My path to God, #3, sins and devils

At age seven, my world changed. 

On Sundays, much to my regret, 

I could no longer play with the younger children outside,

I had to attend Mass. 

It was in Latin, the priest saying it with his back turned to us.

My mother gave me a booklet explaining the different parts of it.

I knew one part only, the part where the altar boy rang the bells.

First set of bells, Jesus is coming, second set, Jesus is closer, 

At the third set, Jesus is at the altar and we all bent our heads.

One day, curious, I lifted my head to see if I could see Jesus.

I did not see anything but felt my mother's hand pushing my head down.

I learned about sins too.

At seven, we are capable of sinning.

Now if we had died before the age of seven, we would be angels in heaven.

I thought that would be nice but did not want to die.

And, I could no longer use some of the colorful language I learned from my playmates.

"Do you know what 'tulang' means?" my mother asked me.

"Angry," I responded.

"No, it is a bad word," my mother told me, "It is a sin to use that word."

That word referred to some sexual parts. 

Then there is the devil.

My mother told us, angels are on our right hand side, devils on the left.

If we commit sins, it is the devil inciting us to do it.

That if we use the branch of the palm blessed from Palm Sunday and hit it, it will cry out.

I tried it one day.

One hand reached out to steal some coins from my mother,

the other hand held a branch of palm ready to strike at my left hand 

where the devil would be.

I got ready to hit out at the devil but lost my nerve and did not do it. 

I did not want to hear the devil crying out.

That would be too scary.

They looked hideous, writhing distorted figures, burning eternally in hell.

Hell, heaven, purgatory, limbo. Those were all drummed into our young minds.

Years later, reading the documents of Vatican Second, it came to me.

enforcing the principle of actions from the outside 

does not work as effectively as from the inside.

Threatening us with fires of hell or purgatory was never that effective.

More effective would have been teaching us rightness of action 

stemming from the inside.

Inculcating rightness or wrongness of action born from conscience.