"Be ye holy..."

[reen12]

One day when I was fifteen, I was standing at a busy cross road after school, watching the busy crowd on the street and decided at that moment that without God and eternity life was absurd and had no meaning. I was not an official believer then.

When I finally got baptized as a Catholic in the summer of my college freshman year, I knew I have found the meaning of life. The question of meaning has never popped up ever since.

Knowing I am created in love by the loving God with a special purpose in His mind, I walked through life by doing my best to fulfill my call. I am a simple person and I consider that a blessing. Meaning is not something I need to search hard. Meaning is to live, move and have my being in the Lord and to walk toward heaven by living my life to the full.

You are surely blessed, InLight247.

My own experience was quite different.

At the age of 6, a first communion catechism was placed
on my school desk.

Who is God?
God is the supreme being Who made all things.

Why did God create me?
God created me to know Him, love Him, and serve Him in this life,
and to be happy with Him in the next.

A great love of God welled up in my little six year old heart.
The sunlight came through the window and the pages of
my little book were awash in sunlight.

How can anybody sin, I thought?

I have a massive IQ, and was told, in college,
that I was a brilliant student in philosophy.
Not to mention being told, at the end of the 1st grade, that I was first in the class.
At age 7, I didn’t even know that there *was *such a thing!
I ran down our street, waving the report card, yelling
“Mommy, I was first in the class!” Fancy that.

In college, at the end of the first semester, I was
2nd in a class of 200, having ‘only’ received a 93 on
a chemistry final.

I thought people were putting me on.
I thought that everyone had near total recall of what they read.

Imagine a kid like this, being taught about eternal hell,
state of grace, and tough luck for you…if you were dying
and a priest was not near. *

Being treated to this catechesis, by the age of 12
I had lost the will to live.
If hell awaited, then nothing in life could make up for that coming horror.

Now, after 15 solid years of psychotherapy, including two go rounds
at a psychiatric facility - at least I am able to think that maybe God is not
Who they said He was.

I was mentally ill by the age of 10. Spared that catechesis,
I might have made it without long term therapy.

Maybe most people can come to terms with “Be ye perfect…”
but I curl up like a burned leaf, even looking at those words.

My father had schizophrenia, and then my mother deveolped
Altzheimer’s, toward the end of her life. The whole world
seemed nuts to me, by the age of 12. My experience was
different from yours. At the age of 12, I stood outside in the yard,
in the pitch dark, and thought: 'I am all alone in this."

Though I will say that, at the age of 64, I now realize how quickly
life passes, no matter what we suffer.

If it turns out that Jesus is the God/Man, He will understand.
Maybe He will say:

“I don’t blame you a bit, bunny. If I was Who they said I was,
I wouldn’t like Me either.”

I shall now disappear from this thread, and dive back into
works on Judaic thought.

It gave me great joy to write and to illustrate the posts.

Thank you to all who contributed. http://bestsmileys.com/waving/5.gif

reen*