What will we be like in the afterlife?
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- Main Category: Spirituality
edited by Gabriele Cantaluppi
If Hell, Purgatory and Paradise are not "places", but "states", where is the body of the Risen Christ if not in a place?
No one has been to the afterlife and come back to tell us what it is like, therefore, when we want to reconstruct that world, we must be very cautious and above all take into account that on this earth we are always conditioned by our ways of knowing the world that we live in. surrounds. Catholic theology has always maintained that to talk about God and supernatural realities we can only use "analogous" and not "univocal" language, that is, to put it more simply, we use images which, however, do not exhaust the whole of reality.
Words, feelings and thoughts for a cordial prayer
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- Main Category: Spirituality
edited by Gabriele Cantaluppi
Usually, while I drive to work, I pray mentally and I am used to doing the same at other times of the day too, perhaps when I am late getting to sleep in bed. What value does this prayer made only mentally have? Is it less effective than the vocal one?
Penance in confession
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- Main Category: Spirituality
edited by Gabriele Cantaluppi
In my last confession a priest, to whom I was confessing for the first time, did not assign me any penance. But I often receive, even from my regular confessor, so-called "generic" penances, such as "offer the effort you make to avoid falling into sin" or "try to live according to the instructions I have given you" or “a few more prayers”. It seems to me that there is a lot of arbitrariness. Is there a criterion according to which penance is assigned in confession?
John Paul II, in the Apostolic Exhortation "Reconciliatio et poenitentia", recalls that satisfaction, or penance as we call it, is the final act that crowns the sacrament of Reconciliation.
And it underlines three aspects of the works of penance imposed by the confessor.