I feel like an atheist. God seems like a fairy tale. Yet I am faithful to my Rosary. But I am forcing the prayers by my will it's not happening unless I fight to pray. Almost like there is a blockage. I'm miserable spiritually. It's been like this for a month like a purification. But deep within there is still a wee small spark keeping the flame of faith alive. It seems like a contradiction. I am like an atheist with faith.
Praying for you, garabandal. It’s funny that you feel this way because it has not been reflected in your posts. Pray for perseverance. I know the desolations will be replaced by consolations soon. You have always been on the right track. Take courage Thanks for letting us know.
Impossible not to feel that way Bobby, especially when you look out the window at the big bad world as of late it looks like something out of a hollywood movie
That's good to know. That's a confirmation for me. I think the Lord is working within putting me through the washer so to speak and outwardly I appear normal lol. The inner purifications are really painful like a pruning but obviously needed. I doubt myself sometimes both as a person and as a believer. God works in mysterious ways.
I'm just going with the flow, if that helps. Mostly I don't think HARD on things. Can face reality (should -- to a point), then return to prayerful reveries. Go with the flow! Abandon yourself to the flow of Divine Grace -- it's there, even if you don't feel it.
So true John. Last two years of covid I lost my mum and dad declined rapidly especially his mental health. So there has been a lot of natural stress in my life. Now we appear on the brink. But I unite myself with the Lord in the garden of Gethsemane. That is the sorrowful mystery I can relate to the best.
This is off topic, John. But I seem to remember that you posted a dream about Malta. The Pope is scheduled to go to Malta April 2-3. Also the price of wheat is probably going up now. That was another aspect of what the Lord showed you.
People have used the statement that "seeing is believing" for the confirmation of a thing. I heard, and have used for some time now, that believing is seeing. When I wonder where God has gone I remind myself that if I just keep believing eventually I will see. And it WORKS. Every single time. Even if it is to only see God in something as simple as a child's smile or a dandelion for that matter. And as we Catholics have known for centuries, if we believe, we do see. Try it. Holding you in prayer.
I'm going to pray for you Bobby, God has a way of letting me know when I should pray for someone. God Bless.
Prayer is a bit like climbing a mountain. When we are going uphill the most and struggling is when we are accomplishing the most, climbing the quickest. In times when it was Darkest my Spiritual Director asked me to pray to the Holy Spirit for Light. It was great advice. No pain, no gain. I would be inclined to be far more worried about someone whose Spiritual Life was a bed of flowers rather than someone who felt like he had been hit on head with a baseball bat. I loved the comment of one Carmelite nun who said she had entered Carmel to Hang on the Cross. This was very insightful. It is when we feel that God is not there that He is there the most. As we die with Christ, so shall we Rise with Him.
Prayers for you. But also a word of encouragement! You must be on the right path because when you are on that path, the evil one hates it. So not surprising there are obstacles and challenges. And your response and witness here to your brother and sisters is a great example of faith - your still walking. Our job is to pray for you as you pray for us. and isn’t todays first reading from St. James a wonderful word for us… Beloved: Is anyone among you suffering? He should pray. Is anyone in good spirits? He should sing a song of praise. Is anyone among you sick? He should summon the presbyters of the Church, and they should pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up. If he has committed any sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful. Elijah was a man like us; yet he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain upon the land. Then Elijah prayed again, and the sky gave rain and the earth produced its fruit. My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you should stray from the truth and someone bring him back, he should know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
It is the same with the Devil. He doesn't bother people who don't bother him too much. Why would he? They're going to Hell anyway. He only bothers those who bother him.
You are experiencing the dark night of the soul. You might want to read John of the Cross . . .then you will understand. Just don't stop praying! That is what St.Teresa of Avila told her community!
When my mother was dying of cancer I asked her if all she was going through caused her to doubt the existence of God. She looked shocked that I could ask this question and said, 'Oh no it would be mad to think that there was no God!'. It was the shock in her voice and her face that impressed me most. It was if I suggested that the sun did not exist. I compared it to my own Faith which often seems to waver like a candle flame in a typhoon. But I think looking back on it and having time to think about it, my parents came from that kind of generation were Faith was solid and certain as the ground on which they walked. But those were simpler times. Our education and culture moved on so rapidly in Ireland. I think for Faith to survive it had to die and be reborn and it has not the shape and form in me as it had in them and their generation. That doesn't mean that my Faith is any less than my parents, but instead of being a great tree sunk in soil, mine tends to be like a little bird that flies in a great wind but keeps flapping its little wings and keeps right on flying. It is a Faith that is in a way constantly dying and being reborn in a deeper but different way. A Faith. not static like tree in the ground but blowing with the winds of growth. I think that is why so mnany of my generation in Ireland lost their Faith. They tried to be trees in the ground and the tree fell over in the wind, whereas they should have been like birds floating in the winds. Our Faith in order to survive needed to be a Mystical Faith rooted in deeper prayer, not a kind of orgnaisation , pure Parish type Faith. It is the same with our prayer life as we go forward. It needs constantly to die and be reborn. This is not an easy process, just as child birth is not an easy process , it can be very painful. In addition ot this demons are observing this process and chime in. But pain can be a Sign of Growth , not just disease. It is darkest just beforethe dawn. Before Easter and the Ressurection comes Gethsemane and Good Friday. This is the Cycle of Life, dying and rising, the cycle of Faith.
Pope Benedict described this very well when he was a young priest: When Father Joseph Ratzinger Predicted the Future of the Church (aleteia.org) When Father Joseph Ratzinger Predicted the Future of the Church Laying it out in a 1969 broadcast on German radio ... He didn’t pretend he could tell the future. No. He was much too wise for that. As a matter of fact, he tempered his initial remarks with this disclaimer: “Let us, therefore, be cautious in our prognostications. What St. Augustine said is still true: man is an abyss; what will rise out of these depths, no one can see in advance. And whoever believes that the Church is not only determined by the abyss that is man, but reaches down into the greater, infinite abyss that is God, will be the first to hesitate with his predictions, for this naïve desire to know for sure could only be the announcement of his own historical ineptitude.” But his era, brimming with existential danger, political cynicism and moral waywardness, hungered for an answer. The Catholic Church, a moral beacon in the turbulent waters of its time, had recently experienced certain changes of its own with adherents and dissenters alike wondering, “What will become of the Church in the future?” 10 Pithy and Potent Quotes from Pope Benedict And so, in a 1969 German radio broadcast, Father Joseph Ratzinger would offer his thoughtfully considered answer. Here are his concluding remarks, “The future of the Church can and will issue from those whose roots are deep and who live from the pure fullness of their faith. It will not issue from those who accommodate themselves merely to the passing moment or from those who merely criticize others and assume that they themselves are infallible measuring rods; nor will it issue from those who take the easier road, who sidestep the passion of faith, declaring false and obsolete, tyrannous and legalistic, all that makes demands upon men, that hurts them and compels them to sacrifice themselves. To put this more positively: The future of the Church, once again as always, will be reshaped by saints, by men, that is, whose minds probe deeper than the slogans of the day, who see more than others see, because their lives embrace a wider reality. Unselfishness, which makes men free, is attained only through the patience of small daily acts of self-denial. By this daily passion, which alone reveals to a man in how many ways he is enslaved by his own ego, by this daily passion and by it alone, a man’s eyes are slowly opened. He sees only to the extent that he has lived and suffered. If today we are scarcely able any longer to become aware of God, that is because we find it so easy to evade ourselves, to flee from the depths of our being by means of the narcotic of some pleasure or other. Thus our own interior depths remain closed to us. If it is true that a man can see only with his heart, then how blind we are! “How does all this affect the problem we are examining? It means that the big talk of those who prophesy a Church without God and without faith is all empty chatter. We have no need of a Church that celebrates the cult of action in political prayers. It is utterly superfluous. Therefore, it will destroy itself. What will remain is the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church that believes in the God who has become man and promises us life beyond death. The kind of priest who is no more than a social worker can be replaced by the psychotherapist and other specialists; but the priest who is no specialist, who does not stand on the [sidelines], watching the game, giving official advice, but in the name of God places himself at the disposal of man, who is beside them in their sorrows, in their joys, in their hope and in their fear, such a priest will certainly be needed in the future. “Let us go a step farther. From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly it will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion. Along-side this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly. But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize the sacraments as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship. “The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain — to the renewal of the nineteenth century. But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret. “And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. It may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but it will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death. The Catholic Church will survive in spite of men and women, not necessarily because of them. And yet, we still have our part to do. We must pray for and cultivate unselfishness, self-denial, faithfulness, Sacramental devotion and a life centered on Christ.
Oh Bobby you could be describing my last few months. Its a terrible wasteland. I say to myself "if its so bad now imagine what Lent will be like?" I too have wondered about blockages. Thats why I am going to try to unplug during Lent in case its my time on line (not the forum) that's doing this. I am resolved to check in here on Sundays. This will be a true fast for me. I will put you in my prayers today (I too force out my rosaries but I tell myself thats emotion not reason--fact is I say them) A thought just occurred to me. Are you getting spiritual backlash because of the book you are publishing?
