E
ethereality
Guest
Edit: Sorry for the omission regarding age 12 in the above poll ("<12 years old" and “13-28 years old”): If you are 12, please select the “<12 years old” category.
How can I grow in faith during great suffering? I’m praying for healing every day, given what the Bible says about it, but every day that my petitions are not granted is a new occasion to be tempted to despair and to doubt the truthfulness of the Church (who compiled the Bible and promulgates its veracity), and hence doubt the existence of God. I quit going to Daily Mass because I finally got sick of the suffering caused by the transit and the failed hopes after receiving the Eucharist. It was more than I could bear.
Similarly, before that I quit praying the Rosary and the Divine Office and sitting silently before the Tabernacle, because I was tired of the silence (I can recall no communication from God in any form) and the apparent fruitlessness of my time spent praying. In short, the more I seek God, the more apparent His absence is.
Now all I do is:
How can I grow in faith during great suffering? I’m praying for healing every day, given what the Bible says about it, but every day that my petitions are not granted is a new occasion to be tempted to despair and to doubt the truthfulness of the Church (who compiled the Bible and promulgates its veracity), and hence doubt the existence of God. I quit going to Daily Mass because I finally got sick of the suffering caused by the transit and the failed hopes after receiving the Eucharist. It was more than I could bear.
Similarly, before that I quit praying the Rosary and the Divine Office and sitting silently before the Tabernacle, because I was tired of the silence (I can recall no communication from God in any form) and the apparent fruitlessness of my time spent praying. In short, the more I seek God, the more apparent His absence is.
Now all I do is:
*]attend Mass on Sundays, offering up my sufferings and praying for their cessation
*]read daily excerpts from the Bible every morning, usually before I do or read anything else
*]pray petitionary prayer (requesting the intercession of two venerable people, and sometimes interceding for others myself), particularly for healing
*]try to thank God for minor blessings throughout the day (when things work out in my favor, e.g. getting a convenient parking spot for my bicycle or catching a green light during transit)
*]talk to God at various moments throughout the day, e.g. when something particularly delights, frustrates, or worries me
To clarify my situation, my suffering is so severe that it has made me suicidal*, since many of my problems only God can heal (literally, there is no cure for them). I am seeking medical care for depression, but I see this at futile, since they are taking a symptomatic approach (e.g. medicine to induce a drowsy apathetic stupor to decrease suicidal thoughts) whereas my depression is in fact situational: I am sad and wanting to die because of my problems, not because of a chemical imbalance. Solve the problems the depression will vanish. Regrettably, it seems to take time to convince physicians of this, especially when my native language is a difficult second language for them, and vice versa. The psychiatrist promised assistance in helping me find solutions to many of my problems, but the worst of them are incurable, as I’ve said.
Fr. Serpa has advised me to contemplate the Passion as evidence of God’s love for me, but I don’t see in it what he does: I see instead an incomprehensible and sadistic depiction of justice. (It seems a design flaw in our species – a failure of the divine intellect – to have everyone’s damnation and redemption depend on single members, namely Adam and Jesus. Since I cannot attribute a mistake to God, I am left with the incomprehensibility of it. I read through the Quran wondering if Mohammedans were correct in their condemnation of Christianity, but Mohammedanism seems even worse and more likely flawed than Christianity.)
I have been encouraged to see the blessings given me by others (e.g. parents, local church community) as proof of God’s love for me, and that I should be encouraged to think that He hasn’t yet healed my physical ailments for very good reasons, and regard the blessing from others as a ‘pick-me-up’-“hang in there” note from God, but there are two objections to this thinking:
*]Distinct agency. It seems unreasonable to insist that everything bad humans do is from their agency (“not God”), whereas everything good that they do is from God’s agency (“not man”). (How are we to distinguish between love from God and man if all we see are man’s actions?)
*]It seems to insult those who do not receive such blessings insofar as it implies that God doesn’t love them. (How are we to affirm God’s love for those who don’t benefit from the acts of men?)
I’ve already read some literature on suffering from Kreeft, Lewis, and St. John Paul II, but this does not end my pain or provide emotional support: It only clarifies intellectual objections for those seeking to learn how Christian philosophy explains suffering. Perhaps I will try to get a copy of Lewis’ A Grief Observed, though, since I’ve not read it yet and have heard it’s an experiential response to suffering rather than intellectual survey of it.- Expressing it as a simple equation: I don’t want to continue suffering (living with) these problems + these problems have no human cure + God has not cured them = I don’t want to continue living
but everyone’s different.
