When is it alright to cease praying for our mistakes?

When is it alright to cease praying for our mistakes?

A general thought like that will become the very fodder which Satan’s angel is looking for.  It becomes the fuel that evil looks to make the heat of sin continue burning; but without the sinner recognizing what has entered his conscience.  

One must seek the virtue of fortitude (CCC 1805) to keep on fighting the temptations to fall back into the very weaknesses that brought him to this feeling of rejection; not from God, but from his own understanding that there is no way around the evil that has encompassed him.

Fortitude is the moral virtue that ensures firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good.  It strengthens the resolve to resist temptations and to overcome obstacles in the moral life.  The virtue of fortitude enables one to conquer fear, even fear of death, and to face trials and persecutions.  It disposes one even to renounce and sacrifice his life in defense of a just cause.  “The Lord is my strength and my song.”  (Ps 118).  “In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”  (CCC 1808).

“Blessed is the man who perseveres in temptation, for when he has been proved he will receive the crown of life that he promised to those who love him.”  (Jas 1: 12).

Behold, the hour is coming and has arrived when each of you will be scattered to his own home and you will leave me alone.  But I am not alone, because the Father is with me.  I have told you this so that you might have peace in me.  In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.”  (Jn 16: 32 - 33). 

The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it.  It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism.  It is in us the source of the work of sanctification: (CCC 1999).  Therefore if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.  All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself.  (cf 2 Cor 5: 17 - 18).

We can never give up on prayer, not in the lesser events that might plague our conscience believing that the tempter has won this battle.  Sin and reach for the rosary beads or the bible and refresh your mind that God is always with you and Christ destroyed sin on the Cross. 

 “Do not be afraid, I am the first and the last, the one who lives.  Once I was dead, but now I am alive forever and ever.  I hold the keys to death and the netherworld.”  (Rv 1: 18).

For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want.  Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.  So, then, I discover the principle that when I want to do right, evil is at hand.  For I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self, but I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.  Who will deliver me from this mortal body?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Therefore, I myself, with my mind, serve the law of God but, with my flesh,  the law of sin.  (Rom 7: 19 - 25).

Ralph B. Hathaway