The universality of the law and its obligation are acknowledged; not suppressed, once reason has established the law’s application in concrete present circumstances.” Thus, the judgment of conscience bears witness to “the authority of the natural law.” Man can also recognize the authority of Divine law given to us by Christ or revealed by the Holy Spirit. If despite his conscience, man chooses evil, the judgment of his conscience remains a witness to “the universal truth of the good.”
Conscience is more than a little voice inside of us that assists us in making moral choices. It is a personal sanctuary where God speaks to man. At the supernatural level we see conscience as an inner voice speaking to every man and woman, “The Holy Spirit breathing, guiding us to the Father” or as St. Ignatius of Antioch, an Early Church Father expressed it, “Living water within me bids me come to the Father.” The Holy Spirit was sent by the Father and the Son as another advocate and He speaks to our heart. As St. Paul urged in his letter to the Romans: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).
For St. Patrick, this inner voice caused him to find God in prayer while still enslaved in Ireland, to boldly escape to the coast and return to his home in Britain though he knew not the way or how he would manage it, he placed his trust in God. Some years later after dreaming of the needs of the Irish people, who were overwhelming pagan, it beckoned him to go to Europe and study for the priesthood so he could answer the call in his heart to return to Ireland as a missionary. He did return many years later after his formation as a priest of God, ordained first as a Bishop, and subsequently spent the rest of his life listening to voice of God in his heart, in the process saving many thousands of souls all over Ireland. His conscience served him well because he listened to it and responded.
On the other hand, Cain made the wrong choice when he chose to kill his brother Able, out of hatred and jealousy. Crestfallen at the fact that Abel’s offering to God was accepted because it came from the heart, and his offering did not, he was angry. The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is couching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Gen. 4:6-7). Obviously, Cain rejected his conscience and did not master sin. Instead, he chose to indulge his jealousy and hatred and killed his brother. As a result, he was forced to lead a difficult fugitive lifestyle away from the Lord. We all our given choices in our lives, but in order to make them rightly, so they lead to union with God, we need a formed or informed conscience.
Although conscience is a natural gift given to all of us, it will not serve you well in all instances, including important choices involving even life and death, unless it is well formed. “The education of conscience is indispensable for human beings who are subjected to negative influences and tempted by sin to prefer their own judgment and to reject authoritative teachings” (CCC 1783). “The education of conscience guarantees freedom and engenders peace of heart” and “is a lifelong task” (CCC 1784). Bishops, as the chief catechist in every diocese, have the obligation to catechize the faithful.
In a recent letter to all Catholics in the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, the Bishop reminded voters that voting is a “moral act requiring a well-formed conscience.” He wrote, “Our conscience does not determine what is right or wrong--God does! Our conscience tells us whether our actions are consistent with what his Law teaches is right or wrong. Therefore, forming our conscience is critically important not just for voting, but for our sanctification and salvation.” He then quoted St. John Paul II who warned us:
Because of the nature of conscience, the admonition always to follow it must immediately be followed by the question of whether what our conscience is telling us is true or not. If we fail to make this necessary clarification, conscience--instead of being that holy place where God reveals to us our true good- becomes a force which is destructive of our true humanity and of all our relationships (General Audience, August 17, 1983).
Jesus, himself, addresses the danger of a deformed conscience when he warns:
“The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is sound your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6: 22-23).
Let’s take the case of a procured abortion. Abortion deprives a child conceived in the womb of the mother of the gift of life and in the words of the Catechism, “is gravely contrary to the moral law.” Yet many people, even Catholic Christians, have come to the conclusion that it is permissible or worse still, that is a right of the woman, while failing to appreciate the rights of the conceived child who has a separate body and an eternal soul. As Michael Warsaw put it in a recent editorial in the National Catholic Register, “Abortion denies our inherent God-given dignity as human beings, and it brings violence and death into the family.” As he noted, it makes parents complicit in the death of their own children.
Another example would be the common conception among some young people who earnestly want to compensate for mistreatment of homosexuals in the past, by concluding that homosexual acts must be morally good. The Word of God contained in Sacred Scripture sees these acts as an act of grave depravity and the Catechism labels them, “intrinsically disordered” and contrary to natural law, because “they do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity” (CCC 2357). It explains, “sexuality is ordered to the conjugal love of man and woman” (CCC 2360). As Cardinal Burke said recently, the Church teaches us to hate the sin but to love the sinner. From these examples we see that conscience is not well served if it is not informed.
Every Christian should make the effort to read the Sacred Scriptures because the Word of God is an important tool (“a light to our path”) in conscience formation when read, studied and put into practice. It is literally the cutting edge for saintly formation. One of the virtues it teaches is humility. Humility is the base plate of sainthood because it is the foundation of all other virtues and is necessary to overcome pride. Scripture says, “Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you” (James 4: 10). There is no respect for others without humility in ourselves.
The authoritative teaching of the Church, especially as found in the beautifully written treasure we call the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is also essential to this formation. It informs us of magisterial teaching and narrates salvation history. Regular confession is also key. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are most evident in the penitent who regularly examines his or her conscience and receives the graces given in the Sacrament. We should seek the moral guidance of the Church Jesus gave us.
This process of forming one’s conscience is brought to fruition in prayer and study to develop a morally sensitive conscience. It is also helpful, where possible, to find a spiritual director. All of this, along with frequent reception of the Sacraments, should lead us to the cultivation of virtues with the grace of God. This is a lifelong challenge, but one that will save us a lot of heartache.
If conscience is properly formed in humility to the Church’s teaching our moral judgments will be enlightened. The Catechism says, “We must examine our conscience before the Lord’s Cross” (CCC 1785). We are always required to distinguish our subjective self from what is objectively true outside of ourselves. As the Catechism teaches, when our conscience is certain we must follow it. On the other hand, we should not follow a doubtful conscience, but rather seek clarification from our confessor or spiritual director.
Even ignorance does not exonerate us from an evil action, if we do not take the time to “find out what is true and good.” Habitual sin can almost blind one’s conscience, but does not excuse our culpability. The Catechism says:
“Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one’s passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church’s authority and her teaching, lack of conversion or of charity these can be the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct” (CCC 1792).
Even a cursory study of the Saints leads to the conclusion that they were scrupulous. That is, they were diligent and extremely careful in their efforts to avoid sin and its near occasion and to practice moral integrity in every aspect of their life, especially as regards charity and sacrifice. They wanted to love Jesus more perfectly, but were only too aware of their own sins.
Sometimes they fell into scrupulosity, which involves falling prey to thoughts that force us to exaggerate our own sins, see mortal sins where there are only venal sins, and failing to distinguish sinful thoughts that pop into our mind, but which we do not entertain by consciously dwelling upon them. Jesus taught that lust, entertaining impure thoughts about another person, is equivalent to adultery. But there is a difference between a passing thought, which we act to put out of our minds because we recognize it is wrong, and an immoral thought that we choose instead to dwell upon and take pleasure from. The former is not sinful, the latter is. We can and should make every effort to avoid the near occasion of sin, but we cannot prevent sinful thoughts from sometimes presenting themselves to our mind. Our focus should be to banish these thoughts when they occur with a short prayer seeking help from God.
Many Saints suffered from scrupulosity, including St. Ignatius of Loyola, who believed for a time that impure or aggressive thoughts that came into his mind were grave sins. As a young man he made a confession at Santa Maria Montserrat Abbey in Spain and then went to nearby cavern at Manresa for a week of self-imposed penance, but was plagued by his scruples. He had thoughts that he had not confessed all his sins or their circumstance and resolved to neither eat or drink (unless his life was in danger) until he received the peace of Christ. But his austerities were ended by a confessor, who counseled him in the confessional to avoid being consumed by his scruples.
St. Maximilian Kolbe scrupulosity also occurred before he became a priest, apparently due to his worries concerning the mercy of God, but he overcame them with the help of his spiritual adviser, Fr. Luigi Bondini, who counselled him to place his faith in the Immaculate Virgin Mary and in the mercy of God. He also counselled him to take care of his health. He afterwards developed a deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
An Augustinian monk named Martin Luther also suffered from scrupulosity. In his Epistle to the Galatians commentary he wrote:
“When I was a monk I tried ever so hard to live up to the strict rules of my order. I used to make a list of my sins, and I was always on the way to confession, and whatever penances were enjoined upon me I performed religiously. In spite of it all, my conscience was always in a fever of doubt. The more I sought to help my poor stricken conscience the worse it got. The more I paid attention to the regulations the more I transgressed them…”
Luther’s too realized that faith had a role in overcoming his scruples, but sought relief for his guilt “by denying the efficacy of confession, penance, and indulgence altogether, claiming that faith alone is all that is required of a Christian.” Ultimately, he tried to destroy the Catholic Church. His conclusions caused great damage to unity of Christianity. Unlike St. Ignatius or St. Maximilian, who relied upon the guides provided by the Church and remained faithful, Luther went his own way causing great damage to the Church and to himself.
Some have been fortunate enough to have experienced an illumination of conscience which can turn a sinner around. Once such person, was C. Alan Ames, a Catholic mystic and former violent alcoholic, who described an illumination of his soul which occurred in 1994. He wrote:
It was the greatest day of my life, but also the most difficult because I was shown how all my sins, from childhood to the present, had contributed to His [Jesus] suffering and dying. There were so many of them! It seemed as though I was sinning every second of my life. I saw how every time I hurt someone, I was hurting Jesus. Any time I told a lie, I was lying about Jesus as He suffered and died. Every time I gossiped about people, I was below the Cross with those gossiping about Jesus as He hung in agony. Any time I made fun of others, I was making fun of Jesus as He died for me. Even the smallest sin, even the thoughts I had toward others—of dislike, anger, hate or frustration—seemed so big. And to see my grievous sins was absolutely terrible.
He added:
“Jesus showed me the state of my soul, which was putrid. He revealed how my sins not only hurt other people but often led them into sin, such as when they tried to imitate me or responded with anger or violence. I felt so ashamed, so unworthy and offensive. I wanted to run away, but couldn’t and Jesus wouldn’t leave me. Worse yet, He kept telling me He loved me and longed to forgive me.” (The Warning: Testimonies and Prophecies of the Illumination of Conscience by Christine Walker, a former anti-Catholic atheist)
He then had a vision of the terrible suffering of our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the Cross and he begged Jesus to let him die and be condemned to hell. He broke down and cried for hours, but with God’s grace eventually asked for forgiveness and transformed his life.
Whether you have a similar experience to Mr. Ames or not, God is calling you today to reform your life and your conscience. He is calling you to draw near to Him in the Sacraments of the Church and to confess your sins regularly to help develop your conscience's moral sensitivity and gain graces needed. He is calling you to properly form your conscience in His Word. Steep yourselves in the Word of God and the magisterial teaching of the Church. Ask God for forgiveness of your sins and dedicate your life to serving him in whatever vocation He has called you to. Conscience is a gift from God. Be sure yours is formed and listen to it.
May the Lord be with you.
Power Points for this presentation are will be available below for a few weeks:
St. Paul says, “Conduct yourselves in a way worthy of the Gospel of Christ” (Phil. 1:27). This is part of our call as Catholic Christians. Life is many things, but above all it is a test of whether we will choose the way that leads to life or the way that leads to perdition. Do we take the high road which leads to heaven and Jesus or do we follow the low road to hell and Satan? Of course, we want to choose the road to heaven. One of God’s gift to us in this journey of life choices is our conscience. John Henry Cardinal Newman colorfully referred to conscience as “the aboriginal Vicar of Christ,” meaning that even before Jesus founded the Church on the Rock of Peter, the Vicar of Christ, early man had his conscience to guide him through the difficult moral choices that present themselves in any life.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says “moral conscience, present at the heart of a person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and avoid evil. It also judges particular choices, approving those that are good and denouncing those that are evil. It bears witness to the authority of truth in reference to the supreme Good to which the human person is drawn, and it welcomes the commandments. When he listens to his conscience the prudent man can hear God speaking” (CCC 1777).
As St. John Paul II reminds us, “man has in his heart a law written by God” (Veritatis Splendor, 54). Saint John Paul II also points out that conscience formulates moral obligation in the form of the natural law. Natural Law allows man to discern with his reason that stealing, murder, assault, etc. are wrong. St. John Paul II writes: “The universality of the law and its obligation are acknowledged; not suppressed, once reason has established the law’s application in concrete present circumstances.” Thus, the judgment of conscience bears witness to “the authority of the natural law.” Man can also recognize the authority of Divine law given to us by Christ or revealed by the Holy Spirit. If despite his conscience, man chooses evil, the judgment of his conscience remains a witness to “the universal truth of the good.”
Conscience is more than a little voice inside of us that assists us in making moral choices. It is a personal sanctuary where God speaks to man. At the supernatural level we see conscience as an inner voice speaking to every man and woman, “The Holy Spirit breathing, guiding us to the Father” or as St. Ignatius of Antioch, an Early Church Father expressed it, “Living water within me bids me come to the Father.” The Holy Spirit was sent by the Father and the Son as another advocate and He speaks to our heart. As St. Paul urged in his letter to the Romans: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).
For St. Patrick, this inner voice caused him to find God in prayer while still enslaved in Ireland, to boldly escape to the coast and return to his home in Britain though he knew not the way or how he would manage it, he placed his trust in God. Some years later after dreaming of the needs of the Irish people, who were overwhelming pagan, it beckoned him to go to Europe and study for the priesthood so he could answer the call in his heart to return to Ireland as a missionary. He did return many years later after his formation as a priest of God, ordained first as a Bishop, and subsequently spent the rest of his life listening to voice of God in his heart, in the process saving many thousands of souls all over Ireland. His conscience served him well because he listened to it and responded.
On the other hand, Cain made the wrong choice when he chose to kill his brother Able, out of hatred and jealousy. Crestfallen at the fact that Abel’s offering to God was accepted because it came from the heart, and his offering did not, he was angry. The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is couching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Gen. 4:6-7). Obviously, Cain rejected his conscience and did not master sin. Instead, he chose to indulge his jealousy and hatred and killed his brother. As a result, he was forced to lead a difficult fugitive lifestyle away from the Lord. We all our given choices in our lives, but in order to make them rightly, so they lead to union with God, we need a formed or informed conscience.
Although conscience is a natural gift given to all of us, it will not serve you well in all instances, including important choices involving even life and death, unless it is well formed. “The education of conscience is indispensable for human beings who are subjected to negative influences and tempted by sin to prefer their own judgment and to reject authoritative teachings” (CCC 1783). “The education of conscience guarantees freedom and engenders peace of heart” and “is a lifelong task” (CCC 1784). Bishops, as the chief catechist in every diocese, have the obligation to catechize the faithful.
In a recent letter to all Catholics in the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, the Bishop reminded voters that voting is a “moral act requiring a well-formed conscience.” He wrote, “Our conscience does not determine what is right or wrong--God does! Our conscience tells us whether our actions are consistent with what his Law teaches is right or wrong. Therefore, forming our conscience is critically important not just for voting, but for our sanctification and salvation.” He then quoted St. John Paul II who warned us:
Because of the nature of conscience, the admonition always to follow it must immediately be followed by the question of whether what our conscience is telling us is true or not. If we fail to make this necessary clarification, conscience--instead of being that holy place where God reveals to us our true good- becomes a force which is destructive of our true humanity and of all our relationships (General Audience, August 17, 1983).
Jesus, himself, addresses the danger of a deformed conscience when he warns:
“The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is sound your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6: 22-23).
Let’s take the case of a procured abortion. Abortion deprives a child conceived in the womb of the mother of the gift of life and in the words of the Catechism, “is gravely contrary to the moral law.” Yet many people, even Catholic Christians, have come to the conclusion that it is permissible or worse still, that is a right of the woman, while failing to appreciate the rights of the conceived child who has a separate body and an eternal soul. As Michael Warsaw put it in a recent editorial in the National Catholic Register, “Abortion denies our inherent God-given dignity as human beings, and it brings violence and death into the family.” As he noted, it makes parents complicit in the death of their own children.
Another example would be the common conception among some young people who earnestly want to compensate for mistreatment of homosexuals in the past, by concluding that homosexual acts must be morally good. The Word of God contained in Sacred Scripture sees these acts as an act of grave depravity and the Catechism labels them, “intrinsically disordered” and contrary to natural law, because “they do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity” (CCC 2357). It explains, “sexuality is ordered to the conjugal love of man and woman” (CCC 2360). As Cardinal Burke said recently, the Church teaches us to hate the sin but to love the sinner. From these examples we see that conscience is not well served if it is not informed.
Every Christian should make the effort to read the Sacred Scriptures because the Word of God is an important tool (“a light to our path”) in conscience formation when read, studied and put into practice. It is literally the cutting edge for saintly formation. One of the virtues it teaches is humility. Humility is the base plate of sainthood because it is the foundation of all other virtues and is necessary to overcome pride. Scripture says, “Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you” (James 4: 10). There is no respect for others without humility in ourselves.
The authoritative teaching of the Church, especially as found in the beautifully written treasure we call the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is also essential to this formation. It informs us of magisterial teaching and narrates salvation history. Regular confession is also key. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are most evident in the penitent who regularly examines his or her conscience and receives the graces given in the Sacrament. We should seek the moral guidance of the Church Jesus gave us.
This process of forming one’s conscience is brought to fruition in prayer and study to develop a morally sensitive conscience. It is also helpful, where possible, to find a spiritual director. All of this, along with frequent reception of the Sacraments, should lead us to the cultivation of virtues with the grace of God. This is a lifelong challenge, but one that will save us a lot of heartache.
If conscience is properly formed in humility to the Church’s teaching our moral judgments will be enlightened. The Catechism says, “We must examine our conscience before the Lord’s Cross” (CCC 1785). We are always required to distinguish our subjective self from what is objectively true outside of ourselves. As the Catechism teaches, when our conscience is certain we must follow it. On the other hand, we should not follow a doubtful conscience, but rather seek clarification from our confessor or spiritual director.
Even ignorance does not exonerate us from an evil action, if we do not take the time to “find out what is true and good.” Habitual sin can almost blind one’s conscience, but does not excuse our culpability. The Catechism says:
“Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one’s passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church’s authority and her teaching, lack of conversion or of charity these can be the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct” (CCC 1792).
Even a cursory study of the Saints leads to the conclusion that they were scrupulous. That is, they were diligent and extremely careful in their efforts to avoid sin and its near occasion and to practice moral integrity in every aspect of their life, especially as regards charity and sacrifice. They wanted to love Jesus more perfectly, but were only too aware of their own sins.
Sometimes they fell into scrupulosity, which involves falling prey to thoughts that force us to exaggerate our own sins, see mortal sins where there are only venal sins, and failing to distinguish sinful thoughts that pop into our mind, but which we do not entertain by consciously dwelling upon them. Jesus taught that lust, entertaining impure thoughts about another person, is equivalent to adultery. But there is a difference between a passing thought, which we act to put out of our minds because we recognize it is wrong, and an immoral thought that we choose instead to dwell upon and take pleasure from. The former is not sinful, the latter is. We can and should make every effort to avoid the near occasion of sin, but we cannot prevent sinful thoughts from sometimes presenting themselves to our mind. Our focus should be to banish these thoughts when they occur with a short prayer seeking help from God.
Many Saints suffered from scrupulosity, including St. Ignatius of Loyola, who believed for a time that impure or aggressive thoughts that came into his mind were grave sins. As a young man he made a confession at Santa Maria Montserrat Abbey in Spain and then went to nearby cavern at Manresa for a week of self-imposed penance, but was plagued by his scruples. He had thoughts that he had not confessed all his sins or their circumstance and resolved to neither eat or drink (unless his life was in danger) until he received the peace of Christ. But his austerities were ended by a confessor, who counseled him in the confessional to avoid being consumed by his scruples.
St. Maximilian Kolbe scrupulosity also occurred before he became a priest, apparently due to his worries concerning the mercy of God, but he overcame them with the help of his spiritual adviser, Fr. Luigi Bondini, who counselled him to place his faith in the Immaculate Virgin Mary and in the mercy of God. He also counselled him to take care of his health. He afterwards developed a deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
An Augustinian monk named Martin Luther also suffered from scrupulosity. In his Epistle to the Galatians commentary he wrote:
“When I was a monk I tried ever so hard to live up to the strict rules of my order. I used to make a list of my sins, and I was always on the way to confession, and whatever penances were enjoined upon me I performed religiously. In spite of it all, my conscience was always in a fever of doubt. The more I sought to help my poor stricken conscience the worse it got. The more I paid attention to the regulations the more I transgressed them…”
Luther’s too realized that faith had a role in overcoming his scruples, but sought relief for his guilt “by denying the efficacy of confession, penance, and indulgence altogether, claiming that faith alone is all that is required of a Christian.” Ultimately, he tried to destroy the Catholic Church. His conclusions caused great damage to unity of Christianity. Unlike St. Ignatius or St. Maximilian, who relied upon the guides provided by the Church and remained faithful, Luther went his own way causing great damage to the Church and to himself.
Some have been fortunate enough to have experienced an illumination of conscience which can turn a sinner around. Once such person, was C. Alan Ames, a Catholic mystic and former violent alcoholic, who described an illumination of his soul which occurred in 1994. He wrote:
It was the greatest day of my life, but also the most difficult because I was shown how all my sins, from childhood to the present, had contributed to His [Jesus] suffering and dying. There were so many of them! It seemed as though I was sinning every second of my life. I saw how every time I hurt someone, I was hurting Jesus. Any time I told a lie, I was lying about Jesus as He suffered and died. Every time I gossiped about people, I was below the Cross with those gossiping about Jesus as He hung in agony. Any time I made fun of others, I was making fun of Jesus as He died for me. Even the smallest sin, even the thoughts I had toward others—of dislike, anger, hate or frustration—seemed so big. And to see my grievous sins was absolutely terrible.
He added:
“Jesus showed me the state of my soul, which was putrid. He revealed how my sins not only hurt other people but often led them into sin, such as when they tried to imitate me or responded with anger or violence. I felt so ashamed, so unworthy and offensive. I wanted to run away, but couldn’t and Jesus wouldn’t leave me. Worse yet, He kept telling me He loved me and longed to forgive me.” (The Warning: Testimonies and Prophecies of the Illumination of Conscience by Christine Walker, a former anti-Catholic atheist)
He then had a vision of the terrible suffering of our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the Cross and he begged Jesus to let him die and be condemned to hell. He broke down and cried for hours, but with God’s grace eventually asked for forgiveness and transformed his life.
Whether you have a similar experience to Mr. Ames or not, God is calling you today to reform your life and your conscience. He is calling you to draw near to Him in the Sacraments of the Church and to confess your sins regularly to help develop your conscience's moral sensitivity and gain graces needed. He is calling you to properly form your conscience in His Word. Steep yourselves in the Word of God and the magisterial teaching of the Church. Ask God for forgiveness of your sins and dedicate your life to serving him in whatever vocation He has called you to. Conscience is a gift from God. Be sure yours is formed and listen to it.
May the Lord be with you.
Power Points for this presentation are will be available below for a few weeks:
| pp6_conscience.pptx |
