Feelings of Guilt

Humility is one thing and humiliation is another. Humility is God’s daughter and humiliation is pride’s daughter. Humility is a positive attitude. Humiliation, on the other hand, is self- destructive. At the heart of the guilt complexes, there are always the two names of death: shame-sadness. Actually, in the final analysis guilt complexes reduce themselves to a combination of these two feelings.

These feelings have, been deliberately cultivated among us, as if one was telling us: humiliate and punish yourself, you are a miserable person, that does not deserve mercy. In fact, underneath, there was an open invitation to be merciless to oneself for being a sinner. It follows that as a sinner, we merit punishment; and so before being chastised by God as our sins deserve, it is better to chastise oneself psychologically oneself (with feelings of guilt), the impression was that one was satisfying divine.

By chastising oneself (with feelings of guilt), there was the impression that divine justice was being satisfied and its ire appeased. One had to do penance to merit divine mercy, forgetting that, even if one did penance until the end of time, mercy is never deserved, it is received.

Therefore, we see Jesus in the gospels making up short stories, comparisons, and parables to tell us that in the end; God is not at all, as they have tried to put in our heads. But, on the contrary, He is tenderness and love, unconditional forgiveness, a love eternal and free. God is like the most beloved and loving earthly Father. To Him, to forgive is a great banquet. Those who are the most broken and fragile, those who have the unhappiest stories of moral failures, and are considered least; those are Father God’s favorites.

Extracted from the book “Psalms for Life” by Father Ignacio Larrañaga