Help with consistency please!

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Lucy_1

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Does anyone else have a feast or famine relationship with God? I’m either going to daily mass, weekly confession, devouring spiritual books and audio, or (more frequently) going to weekly mass, monthly confession, barely saying daily prayers, and hardly ever doing a daily examen. Does anyone else struggle with this? Or if you’re very consistent, what does your spiritual life consist of?
 
I have had the experience of “hitting the wall” spiritually.
For instance, my life is going along and my prayer life expands and contracts within certain limits depending on how much time I have, the urgency of mine or others prayer requests or whatever.

Then a calamity will come along and knock me flat, spiritually, where I can’t pray beyond “I don’t know what to do with this Lord, jut take it”. (I still attend Mass and confession)
Then I have to regain my momentum.
 
I think it’s a fairly common experience for a lot of people, maybe to varying degrees, and if you look at the lives of some Saints, they also had similar feelings — but they pushed through, as we all should.

That’s the challenge for our faith in our current society, I think, especially in the US where the prevalent influence is Evangelical Protestantism - and therefore (at least in perception) largely based on the emotional “personal relationship with Jesus” thing. (And we do need that, but…)

In order to have a true faith that persists and yes, a relationship with Jesus, we treat it like any other relationship (another thing our society seems to misunderstand these days). It requires effort at times. It’s not always happy-making. We live in a culture of disposables, and I see it in how we treat others, too. Once the relationship gets the slightest bit unhappy or turbulent, it’s time to turn and leave. The relationships that work are those we put the effort into even when it’s not easy.

Sometimes it’s challenging or inconvenient to go to Mass or pray. Do it anyway. Yes, we can give ourselves short pauses in relationships sometimes (can’t talk now, skip a lunch with friends, etc.) but we don’t do those things consistently. The same with God. We don’t really take a break from him; we may change up our routine here and there, but the important thing is to keep the relationship going.
 
With me it is more like this…

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The straight line is me praying etc, I am very regimented otherwise I wouldn’t pray. The wavy line is my feelings of trust and confidence due to getting kicked in the teeth when I pray or not.
 
To me, habits of praying and saying the daily Rosary will
help me stay on the straight and narrow.
 
The Doctors of the Church on prayer remind us that the Lord takes away the feelings of warmth and comfort he gives us occasionally, and desires that you keep up your prayer life and the sacraments in spite of not feeling anything. That is how we grow spiritually in faith, hope, and love.

The Lord knows when to let up and grant you a good feeling. Trust Him…and you will have a deeper peace.
 
what does your spiritual life consist of?
Sanctity does not consist in filling our life doing religious things; holiness is about unmasking, uprooting and removing everything from our heart that separates us from God and neighbor. Thus the sacraments, prayer life, good books are the means we are to use to make progress. Filling our mind with interesting theological facts is worthless if it doesn’t lead us to have a transformation of heart.

Someone who spends all their time in church doing pious religious activities, who is the same person they were 6 months ago—the same gossiper, full of unforgiveness, resentments, vanities, etc. are following the example of the Pharisees, not of Christ.

The daily adventure of one who walks with Christ is the experience of a daily introspective reflection about one’s self to identify and engage in a battle to the death against the old self. Here is a brief talk by Archbishop Sheen who gets to the core of what this means: AUDIO
 
Thanks for the audio link. I’m not sure if you’re assuming that I want to fill my life with spiritual activities so I can “check off the god box” but that is not the case. If it were I would be satisfied with doing the minimum of what I’m required. I would like to be someone who pleases God, and so I am looking for help in being consistent in my habits of prayer etc so that I may be continually recollected toward God in my heart and mind. Do you have any suggestions?
 
I think the best thing to do is to keep it simple. Make reading the Bible every day a priority, and praying the daily Rosary being conscious of the 15 promises attached to the Rosary that are gifts for those who persevere with it. One thing to NOT do is to overload yourself with too many devotions on your schedule that you end up overwhelming yourself and stop doing them. You can then sprinkle different devotions throughout the month to keep your prayer life fresh.

Here is a good audio of the different levels of prayer and how to mix things up when you get in a rut. AUDIO
 
I’m in a similar place. Working through Three Ages of the Interior Life.

Yes, as you advance spiritually, it’s normal for God to withdraw consolations. He wants you to want Him for Him, and not for favors or good feelings.

Keep going on this path! This may be a real, solid sign of sanctity!

Peace, Love, and Joy (when it returns to you…)

then bring some of all of the above back to share with us 🙂
 
Suppose I have a bad habit–biting my nails, and I decide to stop. I may give myself a reward each hour I don’t bite my fingernails.

But i would only do that for a few days, then I would increase it so I got the reward only every 3 hours, then every 6, and so on. Hopefully I would get to the point that I would no longer need a reward because I had attained the good habit of not biting my fingernails, right?

So maybe God is telling you that you are ready to fly solo, that you are ready to learn to pray for Him rather than for the consolations you get.
 
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