“I always feel the same bold confidence of becoming a great saint, because I do not count on my merits, having none, but I hope in Him who is Virtue, Holiness Itself. It is He alone who, content with my weak efforts, will raise me up to Him and, covering me with His infinite merits, will make me holy."  - St. Therese, Story of a Soul (Ms A 32 r°)

I just got this lovely quote from Lisieux straight to my inbox. Since I'm making no progress whittling down email, I thought I'd share this with you instead. As I write, the color of the words is red, delightfully matching the dress of Our Lady as the angel Gabriel appears to her above.

Happy Feast of the Annunciation! In the brilliant words of Dr. Warren Carroll:
Truth exists. The Incarnation happened!

I don't know if he put an exclamation point after his famous tagline, his favorite message, but St. Therese and I are sure we want the exclamation point there. After all, what could be better news?

I was thinking yesterday about the Word becoming flesh in Mary's womb, and I had such joy in the thought of how very tiny Jesus was. He told us the night before He died that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and St. Paul assures us that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, so we can bet He was the Way from that first moment in the womb of Mary Immaculate, but what a tiny, what a very Little Way He was!

Our Mother the Church is such a dear and caring teacher that she gives us this feast of the Incarnation in the midst of Lent. Just when it might occur to me to begin meditating on Our Lord's Passion in earnest (or at all!), my Mother gives me a different image . . . Jesus in Mary, Jesus so very small that He is as invisible as He is in the Sacred Host - even more so! 

I had the thrill of seeing Blessed Fra Angelico's Annunciation at the top of the stairs in San Marco in Florence recently, and WOW - what a joy to behold the original in its vivid color (the red on Gabriel's wing sparkles!) and in its full size. I wanted to bring the whole thing home - not all of San Marco (I'm a reasonable girl), just the full fresco of the Annunciation. Here it is in a smaller version:

I'm sorry it's such a little image - I didn't succeed in doing the angelic work of miraculously transporting the original home with me, and even if I had, I think I'd have to bring you to southern California to see it, and that would be complicated. But here is a close up of Gabriel. I was so impressed by his look of hopeful anticipation, but also there is joy, because I think he suspects the answer. "Please, Mary, say yes!"

If you can't think of a reason to smile today, please smile because Mary did say YES!

And now, here we are, 2000 years plus later, and we still get to celebrate this moment of her Yes to the Blessed Trinity which then allowed Jesus' Yes to His Father, and our being the lucky and blessed children with a Savior who has taken on us all our nature. WOW!

And then what? What next?
We all have duties and joys and sorrows tugging on us, and sometimes the joys don't seem to prevail. May I make a suggestion?

Having so lately been awash in beauty in Italy (and thank you to anyone who has ever said a prayer for me - it surely helped bring about the uncountable graces of that trip, which I ask the Holy Spirit of Love to direct right back to your hearts too), I have moments of sadness and fear that all I experienced will disappear.

How silly is that?
It's a good thing God doesn't get impatient with us. He might (if He wasn't so wonderful) start thinking He should stop Therese's showering me with roses, seeing as I'm always plagued with these absurd fears afterward! 

I felt this same silly way after the miraculously perfect wedding of our son and daughter-in-law, and yet I am happy to report that whether or not I remember it, the wedding happened, the marriage is a fact, and though I could never have expected their happily ever after including a trip to Italy that I got to crash, it did!

And so, too, while I may not remember in real time every wondrous detail of Italy and the saints I met and the angels (heavenly and earthly) I encountered, still it did happen and nothing will take that away, not even my pathetic memory.

I surprised one of my doctors a couple days ago when I not only thanked her for encouraging me to go to Italy. but told her the trip was life-changing.

"Life-changing?" she repeated with a shade of a doubt.

Yes!
Though I couldn't explain it to her then, her bemused expression made me wonder later if it was true, and I'm happy to report that yes, life-changing it was . . . because beauty is eternal, and even corrupting material beauty can be restored (I'm thinking of the work done on frescoes, not on faces in my neck of the woods!) . . . Nonetheless, this beauty we experience through our senses merely represents higher beauties and calls our minds and hearts to reflect on them:

The beauty of a maiden interrupted by an angel, for instance, and the very real awed humility, unworthiness, and amazed joy she must have felt at his message, his invitation straight from God . . .

This morning I went for a walk in our suburban neighbor and saw a red winged blackbird sitting in a tree, seeing me before he flew away. I had enough time to realize what he was, and I wondered at his nearness and stillness. 

Yesterday morning I went to a Missa Cantata and heard the most glorious Credo - around the words "et incarnatus est," the organ stopped, and the choir, which had been singing in one voice, broke into polyphony. Tears spring to my eyes just remembering this beauty (which I will, alas, perhaps soon forget) - but that doesn't matter. What is life changing is God's eternal love which won't leave us without beauty for long. We may not hear a Missa Cantata every day (I sure don't!), or often see a red winged blackbird, or glory in the close-up view of a Fra Angelico at the top of the stairs where the saint first painted it . . . but I bet - I'm sure! - the infinite solicitude and unceasing tenderness of this God who became man to die for us to bring us into Eternal Beauty forever will not let us go long without surprising us with another passing beauty, just to remind us He, Eternal Beauty is near. 

I hope and pray that you experience and remember boatloads of beauty, and that when it is present before you, when it is present in your memory, or even when it is long forgotten, it will have changed you by reminding you that God loves you now and forever. 

May the beauty of Our Savior greet you today when you least expect it!

Draw me; we will run!

"The Almighty has concentrated in St. Joseph, as in a Sun of unrivalled luster, the combined light and splendor of all the other saints." - St. Gregory Nazianzen, Bishop and Doctor of the Church

What do you need today? If you're anything like me, the answer may be:
1. Miracles
2. A cappuccino
3. Sleep
And I don't know if that's the right order, but probably the miracles come first!

I have just returned from a pilgrimage of miracles (and cappuccino, and just the right amount of sleep), and yet would you believe it? I'm in search of more! More of all three, but especially more miracles. I had the absolute joy of praying before the tombs/bodies/remains of many of my favorite saints of old, and some new ones, including:

St. Dominic Savio
St. Don Bosco
St. Mary Mazzarello (helper of John Bosco)
St. Anthony of Padua
Bl. Luca of Belludi (friend of St. Anthony)
St. Luke the Evangelist
St. Charles Borromeo
Blessed Idelphonso Schuster
St. Andrew Corsini, Carmelite
Apostles Philip, James, Jude, and Simon
St. Philip Neri
Blessed Fra Angelico
St. Catherine of Siena
St. Ignatius Loyola
St. Francis Xavier
St. Camillus de Lellis
Pope St. John Paul II
Pope St. Pius X
Pope St. John XXIII
Pope St. Paul VI
Venerable Antonietta Meo
St. Monica . . . 

If you're tired just reading this list, you might imagine I was tired making the pilgrimage, but I'm here to assure you that reading is much more tiring than seeking out (or being surprised by) the saints! In fact, I wasn't very tired, and the occasional gelato did more than enough to keep me going, to the bemusement of those who led me around Rome (endless thanks, C and T!).

You see, the saints are alive and well, even as their mortal coils (now shuffled off and free of the duty to house their immortal souls) either retain their living tones, take on darker hues, or disintegrate as we would expect them to do . . . But man-oh-man, these saints are continuing to befriend us in the Mystical Body, taking their places in the Communion of Saints and ready to intercede for us at a moment's notice.

I always remember fondly the years of homeschooling my boys because whatever else did or (usually) did not get done, if it was a feast of any level (from barely-heard-of-would-be-saint all the way to solemnity), you can bet one of us tried to get the day "off" from even our own extremely relaxed version of Catholic unschooling.

On St. Joseph's feast - highest solemnity! - we definitely took the day to celebrate, and I hope you will too, whether you have kids at home, kids grown, or are a kid yourself!

These days my thoughts turn less to cupcakes and more to favors I want the saints to procure for me from the infinite, but sometimes seemingly elusive, mercy and love of our awesome Almighty God. And with St. Joseph, we have every reason to believe that we'll get what we ask for because He who obeyed Joseph while they walked the earth will certainly grant his petitions now that they are walking in Heaven. (Or possibly reclining.)

One of the holy cards I brought back from Italy, where I had found, or been found by, the numerous saints listed above, was from Turin where St. John Bosco founded the Salesians, a religious order of men dedicated to helping educate boys in the spirit of St. Francis de Sales. John loved St. Francis because of his gentleness, and I loved discovering years ago that this St. Francis really had to work on what later became his captivating gentleness, because by nature he was choleric and prone to anger!

The holy card I got has on the front a picture of St. Francis de Sales kneeling before a crucifix, a quill pen in his hand and an open book before him. Angels are floating above him, quite interested in what he's writing (although he has his eyes on Christ crucified), while in the background we see a statue of Mary and little Jesus. The card has on the back one of St. Francis de Sales' sayings in Italian:

"Fate tutto per amore, nulla per forza," which translates to this beautiful advice: "Do everything through love, nothing through force." 

This was exactly Don (Italian for Father) Bosco's approach, and while I can't say I always follow it, I sure want to!

I've been thinking about St. Joseph, and it occurred to me in one of those rare moments (when my thinking yielded a thought that wasn't instantly about food) that he and Jesus must have spent a LOT of time together. We glide over those thirty years of silence as if the only thing that happened was the Finding in the Temple, but we can imagine another set of rosary mysteries ("The Hidden Mysteries") that might include "Jesus loses his first tooth," and "St. Joseph teaches Jesus how to shape, cut, join, and finish wood," as well as "Mary and Joseph teach Jesus how to read," and so on. He, Our Lord, was like us in all things but sin. He was also unlike us in that He was God, but He willed to be little like us and actually learn, in His human nature, as we do, gradually. At the very least we can remember that He was born into a family, and spent not only his childhood years with Mary and Joseph, but even up to His thirtieth year when He launched into the three years of His public mission.

Wow! Thirty years - and (most likely) most of them with Joseph as well as Mary. Which means St. Joseph, after Mary, was the person who spent the most time with Jesus. Not just three years, like some of the apostles, but perhaps ten times that long! What friends they must have become, as we can become with our parents and our children when we grow (or they grow) into adults. What conversations they must have had, from Jesus' first articulate words to the last words He and Joseph said to each other as Joseph lay dying. Because the Scriptures mention Mary's presence at the foot of the Cross, but not Joseph's, we can safely believe that Joseph had already passed out of this life and into the next before Christ's passion and death and resurrection, and what a death that must have been, with Jesus and Mary beside him.

When St. Therese was made Doctor of the Church in 1997, we had a super fun pizza party after an evening Mass in her honor (thank you, Father R!), and I remember at that party talking about the other Doctors of the Church (thirty-two others at that time) and asking a smart friend (the same T who led me around Rome and re-awakened my devotion to St. Peter's just a few days ago), "Who is St. Lawrence of Brindisi?" It turns out he was a Capuchin from the 16th century, and in Fr. Calloway's Consecration to St. Joseph book I found this wonderful quote from St. Lawrence:

"Though not Jesus' father by generation, St. Joseph was His father in His upbringing, His care, and the affection of His heart. It seems to me, therefore, that Joseph is clearly the holiest of all the saints, holier than the patriarchs, than the prophets, than the apostles, than all the other saints. The objection cannot be raised that the Lord said of John the Baptist: Among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist [Lk 7:28]. Just as this cannot be understood to mean that John is even holier than Christ or the Blessed Virgin, so it can't be understood in reference to blessed Joseph, the spouse of the Virgin Mary and the father of Christ, for just as husband and wife are one flesh, so too Joseph and Mary were one heart, one soul, one spirit. And as in that first marriage God created Eve to be like Adam, so in this second marriage He made Joseph to be like the Blessed Virgin in holiness and justice."

As an American who doesn't know Italian, faced with a myriad of glorious basilicas, cathedrals, vistas, sculptures, etc., all I could do was repeatedly express in one globally understood word:

WOW!

I feel the same after reading, typing, and re-reading St. Lawrence of Brindisi's description of the marriage of Mary and Joseph.

Wow!!!

Thank You, Father, for sending the Holy Spirit to enlighten and prompt the Doctors to teach us the otherwise unimaginable intimacy You delighted to behold in the Holy Family!

St. Joseph, you have answered so many of our prayers. You have quietly taken them to Jesus - or whispered them into His ear while you held Him close - and He has, as always, responded with everything we needed. The list of the miracles you've obtained for us is a wonder to recall, from home sales and home purchases that allowed us to live in peace in exile, to the infinitely greater graces of beautiful deaths in union with the Church . . . and in between, on some level of combined earthly and heavenly bliss: marriages in the heart of the Church, children loaned to us to bring up for God's glory, perseverance in receiving the sacraments and loving Christ and the Church, cures that bring health and joy back into our homes, and jobs that give us dignity and allow us to work for the salvation of souls. 

Thank you, good St. Joseph! Thank you for every grace you've obtained for us: those we've begged for and those you gave us unasked; those we remember, and those we never even noticed, but which, like every good father, you anticipated and gave us before we even knew we needed them.

We come to you once again, grateful and yet still in need. Please scoop us up into your strong arms that so wonderfully held little Jesus and protected Him. Protect us too, and obtain for us from dear Jesus all the miracles we so urgently need: the healings, the peace, the work, the play, the home sales and home purchases, but most of all the life of joyful, peaceful conversation and intimacy with Jesus and Mary that you lived on earth and now live with them forever in Heaven.

St. Francis de Sales, on my mind because of his wonderful advice on that holy card, said some very exciting things about St. Joseph. The Oblates of St. Francis de Sales tell us on their website:

In May of 1621, Pope Gregory XV had ordered that the March 19 feast of St. Joseph henceforth be observed by the universal Church. On March 19, 1622, the first time this feast was observed by the whole Church, Francis preached an important sermon on the virtues of St. Joseph to the Visitation Sisters in Annecy.
Towards the end of this profoundly beautiful sermon, Francis added: 

“What more remains for us to say now, except that we cannot doubt at all that this glorious saint has great influence in heaven with Him who so favored him as to raise him there in body and soul . . . for how could He who had been so obedient to him all through his life, have refused this grace to St. Joseph?” (pages 124-25 of Oblate Father Joseph F. Chorpenning’s Sermon Texts on Saint Joseph by Francis de Sales: Toronto, Peregrina Publishing, 2000)
St. Joseph does not utter a single word in Scripture. But, in this same sermon Francis imagines that the silent Joseph now addresses the newly risen Jesus in these words: 

“My Lord, remember, if it please You, that when You came from heaven to earth, I received You into my house, into my family, and, as soon as You were born, I received You into my arms. Now that You are returning to heaven, take me with You; I received You into my family, receive me now into Yours . . . I have carried You in my arms, now carry me upon Yours; and, as I took care to nourish and guide You during the course of Your mortal life, take care of me and lead me into life eternal” (page 125).


Francis then concludes:

“How can we doubt that Our Lord caused to rise with Him to heaven in body and soul the glorious St. Joseph . . . St. Joseph, then, is in heaven in body and soul, there is no doubt” (page 125).

+  +  +

What a magnificent picture we see with the help of the gentle and wise St. Francis de Sales: in Heaven today, while most await the return of their bodies at the end of time, there is a holy family, the Holy Family, already reunited with their bodies as well as with each other. How wonderful to be able to imagine them and know that while our imagination may miss out on the vibrancy of the colors of their clothes or the glory with which Jesus's wounds sparkle and shine or the beauty of Our Lady's face, but we do not err in imagining them together and in their glorified bodies!

May St. Joseph, in the heart of the Holy Family, shower you with Therese's roses today. We have no doubt that little Therese and that imp Marcel have snuck their way into the midst of this happy family, even if our little sister and brother have no bodies at this juncture! As the Christmas carol put on our lips a few short months ago, "Oh that we were there! Oh that we were there!" 

Meanwhile, let's not waste this great feast. Let's ASK FOR THE MOON - or some other, more practical miracles that have been commended to our prayers and we have possibly been praying for a long time. I'm sure today is the day for some of them, and I have proof that St. Joseph loves to surprise us by giving the very things we were ready to (finally) give up on.

No giving up!
Hope may not spring eternal, but by the grace of God may it spring throughout time until we reach eternity and have no more need of it. Then Love will be all in all, and for the nonce, let's do our best to trust Him who is that Love beyond telling.

Jesus, we trust in You!
Joseph, we trust in you too!
Mary, make sure St. Joseph and Jesus stop wrestling long enough to give us our wish list of miracles!

Draw me, we will run!

Yesterday and the day before I read the best advice about Confession that I've ever found, and after my first feelings of utter freedom and peace, I knew I had to share it with the whole world.

Thank you to Maura McKeegan, whose 2 part article on Catholic Exchange broke open the jar, and thank you to Caryll Houselander (author of The Reed of God and more) whose intimacy with Christ and compassion for timid souls led to her consoling understanding of this sacrament as an embrace of Our Lord. Enjoy!

Confession for the Anxious: Caryll Houselander’s Advice
by Maura Roan McKeegan

In the mid-20th century, a British woman went to Confession one day in a (not unusual for her) state of exhaustion and depression.

“What will help you,” the priest said to her in the confessional, “will be a book by Caryll Houselander called This War is the Passion. You probably won’t understand all of it, but read such-and-such pages.”

Unbeknownst to him, the woman on the other side of the screen was Caryll Houselander herself.

“What did you do?” asked her friend Frank Sheed, whose wife, Maisie Ward, tells the story in her book Caryll Houselander: Divine Eccentric.

“Read it, of course,” Caryll answered. “I always do what I’m told in confession.”

By that time, Caryll’s fame as a spiritual writer had perpetuated an endless stream of people flocking to her for help and advice. It was her gift for easing anxious minds that spurred the priest to recommend her own book to her that day in the confessional. Her profound insight came the hard way, earned through a lifetime of struggling with what she called “neurosis,” an illness that gave her tremendous empathy and understanding for people who, like her, also suffered from scruples, anxiety, depression, and other related symptoms.

Because she had experienced their struggles firsthand, Caryll was able to counsel the scrupulous and anxious with remarkable results. Even doctors sent their patients to her, and she helped to heal them, though she had no medical training at all.

One subject Caryll often discussed with people who suffered from anxiety was how to approach Confession. The sacrament of Penance, she observed, often induced fear in the hearts of timid and anxious souls. But this type of fear is contrary to the true nature of the sacrament, which is meant to draw us closer to God in love, not drive us away from Him in trepidation or self-flagellation.

“Remember Confession, like Communion, is first of all a contact, a loving embrace with Our Lord,” she writes to a friend in The Letters of Caryll Houselander.

“Penance is a form of Communion, a means of union with Christ—that above all else,” she writes to another friend.

An anxious person will often obsess over the state of his own soul, Caryll notes. In Guilt (the book Maisie Ward aptly called Caryll’s “most important work”), she describes what Confession might be like for a woman suffering from anxiety:

She will doubt the sincerity of her contrition because she does not think that she feels sorry, or sorry enough, or sorry for the right reason. She will doubt the sincerity of her purpose of amendment because she thinks it likely that in spite of her good intentions she may sin again. The examination of conscience, her greatest bugbear of all, will present insurmountable difficulties. She will either think that she has not done anything sinful, or that everything she has done is sinful, or that she has forgotten what she has done that is sinful. If she ever reaches a decision about what she has or has not done, she will proceed to the torment of trying to assess the gravity of the sin, to decide whether it is mortal, venial, deliberate, sin at all, or imperfection. When she has at last made her confession she will fall into fresh anxiety about how she made it, whether she forgot, left out or misrepresented something, even whether the priest understood what she said. Next she will bring to the saying of the act of contrition, and her penance, the same anxiety which she does at home to whether she has switched off the electric light or not. She will worry about whether she really remembers what penance she was told to say.

All these difficulties come from concentrating on self instead of on God, and not really believing in the goodness of God.

The tendency to overthink and overanalyze one’s own sinfulness, Caryll points out, is often not a willful choice on the part of the penitent. It is a psychological symptom that might stem from childhood experiences, genetic predisposition, or any number of influences outside of the person’s control. Whatever the cause, though, reflecting on the true nature of the sacrament of Penance will help to ease the anxious mind.

When we think too much about our sins, we lose sight of the true meaning of the sacrament: the mercy and forgiveness of God. It’s about His love, not our failure. Ruminating over our own sins keeps our eyes fixed on ourselves. The remedy is to turn one’s thoughts to God’s goodness instead.

"I think that Confession must be a very real trial to anyone as sensitive as you are,” Caryll Houselander writes in a letter to a teenage girl struggling with nervous illness after a difficult childhood. “No one likes it; the toughest old Catholics of my acquaintance get a sort of squiggle in their insides even over the most paltry recitation of their sins, and nearly all have been through searching periods of nervous scruples which leave a miserable association of ideas.”

Caryll’s own lifelong battle with nervous illness made her particularly sensitive to the needs of others who suffered the same symptoms, and she understood with tremendous empathy the plight of those plagued by anxiety about the sacrament of Penance. In her writings, Caryll advises the following measures for anxious people to consider when approaching Confession:

1. Keep the examination of conscience short.

Caryll advises beginning with a brief prayer to the Holy Spirit to bring to mind what is most important to confess—“Let me make a good confession”—and then limiting the examination of conscience to two minutes.

“Confess only what comes to mind in those two minutes,” she writes.

Once the penitent has prayed to the Holy Spirit for light, a few minutes is all it takes to recall the sins that are most important to confess.

Not long ago, I came across an article in which a priest advised beginning the examination of conscience the night before Confession. Though well-intentioned, this kind of advice makes the sacrament of Penance a more difficult process than it needs to be, especially for anxious souls. Long hours spent examining one’s conscience will not help the anxious penitent. Overcomplicated preparations only increase stress. The sacrament should be simple and easy, so as not to “break a bruised reed” (Mt. 12:20).

“We are so apt to forget that it is Christ who does the most important things in the sacrament, and what He asks of us, to make Him able to do His part, is a very small minimum,” Caryll writes.

2. Remember that repentance is an act of the will, not a feeling.

To an anxious person worried that he doesn’t feel sorry enough, Caryll would answer that contrition is not a feeling but an act of the will.

“Sorrow for sin is just the will to be sorry, proved by receiving the sacrament of penance,” she writes to a friend. All God asks is that we should want to be sorry, because we want to be closer to Him.

“Going to confession is an act of love for God,” she explains in Guilt. “Like all love it is an act of will. Feeling may or may not enter into it.”

3. Avoid dwelling on venial sins, and don’t magnify imperfections.

Caryll emphasizes the fact that it is not necessary (or even possible) to confess every venial sin.
“Sometimes scrupulous people are well advised to confess only one sin,” she writes. At least, sticking to a small number rather than an exhaustive list is advisable. “All you forget or are unsure of is forgiven anyway; you are not obliged to confess any but mortal sin. So long as you confess something, the rest is forgiven with it.”

To a young woman suffering from crippling anxiety, she writes:
You are not bound to confess venial sins at all, even if you remember them at the time, and you are almost bound—in fact, really bound—not to work up and magnify imperfections “to be on the safe side.” Anyway, that would not make you safe—far from it. It would blind you to God’s loving desire to forgive you and take you closer to His heart. Only one thing ever makes you safe—putting your trust in God.

4. Don’t be afraid of God.

Just as the father of the prodigal son in the Gospel was deeply moved just to see his son returning to him, God the Father is deeply moved just to see His children coming back to Him in confession.
It would be a mistake, Caryll says, to believe that God is waiting to catch us in some failure.
“He is there with open arms to take us to His heart, and He makes it as easy as possible for us to come,” she writes. “He isn’t there rubbing His hands and saying, ‘Ha! X forgot something! I’ll jump on her for that!’”

“The devil loves to distract from God’s love and mercy by worry about sin,” she continues. “The only cure for this worry is to concentrate not on self-perfection but on the love and tenderness of God.”

5. Let Confession be easy and simple.

To make it as “easy as possible for us to come,” the Church, in Her wisdom, has ensured that the sacrament is both simple and accessible in its requirements.

“The whole process of going to Confession, which is a quick and simple process if it is rightly used, is ordered and controlled by the wise and gentle discipline of the Church,” Caryll writes in Guilt.
There are many who complain of the . . . almost extreme measures used by the Church to make it easy for the weakest. For example, that any words expressing sorrow suffice for the act of contrition, that venial sins need not be confessed at all, that forgotten sins are included in the forgiveness anyway, that it practically never happens that a confession made in good will need be, or should be, repeated.

How strange it is, many decide, to surround a sacrament with so many little rules. But it is sufficient to spend one hour with the anxious or over-scrupulous person, to realize that these are the rulings of divine mercy. They are the balm poured into the wounds, the calm and rest insisted upon by the divine Physician.

6. If you aren’t sure if it’s a mortal sin, it’s not a mortal sin.

I once had a conversation with a mother who was in great agony over a sick child. So distraught was she that, in her exhausted mind, she began to worry that she was in a state of mortal sin without knowing it.

Since one of the conditions for mortal sin is full knowledge, this poor mother was clearly not in mortal sin; but sadly, her suffering was heightened by this needless fear.

“You will never be, never could be, in any doubt about mortal sin,” Caryll assures a friend in one of her letters. “If there is doubt there is no mortal sin. That is certain.”

7. Do not re-confess sins or redo penances.

Confess once and only once, and then leave it all behind. If the same sin happens again later, it can be brought to the next confession, but there is no need to re-confess what has already been forgiven.
Likewise, say the penance once and only once, no matter how distracted you may feel while doing it.
I would also add from personal experience that it helps to know that penitents can ask for a different penance if the penance given feels too burdensome or vague. For example, if the penance is to “focus extra hard while you say a chaplet” (this type of mental exertion is highly stressful, if not impossible, for someone who struggles with anxiety and attention deficits) or “be extra nice to your family” (how do we know when the penance is completed?), the penitent is free to ask the priest for a different penance.

8. Be gentle with yourself in making resolutions.

Making sweeping resolutions to overcome sins of weakness through sheer will power often leads to discouragement when those resolutions fail and the same sins prevail or even increase. Instead, Caryll recommends a gentler form of retraining.

“Repetition of ‘I will’ or ‘I will not’ is again a concentration on self,” she writes in Guilt. “Such acts of will become a strain, and tiring too; and for nervous people fatigue is an added danger.” She continues:

It is advisable not to focus upon [the sweeping promise never to sin again] but to stick simply to the purpose of amendment, pray that one may not sin again, and concentrate upon some way of avoiding some one sin. It may be a negative way—to give up a place where the temptation always lurks, or the company that provokes it; or it may be a resolution of humility that will help—for example, the irritable could decide to take more sleep, the censorious to make fewer voluntary acts of self-denial.

Likewise, one should not expect a sudden transformation; the change that takes place in a soul might not be visible, and will likely happen slowly.

“Christ grew secretly, imperceptibly, in Mary, and He grows secretly in us,” Caryll writes.

9. Remember that the heart of the sacrament is love.

In the end, the heart of Caryll’s message is the heart of the sacrament itself: the mercy of God, which is infinitely greater than our sins. Caryll encourages anxious penitents to go regularly to Confession, but not to worry about it at all, as it is an occasion for joy, not fear.

The Father who longs more for the return of the lost child than does the child himself, who makes the way back as easy as he can and comes halfway to meet the child . . . asks not for a microscopic, dreary history of his misdeeds, or for a trembling, broken expression of sorrow—but only for an expression of the child’s love and trust in His love.

“To imagine, once you’ve done your best, that God isn’t satisfied, is an insult to God,” she says. “He is overjoyed, and so should you be.”

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For many years I have preferred this particular Act of Contrition (and my reasons for preferring it are in perfect accord with #8 above):

O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because of thy just punishment, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love.
I firmly resolve with the help of Thy grace to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen.

*  *  *

Draw me, we will run!