Sexual Addiction: A Cure

Mother Silouana (Vlad) talks about a common addiction among young people, the sexual addiction. There is a cure, there is a healer, there is God, Who heals us through regular confession and patience.

Contemporary Moral Issues Series
Subtitles: English, Romanian
Video source: https://doxologia.ro/evenimente/video-conferinta-iubirea-dependenta-emotionala-cum-le-deosebim-sustinuta-de-monahia

Mother Silouana:

“Love, at the time of falling in love, in this openness to the other person’s mystery, ends in a closing in the pleasure that is asked by curiosity, sometimes even forcedwith threats, like: “otherwise we break up”, and so on. So, this is the hardest addiction for you, for today’s youth, the addiction for sexual pleasure.

There is a cure, there is a healer, there is God, Who heals us… By going often to confession, that bath full of shame that you live not at the first confession, where it comes very natural, but at the second, tenth, twentieth, again, again and again… By having patience and by understanding that the wound is slow in healing and… 

There are young people who write to me that they despair: “Why doesn’t God help me? I refrained myself, I avoided it for so many months, then again I fell… Why doesn’t God help me?” And then I asked Him, “Lord, why don’t You help them? What is happening here?” And I have found in the writings of a Holy Father that sometimes He lets us fall into a passion to which we are addicted, in order for us to get rid of another subtle passion: pride, vainglory… in order to teach us not to judge the others. Having suffered humiliation through that fall we now hate the sin, this is important, to hate this sin, it is not so important that you do not do it anymore, but it is important that you call it a sin and you hate it and cry to God: “Lord, save me!” 

Because that fall is for you, as the Holy Fathers say, a martyrdom of conscience.And only hating the sin helps you to know your weakness, because otherwise, if you get rid of it quickly, you will say: “Oh, how great I am… I have said Jesus Prayer for 200 times, I have performed 30 prostrations and I do not sin anymore!” And you already have “wings” and look at the stupid people over there… And then you go back to the bottom and take it all over again until you realize that your weakness is cosmic, it’s a big one… and then you will feel the mercy of God and a miracle happens, the first step in the true love starts: mercy for all the sinners.”

Source: http://otelders.org/contemporary-moral-issues-cmi/a-cure-for-sexual-addiction-mother-silouana/