Hard to live with

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What’s the best thing to do when God feels distant…? Like a stranger you don’t know well who doesn’t seem to care for you? 😦
 
For me, it starts with going to Mass - I will try to go more, to go the next day, etc. The Eucharist, and the Mass really brighten me up - I can feel the grace from God.

I would also suggest praying more - maybe try something different, a different prayer, something different with a Rosary, like the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, or maybe contemplative praying and listening to God more.
 
For me, I like to take comfort in the fact that our faith is not a feeling. This feeling of forsakeness is part and parcel of the Christian life. Christ ‘felt’ abandoned on the cross; but His response, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” is a quote from a psalm testifying to faith in times of trial.
 
When I have doubts or feel distant, I am most comforted by reading the Gospels. Also, reading saint biographies. Sometimes, I need to go to Confession. That helps. I’m a homemaker, so I like to listen to Audio sets on the faith. Also, I’m noticed that if I’m not getting time to myself or some silence in general, I seem to drift away from God. I’m not a very good meditator, but a few minutes here and there brings me closer .
 
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Stylus:
What’s the best thing to do when God feels distant…? Like a stranger you don’t know well who doesn’t seem to care for you? 😦
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I have been through this many times. I started healing in this area by first taking a very thorough moral inventory of my life. I listed all my resentments and my fears. I put them on paper and looked at all of them; who, what, why and how they all affected me on a daily basis. I asked myself if I really wanted to continue to live a life that was run on resentment and fear…

you might think you have none…but you just expressed one against God and that’s a start…

I took my list to the confessional and shared it, asking to be absolved for my sin against Faith. God never removed Himself from me…I move away from God.

Then I started an active personal campaign to deepen my prayer life. It didn’t matter what I FELT like doing, I did it anyway - a daily Rosary, Mass attendance at least 3 times a week in addition to my Daily Obligation and I started saying the Angelus at Noon every day…

slowly and surely, the feeling of connection with God returned.
 
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Stylus:
What’s the best thing to do when God feels distant…? Like a stranger you don’t know well who doesn’t seem to care for you? 😦
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God may very well be drawing you to Himself, but is requiring your response to His Truth about yourself.

Some people blame God for their own faults, but others endure privation through no fault of their own. I have no idea which group you are in, but you can test yourself. Are you harboring any mistrust towards God, such that you secretly blame Him for this? Or are you one who has always been close to God, and this has suddenly occurred without any clear explanation?

(For my response, I will assume you have the best of dispositions. If not, then the following will probably make you feel resentment).

God may be giving you an opportunity to choose Him for Himself, and not for anything you are getting. Move closer to Him by an act of your will. This can be done by pledging your obedience. It can be done by accepting the absence with the expectant faith of a child who knows his parent is busy preparing something good. It can be done by accepting the absence as a penance to atone for your past absences from Him - or for those of others who are absent from the Lord.

Here is a possible prayer:

“Lord, I do not deserve your constant presence and consolation, but thank you for all the times you granted it to me! I look forward to when you next bless me with yourself. In the meantime, please strengthen my resolve to do my duties and prepare for your return. Please remember the souls in purgatory who long for you so much - may they receive the consolation I now miss. And if what I see is a reflection of my own apathy and neglect towards my neighbor, please forgive me and also make me love you more through my neighbors.”

These and other sentiments of your heart can serve to build up your heart to be filled even more later. Anytime a house is renovated, there is temporary downtime wherein you cannot occupy it. And if you are cleaning a vase, it can’t have flowers in it at that time. But such preparation is for something greater. So be thankful with expectant faith of what our good God plans for you! Try to cooperate as much as possible, and be thankful for the pains and suffering that attends your state, for that same suffering is purifying you. As that marine sticker says “Pain is weakness leaving the body”.

The scouring pad’s goal is to remove the dirt, not to hurt the pot.

Ephesians 1:4 As he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and unspotted in his sight in charity.

Keep faith with hope and practice charity in constant prayer, offering your body as a “spiritual sacrifice”.

Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God, your reasonable service.

Once cleaned inside and rooted in charity, we can be filled.

Ephesians 3:16 That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened by his Spirit with might unto the inward man, 17 That Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts; that being rooted and founded in charity, … that you may be filled unto all the fulness of God.

Now before we can be filled with God, we have to endure being empty towards the world.

1 John 2:15 Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him.

So again, accept your dryness as a matter of course, even with gratitude, and let it profit your soul. Exercise true praise, and not just that which results from good feelings. Charity is to give without requiring repayment. Now is the time you can give to God in truth, for you do not sense any return. And this act will form the basis of your habit of charity, so that later you can return to it as the basis even amidst apparent riches. Blessed are the poor: and those who are charitable always make themselves poor, even as God always makes them rich, for they are always giving what they receive.

Luke 14:13 But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind; 14 And thou shalt be blessed, because they have not wherewith to make thee recompense: for recompense shall be made thee at the resurrection of the just.

So exercise loving trust in the goodness of God for all that happens, and demonstrate this trust by loving your neighbor in thought, word, and deed. Not with fake smiles, but in the truth of obedience, genuinely accepting the accompanying sufferings because God justly deserves it from us; and knowing you are building something that though not filled now, promises to be filled soon.

hurst
 
Outside of going to Mass every day I try to pray the Rosary every day, The Divine Chaplet, Stations of the Cross.

God is never far from you. You just have to look and he will be there.

My prayers are for you.
 
Great suggestions. I had been considering posting a similar question.
 
Devotion to the Christ Child was a way I overcame those feelings. The realization that Christ was once a helpless infant and needed warmth, care, and love in order to survive, can help conquer those times when you may feel he is an impersonal and distant God. The excellent and beautifully written book “The Little Way of the Infant Jesus” by Caryll Houselander is a good way to start looking at Jesus as being “one of us” instead of “far from us.”

http://www.trinstore.com/ecom_2/inventoryimages/540_PR_1.jpg

Link to book description: trinstore.com/ecom_2/item_view.cfm?inventoryid=540
 
God never changes- he’s immutable. Although you feel cold or distant , God still loves you.

Try these prayers and story, they help me greatly.
Last night I had a dream. I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Across the sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand: one belonged to me, the other to the Lord.
** After the last scene of my life flashed before me, I looked back at the footprints in the sand. I noticed that at many times along the path of my life, especially at the very lowest and saddest times, there was only one set of footprints.**

This really troubled me, so I asked the Lord about it. "Lord, you said once I decided to follow you, You’d walk with me all the way. But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life, there was only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me."

The Lord replied, "My son, my precious child, I love you and I would never leave you. During your times of suffering, when you could see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you."

Catholic Online** > Prayers > Catholic Prayers**
Catholic Prayers

Your Cross

The everlasting God has in His wisdom foreseen from eternity the cross that He now presents to you as a gift from His inmost heart. This cross He now sends you He has considered with His all-knowing eyes, understood with His divine mind, tested with His wise justice, warmed with loving arms and weighed with His own hands to see that it be not one inch too large and not one ounce too heavy for you. He has blessed it with His holy Name, anointed it with His consolation, taken one last glance at you and your courage, and then sent it to you from heaven, a special greeting from God to you, an alms of the all-merciful love of God.

MORE Prayers by St. Francis de Sales
Confidence in God
Direction of Intention
Your Cross
 
When I feel distant from God, I usually pick up a book such as “The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ” by Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich or “Divine Mercy in My Soul,” the Diary of Saint Faustina. Just reading a few pages from books like these really helps me feel closer to Jesus.

I also go straight to Confession, then sit in front of the Blessed Sacrament for a while, just being quiet and letting God speak to me.

hollyangel :angel1:
 
St John of the Cross’ *Dark Night of the Soul * is, of course, the spiritual classic devoted to this experience. One of the reasons he chose the dark night metaphor is because during these times you can’t see God, or touch, taste, hear, or feel Him near.

You might want to read this book if you haven’t already because it will describe and explain spiritual growth spurts and stages that a Christian will go through towards union with Christ.
 
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