Growing Doubts

[Stephen_says]

Have you ever gone through a period of immense or lasting doubt, or have you ever lost your faith completely?

Were you able to p(name removed by moderator)oint the cause of it?

Were you able to escape your doubt? Was there something concrete you did to strengthen your faith?

Really interested in hearing all sorts of responses

Thanks!

 

[slMike]

When I couldn’t follow my mind I followed my heart in such situations. I just kept on reading about the Faith and continued with my prayer life and later the mind:thumbsup: came along.

Mike

 

[Mr_Lonely]

I know exactly what you are going through. In fact, I’m still going through it.

One of my Spiritual Directors once told me, “God speaks to us in the silence of our hearts.” Sometimes, we just need to turn off the world, so to speak, and just listen. Sometimes it takes a couple minutes, for others a couple days, some months or even years. The point is it’s about you and Him.

I’m not an expert, and this may not work for everyone. My feeling…when things get cloudy, as long as you keep longing for the light, there’s still hope.

Take care and God bless!

 

[Bookcat]

"The resurrection, then, is not a theory, but a historical reality revealed by the man Jesus Christ by means of his “Passover”, his “passage”, that has opened a “new way” between heaven and earth (cf. Heb 10:20). It is neither a myth nor a dream, it is not a vision or a utopia, it is not a fairy tale, but it is a singular and unrepeatable event: Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary, who at dusk on Friday was taken down from the Cross and buried, has victoriously left the tomb. In fact, at dawn on the first day after the Sabbath, Peter and John found the tomb empty. Mary Magdalene and the other women encountered the risen Jesus. On the way to Emmaus the two disciples recognized him at the breaking of the bread. The Risen One appeared to the Apostles that evening in the Upper Room and then to many other disciples in Galilee. "

-Pope Benedict XVI Urbi et Orbi message 2009

 

[Bookcat]

Hold fast to Jesus of Nazareth the Christ and Risen Lord! He loves you! He is the Way the Truth and the Life! Even in difficulties and even in darkness – he is the Good Shepherd.

“Doubts” can occur involunarily for various reasons. Not only temptation but also as a part of ones purification (permitted for that reason) at various points in one spiritual life.

And as the Catechism (257) notes :“Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.”

Also remember that there is a difference between “voluntary doubt” and “involuntary doubt” --This is what the Catechism says of that latter:

“Involuntary doubt refers to hesitation in believing, difficulty in overcoming objections connected with the faith, or also anxiety aroused by its obscurity.”

Temptations against Faith can thus come …the best way to fight against such is more by flight then by fight. (such is the age old advice --same with the temptations against the virtue of chastity).

In fact most “temptations of thought” are are better to “ignore”…

And the great Catholic Philosopher Josef Pieper noted sometimes one has to even to simply stand fast as a kind of martyr in silence holding fast to ones Faith…in the midst of temptations against faith…even in the the midst of ones own involuntary feelings or thoughts --that assail one like arrows…(not consenting).

or as St. Therese did… simply say or write “Credo” (I believe).

Or silently make the sign of the cross…(as ones profession).

Hold fast to Jesus of Nazareth the Risen Lord!

In him is* true life!*

 

[Spritus1]

Faith is a gift from God. We cannot generate it.

All of us has to ask for this gift. Ask and you will receive.

The gift will be given in God’s time. Pray. Pray. Pray. And wait on the Lord. The gift may be given when it is least expected. Once we have received the gift of faith it is up to us to cherish and nurture it.

 

[mattp0625]

Have you ever gone through a period of immense or lasting doubt, or have you ever lost your faith completely?

Were you able to p(name removed by moderator)oint the cause of it?

Were you able to escape your doubt? Was there something concrete you did to strengthen your faith?

Really interested in hearing all sorts of responses

Thanks!

There are so many good resoures!

CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity. He was a converted atheist.

Miracles Do Happen by Sister Breige McKenna.

The Diaries of Saint Faustina

An Exorcist Tells His Story by Fr Gabriele Amorth

Look up the interviews or books of Holly Ordway - another converted atheist

I also like books on Padre Pio as well as the movie about his life.

The Passion of Christ movie too!

 

[Stephen_says]

The Diaries of Saint Faustina

This is what has caused the problem in the first place

**Story: ** I had decided to read The Diaries for lent, because I know a lot of people that just love it.

I couldn’t get more than a few pages into it!

It seems like on every page, she has a realization that all her unhappiness and pain is coming from Jesus, but she prays to love him still, and seems to blame herself for not loving him as she should.

There is an episode where she is in the convent and going to visit another convent and she has a vision of Jesus taking her heart out of her chest and says

“If you’re going to leave, your heart is going to stay with me.”

God forgive me, but it seemed like a very abusive relationship and I just kept thinking She’s completely nuts for loving a God that is causing her so much pain!

So it’s not really that I don’t believe in God, but just that I’m wondering about our suffering. It’s one thing to bare suffering with joy, but it’s another to believe that our suffering is CAUSED by God because he loves us and want’s to make sure we will love him even through the suffering if we know someone on earth in a relationship like that, we’d tell them to leave!

Maybe my mind is just too small to understand

 

[Spritus1]

Stephen says

God’s ways are not our ways. The world fears and flees suffering not realising that if accepted, United and offered to God, He in turn grants us great graces in return. He never gives us a cross that is too difficult to carry. Yes St Faustina suffered. She would likely have suffered anyway. Yet because she sought Jesus through it all, through all the pain, hardship, persecution, not understanding etc she is now in heaven today for all eternity.

God does not cause suffering. He can and does allow it though. He sees all. He knows all. He knows just how to bring good out of evil. Always. There is no evil, no suffering so great that God cannot bring good out of. None.

St Teresa of Avila complained to Jesus that if that is how He treats His friends then it is little wonder He has so few of them. We only see the suffering. We don’t see the fruits of how God uses that suffering; reparation, conversions, graces etc. While we are going through the suffering, God is preparing a crown for us. We do not see. Yet we must trust.

All that comes to us from God, whether sunshine or rain is for our and/or someone else’s good. It is better to accept the cross God has chosen for us rather than to design one for ourselves.

In this life, suffering of whatever sort is inevitable and unavoidable. St Pio said that what grieved him was ‘wasted suffering’. We are not called to be masochists, rather to accept whatever cross we are given, to unite it with Christ’s and seek to follow Jesus to the end.

Viewed with natural eyes, yes St Faustina’s sufferings can seem grotesque and even perverse. Yet if we look with the eyes of the soul, with supernatural eyes, her sufferings were an abundance of graces. You can be sure that St Faustina carried her cross, but Jesus held her and helped her every step of the way.

 

[adamhovey1988]

Have you ever gone through a period of immense or lasting doubt, or have you ever lost your faith completely?

Were you able to p(name removed by moderator)oint the cause of it?

Were you able to escape your doubt? Was there something concrete you did to strengthen your faith?

Really interested in hearing all sorts of responses

Thanks!

Long story, maybe I’ll write a book. I think everyone has faith. Maybe not in God, but in something.

 

[mattp0625]

This is what has caused the problem in the first place

**Story: ** I had decided to read The Diaries for lent, because I know a lot of people that just love it.

I couldn’t get more than a few pages into it!

It seems like on every page, she has a realization that all her unhappiness and pain is coming from Jesus, but she prays to love him still, and seems to blame herself for not loving him as she should.

There is an episode where she is in the convent and going to visit another convent and she has a vision of Jesus taking her heart out of her chest and says

“If you’re going to leave, your heart is going to stay with me.”

God forgive me, but it seemed like a very abusive relationship and I just kept thinking She’s completely nuts for loving a God that is causing her so much pain!

So it’s not really that I don’t believe in God, but just that I’m wondering about our suffering. It’s one thing to bare suffering with joy, but it’s another to believe that our suffering is CAUSED by God because he loves us and want’s to make sure we will love him even through the suffering if we know someone on earth in a relationship like that, we’d tell them to leave!

Maybe my mind is just too small to understand

I don’t think he causes suffering, but allows it to happen if it can bring a soul closer to him.
Faustina loved God and fellow souls so much that she would do anything to save them. All she wanted was salvation for the world. God is interested in the afterlife, but sin can’t go to heaven. To me, it was a moving narrative.

Try mother Angelica’s books.

 

[fred_conty]

This is what has caused the problem in the first place

**Story: ** I had decided to read The Diaries for lent, because I know a lot of people that just love it.

I couldn’t get more than a few pages into it!

It seems like on every page, she has a realization that all her unhappiness and pain is coming from Jesus, but she prays to love him still, and seems to blame herself for not loving him as she should.

There is an episode where she is in the convent and going to visit another convent and she has a vision of Jesus taking her heart out of her chest and says

“If you’re going to leave, your heart is going to stay with me.”

God forgive me, but it seemed like a very abusive relationship and I just kept thinking She’s completely nuts for loving a God that is causing her so much pain!

So it’s not really that I don’t believe in God, but just that I’m wondering about our suffering. It’s one thing to bare suffering with joy, but it’s another to believe that our suffering is CAUSED by God because he loves us and want’s to make sure we will love him even through the suffering if we know someone on earth in a relationship like that, we’d tell them to leave!

Maybe my mind is just too small to understand

Maybe this will help. I found this and thought it would answer the last part of your post with regards to suffering.

With regard to the comment about her heart staying with him(Jesus), isn’t that sort of a poetic way of putting it when two people deeply love one another? You and I are men so I don’t think we would be saying such things. But read in the gospels about Mary Magdelane and the way she speaks to Jesus. It is a person she is totally and completely given herself too, and she speaks as such. Our relationship has a lot to do with the way we speak to someone.

Incompleteness of Christ’s suffering

---

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=930073

Colossians 1:24 says that what is missing in Christ’s suffering is to be completed in us for the sake of His body the Church. Does not this contradict the completeness of his suffering and death which redeemed mankind of all sin? (Eph1:7, Col 1: 20-22)

I recommend the Haydock Catholic Bible Commentary for this and other such difficult biblical passages:

Ver. 24. And fill up those things…in my flesh for his body, which is the church.[5] Nothing was wanting in the sufferings or merits of Christ, for a sufficient and superabundant redemption of mankind, and therefore he adds, for his body, which is the church, that his sufferings were wanting, and are to be endured by the example of Christ by the faithful, who are members of a crucified head. See St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine. (Witham) — Wanting. There is no want in the sufferings of Christ himself as head; but many sufferings are still wanting, or are still to come in his body, the Church, and his members, the faithful. (Challoner) — St. Chrysostom here observes that Jesus Christ loves us so much, that he is not content merely to suffer in his own person, but he wishes also to suffer in his members; and thus we fill up what is wanting of the sufferings of Christ. (St. Chrysostom) — The wisdom, the will, the justice of Jesus Christ, requireth and ordaineth that his body and members should be companions of his sufferings, as they expect to be companions of his glory; that so suffering with him, and after his example, they may apply to their own wants and to the necessities of others the merits and satisfaction of Jesus Christ, which application is what is wanting, and what we are permitted to supply by the sacraments and sacrifice of the new law.

 

[sirach2v4]

This is what has caused the problem in the first place

**Story: ** I had decided to read The Diaries for lent, because I know a lot of people that just love it.

I couldn’t get more than a few pages into it!

It seems like on every page, she has a realization that all her unhappiness and pain is coming from Jesus, but she prays to love him still, and seems to blame herself for not loving him as she should.

There is an episode where she is in the convent and going to visit another convent and she has a vision of Jesus taking her heart out of her chest and says

“If you’re going to leave, your heart is going to stay with me.”

God forgive me, but it seemed like a very abusive relationship and I just kept thinking She’s completely nuts for loving a God that is causing her so much pain!

So it’s not really that I don’t believe in God, but just that I’m wondering about our suffering. It’s one thing to bare suffering with joy, but it’s another to believe that our suffering is CAUSED by God because he loves us and want’s to make sure we will love him even through the suffering if we know someone on earth in a relationship like that, we’d tell them to leave!

Maybe my mind is just too small to understand

This is a recurring theme in the psalms where the psalmist asks things pointedly like “God, where are you?” “God, why have you abandoned me?” and “God smite my enemies” etc.

Jesus said that He would suffer and we would, too. I think He told us to expect it. Now, there’s a lot of things you can say about that, e.g. whether you like it or not. What comes to mind is that God is showing us that there is eternal punishment; if we don’t like this suffering – and we don’t – imagine how we will not like eternal punishment.

I’m studying the book of Revelation in a group, and I have my pet theory about why the book is so scary – it’s to show us the horror of sin and the wrath of God that it brings down. The “horror” of the first couple chapters, about the seven churches of Asia Minor, is the horror that they might lose their salvation – literally, that their lampstand, which represents Christ , will be taken away from them. So, one of the admonitions of the Bk of Revelation is “to endure.”

 

[detoutcoeur]

I know exactly what you are going through. In fact, I’m still going through it.

One of my Spiritual Directors once told me, “God speaks to us in the silence of our hearts.” Sometimes, we just need to turn off the world, so to speak, and just listen. Sometimes it takes a couple minutes, for others a couple days, some months or even years. The point is it’s about you and Him.

I’m not an expert, and this may not work for everyone. ** My feeling…when things get cloudy, as long as you keep longing for the light, there’s still hope.**

Take care and God bless!