East Spiritual Help

[Dave_in_Dallas]

Feel like I am in a precarious position in my life – feel like me & my family are under a lot of spiritual attacks. I have this deep desire to “crank up” my spiritual life so to speak.

I keep having a re-occurring attraction / pull towards the East (for the past year or so). When I do, I start exploring the websites, listening to chants, and reading I feel a sense inner peace. However, there also usually follows a lot of sleeplessness and some increased spiritual attacks (to myself and family). As soon as I give it up, everything seems to click back into place as far as being able to sleep, minimal spiritual attacks, and get some “signs” that I am where I am supposed to be (in the RC Church). ~~ yes I know it sounds a little silly ~~

So I started trying to determine why I am so attracted:

Chanting
Liturgy – more poetic
Greater awareness and appreciation of fathers
Beautiful Churches
Greater Appreciation for liturgical seasons
East seems more Masculine; West more feminine (I think this is the opposite of what +Kalistos Ware says ) – maybe it’s just all the beards?
Better .mp3’s / resources on the web

BUT there is the universality of the RC church – i.e. there are many churches practically wherever you go in the US – can go daily – find confession daily.

Is it possible to live a more Eastern spiritual life while going to a RC Mass on Sundays?
What practices could I do to help me during this challenging time in my family’s life?

 

[hjig22]

Go where ever you are comfortable going. Theirs nothing worse than making a move to another church and than changing your mind about it two months down the rode. Choose a church that you know you will stay in for a long time.

 

[Little_Boy_Lost]

BUT there is the universality of the RC church – i.e. there are many churches practically wherever you go in the US – can go daily – find confession daily.

Is it possible to live a more Eastern spiritual life while going to a RC Mass on Sundays?
What practices could I do to help me during this challenging time in my family’s life?

Yessir. It’s a blessing if you have an Eastern church very close by. I drive about a half hour to my parish on sundays, and with gas prices it’s pushing it. Sometimes I just don’t go and end up at the RC church in town. Same thing with confession. Sometimes I will go to one of the Roman priests in town.

You can live it out spiritually, not very well, but if you read the fathers, pray the prayers, and get to a parish when you, hopefully by God’s blessing, a mission will open up by you, or maybe you can relocate to a place that has an eastern church.

 

[Alexander_Roman]

Dear Dave,

First of all - PLEASE don’t give yourself grief over any of this.

The Catholic Church with her Rites and Particular Churches is universal all around. There is no need for you to become EC in order to drink from the Eastern Christian spiritual waters.

You could, if you wish, attend an EC liturgy every so often, when it is convenient. You could also visit Orthodox Churches.

There is lots of spiritual reading, the Philokalia and Unseen Warfare and the like. You could have an icon corner, including many Western Saints or saints East and West have in common.

You could also investigate the lives of such saints as St Tikhon of Zadonsk and St Dmitri of Rostov - they were all very “Westernized” in their devotions.

The Jesus Prayer is simply devotion to the Name of Jesus and it too is universal.

The Rosary - it’s called the Rule of the Theotokos in the East, but a “rosary” by any other name . . .

And don’t worry - that’s very “Latin,” you know . . .

Alex