I was a faithful child, no doubt. I think my faith dipped a bit when I was a teenager, and rebounded when I was a university student. Once I graduated from university, I felt I was more “open” to other ideas and I lost some faith. I was into political ideals and some of them took away from my belief in the Church and her infalliability.
When I got married, my faith rebounded again. Now a year and a bit later, it is rescinding.
I noticed when people have babies, their faith grows. It is such a blessing.
A lot of elderly and young people have such devotion. I think people my age are less devout. ( I am 27 ) .
What are your thoughts or experiences on this? I mean, obviously not everyone follows this pattern.
You my sister are a normal human being. As a child we learn about faith, and as we mature so must our faith. But remember we are talking faith, not knowledge. Faith is that simple, childlike, trusting, hoping belief in something we can’t prove.
The vitality of our faith is determined on how we focus on our relationship to God. If we don’t have that intimate relationship with Him, faith becomes very weak. If we are distracted by the world around us, our busy schedule or anything else, our faith suffers if we take out “eyes” off of God and concentrate so exclusively on those distractions.
So yes, those years we spend as post secondary students, be it college, trade school, etc., and the years we are starting families and careers can be terribly distracting and encourage us to take our eyes off the prize so to speak, eternal life. Robert Novak’s recent conversion came after years of struggle, study and discernment, but his actual conversion was finally triggered by a young woman he did not know who told him “life is short, eternity is long”. That caused him to pay attention to the most important thing we have to do in this life, and that is make it to heaven, and bring everyone we can with us!
I have said many times, draw a line that is infinite if you can, (goes on forever). Now draw a line on that line which represents in scale the length of your life on this earth. It cannot be anything but a microscopic dot, even if you live to a hundred. So how you “invest” that dot, determines how you will spend all of eternity, (that infinite line). But when you are up to your ears in career, babies, school lunches, improving the paycheck, the common struggles of life, it’s difficult to look so far into the future, but remember, life is short and eternity is long!
If you keep your focus on God, your faith will grow, and grow, and it will be easier to be faithful in your relationship with God. So yes, baby faith is sweet and innocent, but mature, adult faith is even more so. It’s those crazy years in between that cause all our troubles.
God Bless You All in Your Journey
