French l Spanish

In our group, let us entrust our guilt or our regrets, which we may have carried for quite some time within us. Let us free ourselves from this weight.

God is good. God is love. God is not a judge. Whatever you have done, whatever memories you may have, erase your past.

Guilt is often hidden deep within ourselves. There are very simple examples of guilt. For example, as a child, one may have made mistakes. A group of children may realize that one of them has fractured a leg or an arm. And for whatever reasons, the children will not tell; they don't tell the parents. This happens every day; I heard it again last night. The children keep it to themselves. It isn't serious; the child got a cast, the children have lied, like all children of the world, but they keep it deep within themselves.

We become an adult, a father or a mother, but with thousands of more feelings of all kinds of guilt. Who has not lied in his life? Who hasn't let someone down? Who has not been dishonest? We are all dishonest. What is honesty? One could speak volumes. Looking inward, we realize that we are all guilty of many things: a lack of generosity for example. How many times could we have welcomed someone? Yet we were too excited to read a good book or watch a game on TV. I could speak for anyone. So at that moment, we did not welcome this person who precisely came because she needed something from us.

For others, it was during a family meal and someone called a little late. He was alone, but too bad... And then we feel guilty. Why didn't we invite him? One more, one less, it does not really matter. So why did we leave him alone?

You see, these are insignificant details at first, but which will turn us into monsters. Because in fact all this guilt will accumulate within us and instead of making fertile soil, it will make manure which we cannot get rid of... We will create negativity in all of our thoughts, our actions and everything that life reveals to us. We will carry this heavy weight around with us. As soon as we find ourselves before an event that reminds us of our sins, hence our guilt, we will see the same problem in the other person. The person will explain to us, "You know, it's terrible, I cheated on my wife, it's awful. I'm a bastard, you know..." We will hear this but since we did the same thing, and yet never talked about it, we will feel the weight of guilt. We listen to the other person but the weight is still there. We will try to help the other person, but who will listen to us? Whom will we tell? This is how we manage to get depressed. Our guilt leads us from a depressed state to a depression, and then to alcohol and drugs.

However, realize that all the weight that we carry around within us is what separates us from God. For Satan knows us well: he knows our weaknesses, he knows our organization but he also knows our disorganization; he knows our possibilities and our impossibilities to face certain things, or to deal with others. He will play on all facets of our guilt. So the little boy, who had pushed the little girl into the nettles, is this man, now a grandfather, and who still carries this deep within himself. He too wanted to take the little 14-year old girl by force when he was 17: guilt! He too hit someone on the subway one day when he was angry, etc: guilt! This man came to maturity in his life but has never let go of any of that. It's nothing, but it's huge! It's nothing if someone tells him it's nothing. But how could anyone tell him that it's nothing if no one knows what he did? He will have to carry his weight and burden for all of his existence, until he dies. And that is why, in the past, confessions before death were important because priests said: "If you have something to say, free yourself." And then he freed his conscience, often from little things dating back 30, 40, 50 years, but which had become a mountain in the mind of the man who suffers. Because it is shadow that prevents happiness. This weight on man makes joy for Satan, who forever strives to make dust grow disproportionately into mountains. Satan constantly inflates our guilt so that we may never know happiness. Since he cannot create anything, Satan strives to destroy us and anything that has been created.

It is for us, who know all this, to tell others that you can never go wrong by saying this: "God is good, God is love, God is not a judge. Whatever you have done, whatever memories you may have, erase your past." This is why it is so important that, at Cros, people know they have been set free, that they are cleansed. Because the decisive point in the evolution of a man is when he knows that he carries nothing more, that he has been freed of everything, cleansed of everything, washed of everything: he offered it all up to God and God has forgiven him everything. If man does not know that he is forgiven, he is unable to live and to survive. If man knows that he is loved and forgiven, then all the strength is returned to him and he can fight all opponents in order to achieve what he wants. We must understand and feel that every man and every woman you see in the street around you, anyone, grandmother, mother, everyone... everyone is guilty and they all feel guilty.

So guilt is a gangrene for man, because we cannot be free unless we offer all of our past up to God. And that is why we understand Christ's parable: "If you have problems, if you have burdens, give me your burdens, I will carry them for you." Because the Lord knows how small man is and how heavy the burden feels for us, for each one of us. Christ is able to carry it because He transforms it. God knows that our weaknesses and our guilt seem huge to us, but they make no sense to Him; yet nobody knows this. A man walks with a burden that weighs him down more every day. This is exactly why a man can only find happiness if he has the possibility to alleviate this burden, to free himself of all the guilt that has sunk to inner depths, and is heavy.

Besides, you very well notice that when we harmonise people, when we are in contact with patients that speak to us for the first time, you yourselves have heard it, we are astonished to hear people say odd things, amazing things, things that have no meaning for us, "You know my cousin, it's terrible, I signed a deed, you know, I did not think I would do any harm, I signed something but I did not know I was dispossessing her..." Things that they cannot get rid of; these people can sometimes be over 70 years old when they can finally talk about it.

Of course one makes mistakes, who doesn't? This is why we must strive to set free, set free and ensure that guilty people feel loved by God, loved as they are, from the moment they try to transform themselves, and therefore, try to be better.