Remember, God is not surprised by your faults. He knew about them before you did—and He loves you anyway!

I am not fit for this office and never should have been here.

This is God's holiness and justice revealed in Jesus Christ: that God justifies, accepts, and loves sinners despite their unworthiness.

The enemy has always had a great way of trying to keep each of us tied to past sin, weighing us down with sorrow or pain and regret. Feeling heavy under the weight of knowing you made stupid mistakes will, if you allow it, cripple you for life. We have all fallen short. There is no one on earth who has not made mistakes. But walking in the miracle of forgiveness gives God much glory. The

The heart of the Father is always to put us back on track, a little wiser, and ever grateful for another chance.

Therefore, in the presence of my dear family, in the presence of my Church, and in the presence of the imagined communion of my readers, I have told this story in the hope of forgiveness, and as a promise.

The shame I feel as a Catholic Christian, aware in detail of the ways that the Church sanctified the hatred of Jews, not only betraying Jesus but tilling the soil out of which would come the worst crime in history, is shame not only at what my people did, but at what I can now admit I might well have done myself.

When Satan tries to remind us of our past (failures and sins), we're to remind him of his future (ultimate destruction).

The real response to the problem of human sin must always be that I cannot do anything to erase it.

Unforgiveness, resentment, and bitterness can give an excuse for demonic activity to remain in a life. With a cleansed heart, and with confession and forgiveness, a person can be set free from even the most insidious intrusion.

Too often, we think of sin as self-contained, point-in-time choices with no interconnection or momentum. But sin refuses to remain contained in the moment it is conceived.

Repentance is shockingly beautiful when we see it not as "I sinned again, I need to repent," but as "I sinned against my God again, but He is calling me back so He can lavish me with His love and forgiveness.