How to Encounter God?

[ethereality]

I’m tired of mental games trying to convince myself logically that God exists, and when I go before the Blessed Sacrament or receive the Eucharist, I experience only the appearances of bread and wine. When I pray, I talk to the air, and when I listen, I listen to my own thoughts.

So how am I supposed to interact with God who apparently refuses to allow me to experience anything other than other humans and physical objects?

 

[ConstantineTG]

[BIBLEDRB]Matthew 25:34-40[/BIBLEDRB]

 

[antonivs]

I’m tired of mental games trying to convince myself logically that God exists, and when I go before the Blessed Sacrament or receive the Eucharist, I experience only the appearances of bread and wine. When I pray, I talk to the air, and when I listen, I listen to my own thoughts.

So how am I supposed to interact with God who apparently refuses to allow me to experience anything other than other humans and physical objects?

By Faith!  If you can prove God exists logically, then you don't have faith, but knowledge.  

as Jesus said to Thomas after the resurrection:

You believe because you can see me.
Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe.

source: John 20:29

 

[ethereality]

I’ve tried remaining silent before the Blessed Sacrament and listening carefully for the Holy Spirit, or simply trying to be happy in the presence of the Lord, but all that occurs is either mental fatigue or a sense of peace that apparently comes from relaxation (i.e. I could feel the same thing simply relaxing in my bedroom).

I feel like God made me too smart, that “faith” is simply the phenomena of people becoming convinced that unprovable things are true. I’m choosing to live my life in accordance with Catholic dogma hoping that it’s true, but I feel like a closet agnostic, having no way of knowing that any of it’s true – trying to read about miracles, e.g. Fatima, it’s all unprovable, always “trusting someone’s story”.

 

[ethereality]

So far, you’ve reinforced the following ideas:

• We can only interact with other humans.
• We must choose to believe in something that we won’t know to be true until after we die (if we’re correct in our beliefs), unless God grants us private revelation.

So we cannot encounter God in any obvious or direct way – again, the Eucharist still appears to be bread, not God. Why would God make life so difficult for us today?

 

[ConstantineTG]

So far, you’ve reinforced the following ideas:

• We can only interact with other humans.
• We must choose to believe in something that we won’t know to be true until after we die (if we’re correct in our beliefs), unless God grants us private revelation.

So we cannot encounter God in any obvious or direct way – again, the Eucharist still appears to be bread, not God. Why would God make life so difficult for us today?

Wait, we can interact with God even if we can only interact with humans. Read my previous post. Thats how Jesus wants us to interact with Him!

 

[TimothyH]

The words of Christ are as real today as they were to the disciples twenty centuries ago.

Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:27-28)

Jesus invites Thomas the doubter to come forward, to touch, and to see that he is real. I remember that verse once in a while as I gently shuffle toward the altar to receive our Lord in the Eucharist. The verse above could just as well have been written…

Then the Priest to the parishoner, “Body of Christ.” The parishoner answered and said to him, “Amen!”

Jesus invited Thomas to experience his body and nothing has changed since then.

-Tim-

 

[edithsteinrocks]

I totally undertand your frustration with regards to the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. I struggled with that one forEVER - until a couple of weeks ago, actually. I was really ticked off at myself for not “getting it,” so one time when I was deep in prayer, I threw up my hands at God and told him he was going to have to explain this one to me because I just wasn’t GETTING IT!!! I wasn’t believing it - not out of spite or lack of willingness; it simply wasn’t making any sense. I knew that whatever it was that I wasn’t getting about the Eucharistic Presence would have to come from God because nothing and no one could convince me that what I was seeing in front of my eyes at Mass contained the true presence of Christ. And I really, truly wanted to believe that it did.

Something happened during that frustrated, angry prayer. Whether it was God knocking me upside the head or the Holy Spirit enlightning me, I have no idea, but out of bloody NOWHERE this thought exploded into my brain like lightning:

“Just as a human soul is hidden in the body, so is the Christ hidden in the bread.”

And that was it for me.

I hope and will pray that God sheds the light you seek on this. Not sure if my little epiphany helped, but I just wanted to let you know that you’re not the only one who struggles and loses sleep over matters of the faith. I’m still struggling with the Resurrection, but I continue to trust that God will enlighten me on this as he did with regards to the Eucharist.

 

[Zooey]

[bibledrb]Matthew 25:34-40[/bibledrb]

OP, it is not necessarily the case that we are going to “feel” like we are encountering God. We just are. He is with us, unto the end of the age.

I suffer from clinical depression, & as of late, I sometimes feel like…:blush:something you may step in at the south end of a northbound horse. (Actually, to be truthful, I feel that way more often than not:shrug.
God is still real.
God is still alive.
Christ still died for me.
I have the hope of Heaven, thanks to Him.

And I feel like ****…So what???

OK, that’s all the “pep talk” I have in me right now…

 

[Monica4316]

I’m tired of mental games trying to convince myself logically that God exists, and when I go before the Blessed Sacrament or receive the Eucharist, I experience only the appearances of bread and wine. When I pray, I talk to the air, and when I listen, I listen to my own thoughts.

So how am I supposed to interact with God who apparently refuses to allow me to experience anything other than other humans and physical objects?

hmm… maybe you’re focusing on the logic part too much? I noticed that God’s existence makes a lot of logical sense BUT He wants us to believe by faith, so the logic doesn’t seem so logical to a person whose faith isn’t strong. We know God primarily by loving Him, that is when we experience Him. When we don’t believe, we block His graces and the experience/knowledge of His presence. Maybe you could try simply reaching out to Him more in your heart, trusting Him, - and asking for faith? the intellectual understanding will come when your intellect has been illumined by grace. Without faith, our intellect is darkened so we do not sufficiently understand spiritual things. It says in Scripture, “the wisdom of God is foolishness to men”, and in John 1, how the darkness has not comprehended the light. Since we are born with original sin, we all have some of this darkness. So we need grace and faith to help us see God, our sins, etc… St Augustine said: “we believe in what we do not see, and the reward of our faith is to see what we believe”. I say all this as someone who struggled with belief in God’s existence when I first became a Christian.

God bless

 

[ethereality]

this thought exploded into my brain like lightning:

“Just as a human soul is hidden in the body, so is the Christ hidden in the bread.”

And that was it for me.

Mm, nice thought, thanks. It’s more confusing – or sublime? – than that, though, because we actually are body and soul united as one being*, whereas we’re taught the bread actually isn’t there: Jesus is there appearing as bread. Literally, you’ve described consubstantiation, while we believe in Transsubstantiation:

When we sit before the Blessed Sacrament, our body is physically present, our soul spiritually present in union with our body. When the Blessed Sacrament is before us, the bread is no longer physically present; rather, Jesus is present in His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity (i.e. His Person) – I suppose “glorified-physically”** for the first two, spiritually and divinely for the third and fourth …

Jesus “hidden in the bread” would literally be the Lutheran theory of “consubstantiation” (con = with), i.e. both the bread and Jesus are present. Catholics believe in “Transsubstantiation” (trans = through, from one to another), the object’s substance changing from bread to Jesus. (It’s easy to see why the error of consubstantiation is popular, as with Mohammedanism: It’s easier to believe. I’m not accusing you of believing this; simply wishing to be careful with language, and hoping this post may benefit someone who doesn’t already know all this…)

• note Bl. John Paul II’s theology of the body: not two things, as if the soul were “invisibly inside of the body”, but one being altogether: my body is just as much “me” as my soul is, and thinking of “me” one cannot consider my body and soul separately.
  ** “glorified-physically present” (phrase I’m coining off-the-cuff to distinguish from simply “physically present” according to the laws of nature): hence he can appear as bread, just as he could appear as some stranger to the disciples on the road to Emmaus and walk through walls to visit his disciples locked away in their inner chamber, which we can see as corresponding to our visits to Jesus in Adoration Chapels…

Thanks very much everyone, for your time and posts. I’m still reading through them, and I’ve got to sleep now …

 

[Edward_H]

I’m tired of mental games trying to convince myself logically that God exists, and when I go before the Blessed Sacrament or receive the Eucharist, I experience only the appearances of bread and wine. When I pray, I talk to the air, and when I listen, I listen to my own thoughts.

So how am I supposed to interact with God who apparently refuses to allow me to experience anything other than other humans and physical objects?

God speaks to us through people too…mainly our spouse. When you develop a regular prayer life…often inspirations and resolutions will come to you. Who gives you those?

Yesterday’s Mass readings were right on this point.

Reading 1 1 Kgs 19:9a, 11-13a

At the mountain of God, Horeb,
Elijah came to a cave where he took shelter.
Then the LORD said to him,
“Go outside and stand on the mountain before the LORD;
the LORD will be passing by.”
A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains
and crushing rocks before the LORD–
but the LORD was not in the wind.
After the wind there was an earthquake–
but the LORD was not in the earthquake.
After the earthquake there was fire–
but the LORD was not in the fire.
**After the fire there was a tiny whispering sound.
When he heard this,
Elijah hid his face in his cloak
and went and stood at the entrance of the cave.
**

 

[wcknight]

Seems to me you are looking for that personal miracle or supernatural event to happen right before your eyes before you can believe.

I think you have plenty of company. Just about everyone wants to be sure that what they believe in, is in fact 100% true. St. Thomas was told the Lord appeared to everyone else but he would not believe until he could see Him with his own eyes.

We believe historians because their stories can be verified from several sources. There may be hundred or even thousands of folks who witnessed the event and so we can be reasonably sure that what the historians report is true. And we believe that a cake recipe is real because we can follow the instructions and create the cake as specified.

But with God, we get stories from folks who lived hundreds of years ago. The actual witnesses have long since passed away, and there is no experiment or process that we can follow to prove to ourselves that what folks say or believe is actually true.

That is until the moment when we all will encounter God at the time of our demse. At least that is the case for the vast majority of us.

How do we know God is what folks claim Him to be and how can we tell IF our prayers are being heard ???

For the poor smucks like you and me, who probably will never have an up close and personal private revelation from the Almighty, we have to rely on the testimony and experiences of the few folks who really do have those private revelations.

Read up on the lives of the great saints, the miracle workers who have had real encounters with God. Some lived right up to the last century. Look up the stories and lives of the saints who have seen Our Lord or Our Lady in apparitions. The more you know about the lives of these saints and what they experienced, the less doubt you will have about what is real and what is fantasy.

The more I read about the great saints the less I find it necessary for God to show me in person, who and what He is all about. I have been fortunate in that several folks who have had private revelations have told me about them. I do not relate them here because they are not formally sanctioned. The folks that I received them from are very close friends or co-workers that I know personally to be very sincere and honest folks.

I have no doubt that when my time comes, God will be there just as everyone else claims He will. There was a time when I too wanted a personal encounter, but now I find that is not necessary.

BTW there are many Eucharistic miracles. There are web sites where many of these are described. acfp2000.com/Miracles/eucharistic.html

 

[ethereality]

BTW there are many Eucharistic miracles. There are web sites where many of these are described. acfp2000.com/Miracles/eucharistic.html

These things always seem to be “on thin ice” – see home.earthlink.net/~mlbakke1/r_para8.htm for example, discussing common critiques of miracles like the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano; the stories’ obscurity is similar to that of alien abduction stories or conspiracy theories: Could be true, but is likely unverifiable (blurry photographs notwithstanding)… I suppose I could make a longwinded investigation of it and apply rigorous critical thinking myself, but there’s always so much to do …

 

[Holly3278]

Most people would call me a Catholic since that is what I am.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

I feel like God made me too smart, that “faith” is simply the phenomena of people becoming convinced that unprovable things are true. I’m choosing to live my life in accordance with Catholic dogma hoping that it’s true, but I feel like a closet agnostic, having no way of knowing that any of it’s true – trying to read about miracles, e.g. Fatima, it’s all unprovable, always “trusting someone’s story”.

I can relate to that. I’ve always been technical, and I have a master’s degree in engineering. I’ve worked on equipment that controlled the dropping of bombs from B-52 airplanes, and you can bet I refused to sign off on anything unless all the i’s were dotted and the t’s crossed. The very rare times I was “ordered” to sign off on something I wasn’t totally convinced about, I signed with “U.P.” after my name, meaning, “under protest.” Didn’t make my boss happy that I signed it that way, but that was how I was able to obey my boss while preserving my integrity – and possibly avoiding trouble if it came back and bit us.

But I know one person who went to Catholic school, became agnostic and then dared to call himself atheist, but it was just that he didn’t believe in God. He wasn’t saying there is no God, as much as he just didn’t believe there is – at least in the way that most of us have our personal “images” of Him, if you will. But whenever someone would cut down those who do believe in God, or say that one has to be an idiot to believe in God, this person would counter with, “atheism is just as much a religion as any denomination.” I pondered that long and hard, and came to have a lot of respect for him. He didn’t believe in God, but even though we cannot prove the existence of God except through faith, neither can we prove the non-existence of God.

One book that helped me recognize how easy it is to deny or simply fail to perceive things that are beyond our physical ability to experience, was the book Flatland by mathematician and theologian Edwin A. Abbot, which was written over 100 years ago. It’s about a two dimensional world where they go deeply into the ins and outs of daily living, the culture, and other aspects of what it’s like in a land with two dimensions. Then a three dimensional being, a sphere, makes contact with one of these beings and tries to explain the third dimension. It was fascinating to me as a child because of the math and geometry involved, and then again when I read it as an adult and I picked up on all the cultural, political, and religious implications the book brought up. It is in the public domain and has had many printings and is free in many places online; my favorite of the ones I saw published had a foreword by Isaac Asimov, but I don’t know if that one is still in print.

Just a couple months ago my enthusiasm was renewed when I watched a half hour YouTube video about particle physics, by a very engaging speaker. He told about the current efforts with colliders and talked about the elusive “Higgs Boson” and other theoretical things. He talked some about “string theory,” (which I personally am a bit skeptical about but it seems to be popular among physicists at the moment) which requires the existence of at least 11 dimensions – 10 space plus one time – to make it all fit together.

edit: It wasn’t a YouTube video. Turns out I found it in my stumbleupon.com favorites. See for yourself, if you’d like – documentaryheaven.com/the-mystery-of-empty-space/

I bring this up, because it occurred to me that no physicist can honestly say there must be dimensions we can’t perceive, and at the same time claim that there must not be a God. By definition, if we know/believe there are dimensions we cannot perceive, then it is absurd to claim there is no God, or even that there are no sentient beings who are able to connect to these dimensions and operate within them.

It’s like in Flatland, where the three dimensional sphere can tell the two dimensional being what is in his kitchen cabinets without being “in” his 2-D house. He can touch the two dimensional being on his insides. The square told the Sphere “you must be a god,” to which the sphere replied to the effect, if I were a god, then even the villains in Spaceland would be gods.

So in my opinion it is absolutely illogical and unprofessional for a person who claims to be a physicist who believes in more than the four dimensions we’re used to – 3 space and one time – and at the same time claim there is no God.

I’m not trying to prove the existence of God with my arguments. To our faculties, that must be done by faith as the others have said. But I do claim that being “really smart” and claiming there is no God are not compatible. Skeptical, sure – especially when you see some of the crazy things people do in the name of their “God.” I conclude that we don’t have to make a decision between believing in God through faith, and considering ourselves thinking, logical, beings. Yes, we can have it both ways.

Alan

 

[curlycool89]

I’m tired of mental games trying to convince myself logically that God exists, and when I go before the Blessed Sacrament or receive the Eucharist, I experience only the appearances of bread and wine. When I pray, I talk to the air, and when I listen, I listen to my own thoughts.

So how am I supposed to interact with God who apparently refuses to allow me to experience anything other than other humans and physical objects?

Heh. I’m not sure how much this will help you, but I’ll say it anyways.

You see, God does not refuse to do something; He simply does things when the time is right. Don’t think your the only one frustrated with God, as there are many Catholics, including priests, who are trying to pry information out of God unsuccessfully.

You see, God is infinitely patient. It doesn’t matter how long you think you can last, He can last longer.

26 You are loving with those who love you:
you show yourself perfect with the perfect.
27 With the sincere you show yourself sincere,
but the cunning you outdo in cunning.
28 For you save a humble people
but humble the eyes that are proud.

Just a verse that came to mind when thinking about this.

He’s got eternity, and He’ll wait for you. Or rather, He’ll wait you out. He’s not going to force Himself on you, because that is not what He does. It’s why He gave us free will, because we cannot truly seek God with all out mind, hearts, souls, and strength if we don’t have a choice.

Hmm, see, this is the hard part for you. Faith changes a person, and that’s scary. You like who you are, we all do. It’s fairly natural. What’s got to happen is that you have to allow yourself to be changed. What it sounds like right now is that you’re almost trying to do a battle of the wills with God, and well, you’re going to loose that one.

I hope you keep going and keep trying. We need Catholics around here who understand that logic is compatible with faith.