Regret vs. Repentance
The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
Ascension
4.9 • 7.7K Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2020
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Fr. Mike talks about how to regret things we’ve done without staying stuck in the past.
Have you ever heard the saying “don’t regret the past, because it’s made you into the person you are today?” Maybe you’ve heard something similar to that, and while there’s truth to this saying, there’s also something that we as Christians should be aware of. Sometimes we make mistakes. We do things we wished we hadn’t. Sometimes, we hurt those we love in the process.
We never want to live in the past—burdened by the mistakes we’ve made—but it’s safe to say that all of us have done things that didn’t make us the people God wants us to be.
There’s a difference between regret and repentance, and it can be best seen when comparing St. Peter to Judas. Both men sinned gravely against the Lord: Peter denying him during the time of his Passion and Judas delivered him to crucifixion. The difference is, where Peter regretted his sins and repented, Judas let his sin consume him.
It’s okay to regret the things we’ve done in the past that took us away from the path of God, but we can’t dwell in this regret. Instead, we have to do something about it. We have to repent. Repentance is what gives us the strength to forgive ourselves and continue striving for the kingdom of Heaven. When we repent, we surrender ourselves and our mistakes to the Lord, and then he can use those mistakes to glorify our lives. God can use everything—even our worst sins—for our path towards eternity. Nothing given to God is ever wasted.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's worth pausing and noting that, you know, there are decisions that I have made that I have made in my own life that |
| 0:07.7 | have made me a worse person. |
| 0:18.2 | Hi, my name is Fratamik Schmidt and this is a sense of resistance. So sometimes slogans, sometimes slogans have a degree of truth to them, |
| 0:24.4 | but sometimes they also need to be taken with a grain of salt. Here's one of them. |
| 0:28.0 | I've heard people say this so many times. Here's a line, something like this. |
| 0:32.1 | Never regret any choices you've made because they've fashioned you into the person that you are today. |
| 0:40.1 | Something like that, right? Never regret your past because it has shaped you into the person you are right now. |
| 0:45.8 | And okay, I get it. What's trying to be said there is something that I think is true. |
| 0:50.8 | We're going to come back to in a bit and that thing is God can use it all, right? |
| 0:56.0 | That there is a truth and I think it's a truth. I can't live in regret. I can't live in the past. |
| 1:02.0 | And yes, totally. I need to move forward. 100%. I want to agree with that. |
| 1:07.0 | But at the same time, the never regret part is like, okay, what do you mean by regret? |
| 1:11.8 | Because again, there's a difference between regretting and then living there. |
| 1:16.8 | Like in that sense of like, oh my gosh, this decision I made, this thing had happened to me, |
| 1:20.8 | this thing I didn't do or did do. Like, I'm going to live back there and I'm not going to move forward. |
| 1:25.0 | That would be bad, right? Don't live in that kind of regret. |
| 1:27.6 | But what if I regret it because I've learned from it? Like, I've grown from it. |
| 1:31.4 | I mean, because the fact of the matter is, let's go back to this kind of this phrase that people have said. |
| 1:35.0 | Maybe you've said it. Maybe you've seen it on Pinterest or somewhere like this, |
| 1:38.7 | where you know, never regret anything that has happened in your life. |
| 1:41.5 | Never regret any choice you've made because it's created you into the person you are today. |
| 1:45.2 | It's shaped you into the person you are today. |
... |
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