How to have faith?

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Elena321

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The Pope has said:

"There is no room for doubt; let us leave that to the skeptics who, by looking to reason alone, never find the truth. There is no room for the indifference which reigns in the hearts of those unable to love for fear of losing something.”

What does it mean?
I feel I don’t have faith or even know what it mean.I was a Catholic/born into a Catholic culture but am not a Church goer and am somewhat disillusioned.
Sometimes I believe in God due to feeling that things like the human body and nature are too ordered to be just a random occurance and not a creation,but that’s just a mental observation from reason,i don’t have faith itself.

At the same time,i also doubt Gods existence because He seems to help/heal things that can be helped by medical profession but never helps those things/people that cant be helped
( Dementia,Alzheimers,Schizophrenia,Autism,paraplegia,motorneuron disease and so on).

Whenever I hear the Catholic Church declare someone has received a miracle due to a Saints intervention,i feel sceptical because it always things like cancer that are healed and not Dementias (for example).
Cancers can go into remission on their own.
Dementia cure would be a true miracle as we know it cant be helped by “earthy means”.
I believe the Church is wellmeaning and honest but may have “confirmation bias” due to their faith.
Stories like below if true and not just a media sensationalisation are troubling also.

telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1562284/Mother-Teresa-miracle-patient-accuses-nuns.html
 
“Ask and you shall receive.”

God is Light. He reveals Himself to all who seek Him. By permitting these doubts it may be that God wants you to seek Him more fervently.

Forget about miracles of healing for now; do some reading on Eucharistic miracles. Also, keep this in mind. If Jesus is God, you can trust Him and His Church. If Eucharistic miracles have occurred (they have), Jesus is God.

The CERC website might answer some of your questions. There are plenty of different articles there.

Merry Christmas!

Ps. The miracles of St. Padre Pio include the restoration of a blind girl’s sight - a girl without pupils.
 
Elena321,

God does what He wills for our good! He says “My ways are not your ways.”

We finite beings do not see the bigger picture. God is Infinite and All Good; trust Him!

Pray for faith and wisdom.

May you be specially blessed this Christmas!

Peace!

Dorothy
 
When you find yourself doubting as k your self, “what kind of God or what image of God am I doubting?”

And then ask, “What would God have to be like for me to believe?”
 
Elena321 said:
The Pope has said:

"There is no room for doubt; let us leave that to the skeptics who, by looking to reason alone, never find the truth. There is no room for the indifference which reigns in the hearts of those unable to love for fear of losing something.”

What does it mean?
I feel I don’t have faith or even know what it mean.I was a Catholic/born into a Catholic culture but am not a Church goer and am somewhat disillusioned.
Sometimes I believe in God due to feeling that things like the human body and nature are too ordered to be just a random occurance and not a creation,but that’s just a mental observation from reason,i don’t have faith itself.
Click to expand...
Faith is a grace, it is a gift from God. It exists in our intellect, and it’s the gift that allows us to give assent to a revealed truth.

In order to have stronger faith, we need to merit it. This means disposing ourselves to it with a vibrant spiritual life, and asking God to give it to us. Although He doesn’t owe it, He will give it, because He loves us, and He wants us to have such treasures.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever played an instrument. But when we first pick one up, we obviously can do absolutely nothing with it. It seems foreign, weird, difficult to manipulate. But the more we practice, the better we become, and the more the instrument becomes an extension of our feelings, will, and intellect.

Faith is kind of like that. We need to actually cultivate it spiritually, just as many people cultivate doubt. To me, it’s completely alien to think of what life would be like with no faith. For others, they can’t imagine what it’s like to have it. In fact, over my life, I’ve been on both sides of that divide.

But we can never cultivate faith unless we put in the effort, both spiritually and intellectually.

We are experiencing a wonderful Jubilee Year of Mercy! What a wonderful time to start over. Start by going to Confession, and letting Jesus heal you. Go meet Him, no matter how difficult you might think it is, and you will soon see a faith growing in you that you never thought possible. Don’t be afraid to try, because people are willing to do everything these days aside from the one thing that will give them the greatest reward. There is no reward or treasure or gift greater than Jesus. Please don’t be afraid of Him, but go and experience His great love and mercy. He really is just absolutely aching for you to do so.

Merry Christmas, Elena! I will be praying for you every day during this Christmas season. :hug3:
 
Not sure how interested you are in long philosophical treatises, but Fides et Ratio (Faith and reason) by John Paul II is pretty interesting. It has some good points even if Catholicism itself is not true.

God could exist and not be a being who miraculously heals people. He might leave it up to us to try to heal ourselves, and we interpret our healing as miraculous or due to divine intervention even if it is natural recovery. He ultimately would have given us existence and life, and the intelligence to figure out how to help one another and ourselves. There may be stories of people with seemingly incurable illnesses (alzheimers etc.) being healed out there, (someone mentioned Padre Pio and a blind girl)–but I am not aware of them. Does that mean there is no God? No, I think there could still be a God, whether he interacts with us by healing us is another question. Just because some people may mistakenly ascribe healing to God does not mean God does not exist.

I wonder what you mean by faith? Do you mean consistently believing there is a God of some kind? do you mean trust in this God, that it is a benevolent being? or do you mean a belief in the Nicene creed?
 
Faith isn’t about healing, or wealth either. If we need these then our faith is weak. Proof is nothing but a substitute for faith. Faith means we don’t need miracles in our lives to believe.

Our Lord is asking for you to believe and trust him. To do this he has given us a special grace of faith … the power to believe. The more you believe the more you will believe … out of love.

Weak faith means weak love. The greater the love the more you believe in a person.

Jesus believes in you and me because he loved us so much. Just look at Christmas. God, Jesus, born of a human to become one of us and with us. God himself loved us so much he became one of us. He loved us so much he was willing to show you and me just how much by taking that wooden crib and turning it into a wooden cross and laying himself down upon it. Love dosen’t become any stronger than that. Now all he says is to believe him and receive him into your heart so that some day he can bring you into his own home to experience a happiness beyond your wildest dreams. To love you even more.

Love and you will find your faith without miracles.
 
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