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Study of Text, C 13: X. Release from Guilt, P 2. 12-13-16

X. Release from Guilt, P 2

2 Insane ideas have no real relationships, for that is why they are insane. No real relationship can rest on guilt, or even hold one spot of it to mar its purity. For all relationships that guilt has touched are used but to avoid the person and the guilt. What strange relationships you have made for this strange purpose! And you forgot that real relationships are holy, and cannot be used by you at all. They are used only by the Holy Spirit, and it is that which makes them pure. If you displace your guilt upon them, the Holy Spirit cannot use them. For, by pre-empting for your own ends what you should have given Him, He cannot use it for your release. No one who would unite in any way with anyone for his individual salvation will find it in that strange relationship. It is not shared, and so it is not real.

Journal
When I was growing up I was very much influenced by my mom’s relationship with my father. This isn’t unusual, of course, but how this worked for me is so perfect to help me understand what Jesus is telling us in this paragraph. My mom loved my dad, but she also hated him. He didn’t live up to what she expected of him. He was an alcoholic and when drunk was violent. He didn’t always provide for us the way she thought a man should, and I think that was really upsetting to her. She was very prideful when it came to being able to take care of yourself financially, and she was always concerned about what others would think of us.

When I got old enough to date, she started telling me what kind of man to marry. She talked all the time about marrying someone who would take care of me, who would provide a good living. She said I should marry a doctor or an engineer because someone in that profession would always make enough money. Since at that time in my life I was very rebellious and usually did the opposite of what I was told, you would think I would have ignored this. But I guess all those years of being influenced by mom’s fear of lack added up. I did actually marry an engineer, the first guy I knew who met my mom’s criteria for a safe marriage.

“No one who would unite in any way with anyone for his individual salvation will find it in that strange relationship.”

That was my first husband. I married him for my own individual salvation. My mom believed that salvation lay in being taken care of and I believed her, so I did the only reasonable thing I could do considering my beliefs. Not that I didn’t like and love this man, but the relationship was built on a false foundation. I didn’t understand any of this at the time or understand my own motives enough to even question my choices. I don’t blame myself or my mom. We were both doing the best we could with what we had to work with at the time.

It is a good learning situation, though. Whether I had a clear understanding of the situation or not, there would have certainly been guilt. We cannot take what we think the other person has without feeling guilt for it. He had what I thought I needed and I took it and in my mind offered little in return. I was not consciously aware of this feeling, but I was uneasy in the relationship because some part of my mind believed I was a thief and I felt guilty for it. This also left me feeling more unworthy than I was going into the relationship. Though I was a very religious person at the time, it never occurred to me to turn the relationship over to God. I guess I missed Catechism the day they talked about that.

Perhaps if we had been older and more mature we might have made the relationship last longer, maybe even long enough for us to gain some wisdom. The love was there but the spiritual foundation was not. I displaced my guilt onto this relationship. I began to see him as the cause of my discontent. At that time in my life I could not have taken anymore blame, nor did I have the spiritual understanding to know the difference between blame and responsibility. So like most of us do a lot of the time, I refused to look too closely at myself and simply blamed him.

I think nearly all relationships begin as special relationships in which we seek to get our perceived needs met. It is what we know in this world of separate beings with individual needs. But if we are spiritually wise, we can use those relationships to learn differently. We can give the relationship to the Holy Spirit and use all the elements of it, the challenges that are going to rise in any relationship, to let Him heal our minds. It is in this way that the Holy Spirit transforms the special relationship into a holy relationship. If we keep our guilt they never develop into real relationships, but if we give the guilt to the Holy Spirit for purification, we can know what relationships are meant to be.

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