A convert feeling lost and pulled in many directions

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love4mary

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I am a Latin Rite Catholic via conversion from atheism (Praise Be to God). I believe ALL that faith teaches because the Church teaches with the authority from God.

Now for my problem inwhich I am struggling with.

I feel an emptiness at Mass of late. Nothing stirs me, not the music (which has always been uplifting and spiritual) or the homilies or the readings. I went to a protestant service with a friend and loved the energy and the participation. I was moved to join in the singing and the preaching was not half bad. It was an uplifting and energy filled service that “recharged” my spiritual batteries (for lack of a better wayof explaining it). What was missing though was immense…I could NOT recieve my Lords Body Blood Soul and Divinity in Holy Communion.:crying:

Is it possible to have the best of both?..I so love the Liturgy and everything about the Holy Mass, but I also love the energy that I experienced at the protestant church. Is there a Catholic Church where I would get the Fullness of Christs teachings (which I believe can only be found in the Catholic Church) with the energy of the protestant church?

Me thinks a CATHOLIC “tent revival” may not be a bad thing:rolleyes: I live in the “bible belt” south, tent revivals are a big thing here.
 
Charismatic Catholics may have the kind of energy you’re looking for. Lifeteen Masses also tend to be high energy. You might check into whether either are available in your area.

At the same time, I have to say that maybe feeling a little out of it at Mass is not necessarily a bad thing. Your spiritual life isn’t always at a peak, it has ups and downs. How’s your prayer life in general? Is it only at Mass that you feel kind of empty or is it more widespread? Maybe you need something to recharge you in general, like a retreat.

I also must applaud you for not giving up when the Mass isn’t feeling fulfilling to you. It’s important to keep DOING (praying, going to Mass) even when you’re not FEELING prayerful or fulfilled. Eventually the “doing” and the “feeling” will get back in sync.
 
Thank you for your response SuscipeMedomine,

It seems only at Mass do I have these feelings. In part it was due to an exchange I had with my Mass Coordinator (he oversees all the Masses, I am a Sacrastin–he is my immeditate boss),he accused me of “Praying like a fundy” because at one Mass, I was so into praying that I had my hands only Slightly raised.

When I pray away from Mass, I am most always spiritually fed. I pray the Rosary daily and feel that that is when God speaks to my heart the most. I am energized when I study my faith and speak to others about my Catholic faith, its only at Mass do I feel this emptiness. This is in part to the fact that I believe that we should pray as a Community and not as a group of individuals.

Charismatic Masses are offered in my diocese but are to far away for me to attend, due mostly to the gas prices and the times they are offered. As a convert, I am eager to experience other types of Holy Masses, Charismatic as well as Traditional Latin Masses, I have even learned the Angelic Salutation (Hail Mary) and the Pater Noster (Our Father).👍

This will sound strange, but I “feel” more Catholic Away from Church then I do In Church on Sunday morning.

I will always attend Holy Mass (God willing), but for me there just seems to be something missing. When I try and talk about the faith at Church, I will hear from others that “My faith is a personal thing” and so they do not want to dialog. Bible Study (I worked almost a year to get it into my parish) was a failed endever, 14 or less showed in a parish where 650 attend every Sunday for Mass. The next year, bible study was not even offered.

Maybe I will take a day off from being the Sacrastin and make the drive to a parish where a Charismatic Mass is offered.👍 But what if THIS Mass is where I belong:eek:
 
Hello love4mary, I think it’s possible that God is testing your faith. The important thing at Mass is how much of yourself and your love you give to Christ. You should not be concerned about what you receive and that includes consolations. That’s what true love is about i.e about giving and not expecting something in return.

There’s always the danger of loving God for what we receive from Him and forget where the gifts come from. God in His wisdom often withdraws consolation and this gives us a chance to show that we love Him for the right reasons. It’s also a chance to gain merit. “Blessed are those who believe and have not seen”. Pray every day for faith and let nothing destroy your faith.

God bless,
Noel.
 
love4mary said:
What was missing though was immense…I could NOT recieve my Lords Body Blood Soul and Divinity in Holy Communion.:crying:
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It sounds like you may be experiencing a bit of spiritual dryness. I’ve learned from the many wise people on this forum (and from EWTN)… that spiritual dryness is actually a gift from God… which draws us closer to Him. Hang in there, ok?

You hit the nail right on the head… with your perception about the Protestant service. During the time I was away from the Catholic Church… I, too… had attended other churches and always noticed the same thing. To me, it was an “empty” feeling. I know now… that it was the lack of Our Lord’s physical Presence.

The result? Now that I’m back, even though I experience frequent spiritual dryness… I’m not willing to let go of the Treasure we as Catholics have. The Eucharist. He is truly our “Pearl of Great Price”. Ask Him for the grace of Perseverence, and I know He will help you. May He bless you abundantly.
 
I understand where you are coming from. I felt a dryness a few weeks ago and began to feel like I “got nothing” out of the mass. The music was boring, people seemed not engaged with what is going on, the homilies were dry etc…I thought maybe a made a mistake by converting. Of course, I am able to receive the body and blood of our Lord, and that is what kept me from leaving. Then things turned the corner. The homily at mass yesterday was recharging, the mass felt like a true celebration again. I have began to fall in love with the mass all over again.

Hang in there Mary
 
love4mary said:
It seems only at Mass do I have these feelings. In part it was due to an exchange I had with my Mass Coordinator (he oversees all the Masses, I am a Sacrastin–he is my immeditate boss),he accused me of “Praying like a fundy” because at one Mass, I was so into praying that I had my hands only Slightly raised.
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People can say hurtful things and it can be hard to get past them. In this case, he was not only hurtful but I think he was wrong. I can’t think of any point during the Mass that the assembly is called to raise their hands. So if your hand were only slightly raised, what’s the problem? What did he think you should be doing and when???
This is in part to the fact that I believe that we should pray as a Community and not as a group of individuals.
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This is certainly true but I’m not sure I understand what the problem is.
I will always attend Holy Mass (God willing), but for me there just seems to be something missing. When I try and talk about the faith at Church, I will hear from others that “My faith is a personal thing” and so they do not want to dialog. Bible Study (I worked almost a year to get it into my parish) was a failed endever, 14 or less showed in a parish where 650 attend every Sunday for Mass. The next year, bible study was not even offered.
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Something that I find very fulfilling is belonging to a small community of faith. We meet weekly and use the readings for the upcoming Sunday as the basis for our discussions. It’s not Bible study, but more a matter of what the Scriptures mean in our lives and how we’re called to live them out. If these types of groups don’t exist in your parish perhaps you could check with other local parishes to see if they’re available. Ask if you could visit a group and see what it’s like.

I don’t know that I would call having 14 people show up for Bible study being a failure. That’s 14 people who committed themselves to attending something new. Sometimes I think we have unrealistic expectations when we offer programs or classes. This is something I have to keep reminding myself about. Jesus started with 12 and look what happened. If you can reach a small number of people it’s possible for them to spread the word much further.
Maybe I will take a day off from being the Sacrastin and make the drive to a parish where a Charismatic Mass is offered.👍 But what if THIS Mass is where I belong:eek:
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Maybe it is where you belong. But that doesn’t mean that occasionally you couldn’t go elsewhere. Let me put it this way – there’s a church near me where they offer a monthly Taize service and my own parish has it during Advent and Lent. I go as often as I can because I love Taize and it refreshes me. Would I make that my only form of prayer? No, not at all. But it’s a good thing every now and then. If you were to find that a charismatic Mass refreshed you, then perhaps you could go occasionally, maybe make it a point to go once a month or every six weeks or whatever. That doesn’t mean leaving your parish, but it means looking after your spiritual life and taking advantage of opportunities to nourish it.
 
You talk about not feeling this at mass and feeling that at a Protestant service.

In the spiritual life, we don’t go by feelings, but by facts and faith.
 
It seems to me you are judging your experience at Mass through the measure of a protestant.

You speak of not being " nourished" because of music or homilies. You are not mentioning the Body and Blood of our Lord which can only happen at Mass. What could be less nourishing than going to a non-Catholic service?

Have you tried spending an hour before the Blessed Sacrament with no music or anyone around at Adoration?
 
Strangly enough Bpbasilphx,it was what I called a “Gray Matter” conversion to Christianity in general and the Catholic faith in particular. In other words, I studied my way into the faith. At the Easter Vigil when I was confirmed, I prayed that one day my heart would catch up to my brain,I have not really had a conversion of heart, just of mind.

I realize that there are many factors at play with my spiritual dryness, it just seems at it worse while praying the Holy Mass, any other time I feel alive and find myself always talking with God.

I understand what our Lord meant when He said, “Blessed are those who believe without seeing”, but as a struggling convert to the faith, a little “seeing” everynow and then would be helpful. I, like everyone else is on a journey, and with any journey we take, there are “road signs” to help us stay on the true path, I guess I just feel like my road signs where taken down or covered up.

As for the bible study,if it was up to me it would still be offered. The financial committy put an end to it due to the cost of the program and lack of interest. We were doing Jeff Cavins program and everyone there just loved it and learned so much about the bible and in turn it strengthened our Catholic faith.

Maybe ya’ll are right. This is something (the dryness) that God has given me to help me refocus on what is truly important,the worship of God.

As for the community aspect of worship as apposed to the individual aspect. What I mean is that God is our Father and we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. We are to pray for and with each other, helping our neighbor grow in their faith which will inturn help our own growth. To much at my parish do I hear that “my faith is personal” and never have I been able to just “talk the faith” with anyone. Maybe as another poster said, I should search out a small group of like minded, faithfilled Catholics to fellowship with outside of Mass.
 
love4mary said:
I am a Latin Rite Catholic via conversion from atheism (Praise Be to God). I believe ALL that faith teaches because the Church teaches with the authority from God…
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Hello love4mary,

I have a love for all the church teaches as well as love of some protestant music.

Here’s what I suggest for you to get the best of both worlds.
  1. Attend mass regularly
  2. Participate in all available sacraments (Catholic ones that is.)
  3. Use Catholic devotions, (Bible and prayers).
  4. Listen to christian music on the radio. I personally find this music very uplifting too. Although sometimes it does get tiring as well when there’s no new music for a while.
 
love4mary said:
Maybe as another poster said, I should search out a small group of like minded, faithfilled Catholics to fellowship with outside of Mass.
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Mary, that’s kind of what this forum has been about… for me. But, I know what you mean about connecting with the other people in your parish. It’s not always that easy. Another way for you to do this… might be to join whatever ministries that are available within your parish. Some of them take up very little time… but are a great way to “connect” with your fellow parishioners… while doing the work of the ministry. Might wanna take a peek at next weeks Sunday bulletin, and see what they need. 🙂 God bless you.
 
Dear Love4Mary,

I’m going to be very frank (poor Frank - he gets sooo much bad press) but it seems that God gave you what we call a dark night of the soul, a desert experience, a dry spell, when everything seems very dull and boring and tedious and all the emotions of our religious experience disappears! It may even seem as if God has abandoned us, for He seems to have withdrawn to some secret place we can’t get even with the most earnest mental prayers, tears, begging, etc…there’s a problem when we don’t recognize this if we begin to seek the emotional charge we got before elsewhere - that begins an ugly thing I call spiritual thrill seeking - we give our attentions to whatever provides a spiritual thrill, an emotional charge or as you put it, a “re-charge” of the “batteries.” Catholicism is not a *feel good *religion but a **do good **religion. I have read a few books on the spiritual life and it seems this dry patch happens to many and can be a very trying time, as if the refiner’s fire were kindled and we grow dryer and dryer and dryer under its heat. It is a complaint heard in the stories of more than one saint. How we respond to it makes all the difference. I would suggest you stop all spiritual thrill seeking in other churches - you have no real business there and are vulnerable. Just return to your usual practices and especially bring this up in the Confessional. I’m sure if you do so, your dry patch will end. I nor anyone else can tell you when - it is God Who is the giver of all goods gifts and when He is ready to lift you up again, He will. But He tries us many times over. Since you are relatively new to the spiritual life, I could suggest you get yourself a few books on the spiritual life, perhaps St. John of the Cross or Teresa of Avila or the Imitation of Christ by Kempis. Any good priest could suggest many titles and your Confessor probably has an idea or two from knowing something about you, where your spirit would draw the most nourishment from. ASK!

Anyway, enough of the motherly advise from me.

You could join the blue-haired Marine Corps of the Catholic Church - offer it up and keep doing your duty by God and His Church! That’ll fix anything! :rolleyes:

Peace,

Gail
 
Read Mother Teresa. She felt empty for most of her nunly 😛 life. She knew that the Catholic Church was right, but she had no sign from God that what she was doing was right. That is often the hardest thing for us Catholics to explain. People say "OK, OK, you say through logic and resoning that the Catholic Church is right, but do you feeeeeeel good? Well, the faith isn’t about feeling it is about what is right and what is wrong. I mean if all we wanted to do was feel good then the martyrs wouldn’t have let themselves be martyred. I mean being roasted or eaten or crucified just doesn’t sound like it feels good!

Feelings can be extremely misleading. And the devil can influence our feelings easily.

If it makes you feel any better, at least you sound as if you can make it to a traditional mass. Many of us who are trads are stuck going to the liberal parishes that plague the Church. We go every Sunday, and every Sunday we leave disappointed, angry, and sad. We also feel empty because we see the condition of the Church and try as we might to help fix it, we keep getting battered down by the liberals. It is very hard to continue to hope. Thank God that Pope Benedict was elected, or I think many more of us would have fallen into the SSPX trap. If is discouraging, but we must remember that our sufferings are for Jesus. We must suffer through the good times and bad in order to spend eternity feeling good.😉

Find a special saint who you really like and pray daily for the gift of “feeling good” or at least for the grace to persevere through your days of feeling bad.

Ask Our Lady she is the most powerful of all the saints.👍
 
Attending mass is for God’s sake not your own. Catholics go to Mass to offer worship to God and give public acknowledgement to the one true Catholic church. Christ never promised you gratification but rather the cross. You are to die to yourself and follow Him. Worldly people follow the path that is most pleasant to them. Saints follow the will of God no matter how steep, rocky and thorny that narrow path may be. It sounds like you’re tempted to follow the path of least resistance. That’s the choice; whether to choose self and its corrupt needs or Christ and His way of the cross.
 
love4mary said:
This will sound strange, but I “feel” more Catholic Away from Church then I do In Church on Sunday morning.
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God sometimes witholds His consolations from us because He wants us to seek Him as an end in itself. He does not want us to seek Him in order to fell a spiritual high.

The Mass is the highest form of worshipping God - objectively. Whether we feel this or not, it is. At every Mass, we are offering to the supreme sacrifice - the sacrifice of Christ on the cross 2,000 years ago. At each Mass, God, who is outside of time, spiritual transfers us to the foot of the Cross, so that when Jesus cries out to Father to forgive them, we are there at the foot of the cross receiving the grace that come from God. After we just receive Christ, our prayers are the strongest at this time, because Christ dwells in us in His divinity and humanity. Our offering of Christ at Mass is not only that we receive mercy from God but even for the whole world. I shutter to think how messed up the world would be if there was no Mass offered up to God.

Look at this perspective, whethere or not we feel something during Mass seems kind of petty.

So I am not surprised that you may receive more of God’s consolations when you do non-Mass things. God wants us to assist in Mass not because of the feeling it gives, but because through the Mass we receive the grace of God that Christ purchased for us on the Cross.
 
love4mary said:
I am a Latin Rite Catholic via conversion from atheism (Praise Be to God). I believe ALL that faith teaches because the Church teaches with the authority from God.

Now for my problem inwhich I am struggling with.

I feel an emptiness at Mass of late. Nothing stirs me, not the music (which has always been uplifting and spiritual) or the homilies or the readings. I went to a protestant service with a friend and loved the energy and the participation. I was moved to join in the singing and the preaching was not half bad. It was an uplifting and energy filled service that “recharged” my spiritual batteries (for lack of a better wayof explaining it). What was missing though was immense…I could NOT recieve my Lords Body Blood Soul and Divinity in Holy Communion.:crying:

Is it possible to have the best of both?..I so love the Liturgy and everything about the Holy Mass, but I also love the energy that I experienced at the protestant church. Is there a Catholic Church where I would get the Fullness of Christs teachings (which I believe can only be found in the Catholic Church) with the energy of the protestant church?

Me thinks a CATHOLIC “tent revival” may not be a bad thing:rolleyes: I live in the “bible belt” south, tent revivals are a big thing here.
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Charismatic Catholicism.
 
God bless, love4mary,

I am a cradle Catholic who considered joining more lively protestant groups before studying the Catholic faith more closely. I became convinced that the history and theology of the Catholic Church held the fullness of truth. It sounds as though you’ve already come to that conclusion, which means you’ve found the right place. You’ve just got to find the spark that is surely there.

If you haven’t already read “The Lamb’s Supper,” by Scott Hahn, please do so. It explains what’s really happening there on the altar. I often remind myself that there are angels all around worshiping the Real Presence that I will soon come up to receive. I remind myself that the words of Scripture that the reader is mumblling into the microphone were written almost 2000 years ago and read in liturgies not dissimilar from this one in the first centuries. I remind myself that I am privileged to be where I am, at the re-presentation of the death of my Lord. Most of the time, I close my eyes and silently pray the prayers of the priest as he prays them – it helps me to focus on the meaning of the words. Sometimes, I look around and thank the Lord for the people who believe in Him enough to at least show up every week and ask Him to help all of us realize what’s really happening and to increase our faith. I remind myself that, whether or not the mass was well-prayed and the homily well-preached, this whole thing is totally beyond me and I won’t really “get it” in this life.

I don’t know. I’d suggest just keeping up the “thank you’s” to God. Also, as someone suggested, make weekly visits for Eucharistic Adoration, if possible. Pour your heart out to Him and listen. And remember that He knows your heart even more than you do, yourself. And He loves you to death – His!

But I know you know that – sorry for the babbling. You know you’re in the right place and that you love Him and He loves you. It’ll come in His time and in His way. He knows best.

God bless you abundantly!
Dan
 
I thank you all for your sound advice and your prayers. As a convert, sometimes I have a hard time understanding. Being a Christian is tough work sometimes…but I know in the end,it will All be worth the struggle:thumbsup:

I am certainly going to search out a Charismatic Mass in my diocese though. I want to experience as much as possible. As an aside, does anyone know of a good site I may go to research the Charismatic Mass in more detail?

I have Dark Night of the Soul on my bookshelf, but when I tried to read it, it was over my head,but then I tried to read it to soon into my conversion, I may give it another try.
 
“Dark Night” is a deep one. The next book on my stack is written by Ralph Martin, who has been a leader in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal for probably 30 years or so. He is also a teacher at the Catholic seminary for the archdiocese of Detroit and host of “The Choices We Face,” a program seen on EWTN and online at renewalminstries.org (or perhaps .net or .com – try one 'til it works; sorry for the bad memory).

The book is called “The Fulfillment of All Desire.” It’s a thick book because it discusses our journey with/to God, based on the thoughts and wisdom of saints like John of the Cross, Theresa of Avila, Catherine of Sienna and others. It looks promising and Ralph is a clear but thorough communicator who pulls no punches.

I wish you well on finding a charismatic mass at which you feel at home. It’s still the same mass, just a little more noise and exuberance in the Throne Room. God is so good!

God bless,
Dan
 
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