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[Through
much of my life] I was convinced (and I still struggle with this issue)
that I could not turn to God. After all, isn’t it a teaching of the
Church that if one isn’t in the state of grace, then one’s prayers
are worthless (except the prayers asking for the grace of repentance)? I
could not pray for my family when they were in terrible pain, and that was
and is a helpless and horribly guilty feeling. I believed I could not go
to confession, I was not God’s friend, so basically I couldn’t
ask for anything from Him until I was first able to go to confession. That
is a vicious trap: BECAUSE I could not ask God to help me and my family in
their sufferings, I felt even more trapped in sin/guilt/regret/self-hatred.
I still struggle with this.
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 hen you are in a state of grace,
you are in a state of mind and heart to receive the graces God continuously
pours out upon all of his creation. If you are not in a state of
grace—that is, when you are living in
sin—you cut yourself off from accepting God’s
graces. God doesn’t stop his graces because of your
disobedience; you reject those graces
through your own disobedience. In her Spiritual Dialogue, Saint Catherine
of Genoa expressed this very elegantly:
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 This Soul also beheld a
certain ray of love issuing from that divine fountain, and darting towards
man with a force as if to annihilate him; and she saw that when it found
impediments, then, if it were possible for God to feel pain, he would suffer
the greatest of all grief. This ray aimed only to penetrate the soul, and
it was her own fault if she were not penetrated by it, for the ray surrounded
her on all sides, seeking entrance; but the soul, blinded by
self-love, did not perceive it. |
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—Saint Catherine of Genoa
Spiritual Dialogue, First Part, Chapter VIII |
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Now, the Sacraments—the
visible manifestations of God’s grace—are administered through
the Church, and, being tangible things, they are protected with tangible
methods. Thus the Church denies them to persons not in a state of grace.
But aside from the Sacraments, your ability to receive and benefit from
God’s grace is purely between you and God.
Consider, for example, that prayer
has several aspects: praise (recognition
of God not so much because of what he does for us but simply because he
is), adoration (acknowledging
our helplessness and
humility in the presence of God’s glory),
thanksgiving (simple gratitude for
Christ’s work of salvation and its personal
effects on us), intercession (pleading
for the welfare of others), and
petition (expressing our hope and desire
in all things that “thy Kingdom come”).
Notice that for intercession
and petition, much depends upon the persistence of the prayer (see The
Parable of the Persistent Widow, Luke 18:1-8).
As for the first three of these
aspects, they do not, in essence, depend strictly on our own state of mind;
in efficacy, however, they do depend on us. For example, trying to praise
God while you’re in a state of sin is like trying to give a compliment
to someone against whom you secretly hold a grudge—you can say the words,
but your state of mind will dull the effect.
Still, all is not lost. Why do
you think the Catholic Church speaks about the Communion of the Saints?
If we ourselves are lacking, we can call upon the Saints for their intercession
to pray on our behalf. And the greatest saint of all—especially in regard
to assisting sinners—is the Blessed Virgin, the Refuge of Sinners. In
the Hail Mary we ask her every
day—well, actually, for the devout it’s literally dozens of times
a day—“pray for us sinners.”
Not only can we beg the Blessed
Virgin to carry our prayers for others to her Son—even if we ourselves
are not completely pure—but also we hope that our prayers in her honor,
such as the Rosary, will somehow crack open our
own hardened hearts to let in a tiny ray of divine grace that can then take
root and start to grow within us.
 Both
Saint Dominic and Saint Louis Marie de Montfort
rescued large parts of Europe from
heresy with the Rosary.
 Thus anyone who prays the Rosary devoutly and faithfully
must of necessity be led to greater and greater purity of heart. How can
anyone who venerates the purity and humility and obedience of the Blessed
Virgin not learn perfect obedience under her guidance?
Keep in mind here that God will
not violate our free will, and so no divine action
can make us holy or stop us from sinning. But in our love for
the Blessed Virgin, and in our awe for her profound humility and obedience,
our free will can be softened by her motherly softness, and so we can be
slowly weaned from a state of sin to a state of grace,
from self-hatred to proper
self-love.
 All it takes, then, is that
you consecrate yourself to the Blessed
Virgin.[1]
As long as you know that you are now committing some sins, even if you cannot
now see the full depth of them, no matter how disgusted you feel with yourself,
no matter how much you doubt your ability to change, just throw yourself
at her feet. See her as the Mother of
Mercy who seeks always The Divine Mercy of
her Son and follow her instructions. Slowly you will reject your own
desire for sin, and your eyes will be opened to
more and more of your sins—things that even now you think are not
sins—and you will grow, day by day, in your ability to receive God’s
grace.
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1. Complete instructions for the Consecration
to Jesus through Mary can be found in Saint Louis Marie de Montfort’s
book, True Devotion to the Blessed
Virgin.
  
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Let the weak sinful soul
have no fear to approach Me, for even if it had more sins than there are
grains in the world, all would be drowned in the unmeasurable depths of My
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