...my desire for the Eucharist is all I am holding onto right now

[RobNY]

I understand why you want to go back to the pagan meditation-- once having used a spiritual method we become drawn back to it again. We view prayer and meditation superstitiously, as if it is a particular trick which will bring us union and peace with the divine. Whenever I’ve prayed and enjoyed my prayer, I’ve found a very strong inclination to try to “imitate” or “mimic” what I did last time which “made it good.” But prayer is first and foremost a relationship. We should no more expect techniques to work before God than before our most loved ones-- friends, family, spouses. Entering into a deep loving union with our beloved is about spending time with them and being as open and authentic as we can be. God wants exactly this out of us.

Techniques of meditation, all these things, they play to something which we all want to do-- to get something out of nothing. To control things without submitting our wills to others. We all want to be self-centered and not open ourselves to others. Techniques or incantations are about control over others. Prayer must always be a loving exchange. God has lately helped me to see how selfish I am, even in my spiritual life.

Your love of the Eucharist is something real and authentic, along with your concern about God, it shows that you really do care. I really recommend that you immerse yourself in what the Church teaches about prayer, and engage in a deep prayer life. Such a cavernous hole exists in all of us, and if we don’t fill it with God we will fill it with something else. The richness and beauty of the Catholic prayer tradition is like a hidden gem. Investigate it and live it-- you won’t be disappointed. These issues keep coming back, perhaps, because you desire much greater intimacy with the One who created you, and yet you only know substantially non-Christian meditation, so your mind and heart cry out to do that. Investigate the prayer tradition which produces poetry like this:

O living flame of love
that tenderly wound my soul
in its deepest center! Since
now you are not oppressive,
now consummate! if it be your will:
tear through the veil of this
sweet encounter!

How gently and lovingly
you wake in my heart,
where in secret you dwell alone’
and in your sweet breathing,
filled with good and glory,
how tenderly you swell my heart
with love.

And this:

He who is sick with love,
whom God himself has touched,
finds his taste so changed
that they fall away
like a fevered man’s
who loathes any food he sees
and desires I-don’t know-what
which is so gladly found

St. John entered into a deep relationship with God by living a faithful prayer life and imitating Jesus. While we won’t all reach the heights of a St. John of a Cross, we can’t take our eyes off the goal, the one thing necessary, God-- remember he has something awesome prepared for you which “eye has not seen, ear has not heard.”

And please, pray for me. God bless.

-Rob

 

[MarieVeronica]

Ask our Holy Mother, Mary… to place you under her protection. She’s awesome. Just as Jesus came to us, through Mary… we too, can go to Jesus… through Mary.

As St. Louis de Montfort taught… there is no quicker, easier route to Jesus… then through His Blessed Mother. May God give you peace.

 

[DJgang]

Esther Rose, this is all part of your Spiritual Maturity in Christ. Dont’ beat yourself up so hard.

But don’t start going and casting circles…what does that represent to you?

It’s all just a way to make you feel peaceful…but Who’s missing? You know…

And, what about the peace that you found talking to the Blessed Mother?

Never convince yourself that you shouldn’t go to Mass! Please tell us that you did go…

I still think you need to start praying some deliverence prayers. I am serious! I have never been more serious in all my life! I’ve been praying deliverence prayers for about a month now. It’s been a nice cleansing, especially when you finally do see that evil exists (and as pagans, we didn’t believe in evil)…

okay, I’ll stop now. I am praying for you. Keep us posted on how you are feeling and dealing. We are all here for you!

 

[Muzhik]

Rose, Shalom!

I feel like lashing out. I love Jesus, and the Eucharist and the MASS and the Catholic Church, so much that it hurts. but right now, I am so angry and upset that I can’t do the other which I love so much as well.

I think you’re having what I call “a dolphin moment.” Back when I was in college and dinosaurs ruled the earth, in one of my ed psych classes we learned how when trainers are trying to teach a dolphin a new trick, one that requires them to do what they did before but this time turn right instead of left, the dolphins will go through a period of intense frustration – lashing out, etc. This is because learning something new (not just memorizing, but having it change the way you think and therefore change how you see the world) is very hard. If the trainers keep working, the frustration passes and now the dolphins can do two tricks instead of just one. If you can just hold on, this dolphin moment will pass.

I can’t make myself see paganism as wrong; I can’t. I loved it, I love it, I gave it five years of my life - heart, mind and soul went into study and practice.

Don’t think of it as wrong; think of it as immature. It was an attempt to learn about and know the Creator. Now you know a better, more complete way. In some ways, it reminds me of my attempts to lose weight. Many nights I feel an intense urge to buy a dozen chocolate chip cookies and spend the evening using old ways of comforting myself. I resist (most nights) because I don’t want to be in the physical shape I was. The old way will call to you because it’s comfort that you are comfortable with. Know that the new way will comfort you and comfort you better than the old way, but you can’t do both. Keep your eye on the prize.

<><

 

[Neophyte_Rose]

I just feel like… like I keep waking up and it’s cold. the more I turn around and put myself back to sleep, the colder I get.

I feel like everything - everything - is completely and utterly wrong.

Over the holidays, I visited other Catholics as well as my own nuclear family (my mother and small siblings)… and amongst all of my Catholic friends, only two people - an elderly woman who literally glows with an ethereal beauty, and her son who is a young, on-fire priest with the Companions of the Cross - only those two people cared even in the slightest about what I’ve been learning… concerning even the most basic dogmas of the Catholic faith!

This rejection has made me consider - am I wasting my time? I mean, sure, all this information will help me to understand the Catholic faith - my Catholic faith - in so much of a fuller, clearer way… in order for my faith to gain a realistic context in the world of today, I am certain that I need this formation, this information which I am gaining in my current location.

I mean - some of this knowledge is as simple as - how beautiful is this paricular Mass part, when we consider what it means and how it sounds to sing? and some of it is more complex, like our classes where we are introduced to Christology and the Christological heresies vs. the Christological Truth.

 

[Neophyte_Rose]

But all of it is important, because it helps me in my relation to other people - to attempt to comprehend where someone else stands is useless unless I know where I stand - and I stand with the Catholic Church, but I need to know more than just a name.

The Church isn’t just a rock with a splintered wooden signpost on it, reading “Catholic”. The Church is a living rock, with complex and intricate patterns, with a heartbeat and a breath, that only those who pay attention can feel.

I will never know all of what the Church is, of what it means to be Catholic. Who could? It would be like, trying to know everything about what it is to be human - before hitting the age of five!

We are children in the faith, all of us - or we are saints, in heaven. We each have varying degrees of childhood - some of us are graceful teenagers, able to help build up the Church and yet still submissive to the Head… some of us are adolescents, able to help where we can and yet still needing most of what we try to do to be done for us… some of us are five year olds, helping out with the baking by tasting the batter and licking the bowl…

…and many of us are two year olds, insistent that we know everything already and trying to decide what Catholic means all on our own and apart from our Mother or Father. Our favourite word is ‘no’, because we really don’t like to do what we’re told. (and lets face it, telling the authority figure ‘no’ is kind’ve fun!) when we’re offered help, we refuse it because we want whatever we’re doing to be ‘mine’ - but then we complain, kick and scream and blame God, when whatever we are doing falls apart.

I just want the basics of this rock, to help me face the context of the secular world in which we live. I want to know the rhythm of the heartbeat, the warmth and texture of the breath, of this living rock.

but why bother learning all of this if every time I try to share it with anybody, I get told to shut up and go away? even when I try to share it with people who say that they’re proud of me for learning what I am!

if the only people I can share this with are other scholars who will likely end up scattered throughout my nation - and throughout the world - then what is the point?

why learn something, obtain something so valuable and prescious - only to let it just sit there and rust? I don’t want my faith to be a trophy that I can show off, for something I did years ago but couldn’t really do again.

at least, with pagan information and knowledge, all the pagans want to hear about it, try it, learn it, figure it out, play with it, grow through it, experience it! at least with pagan knowledge, other people want to know too!

I was loving all that I am learning here, but why should I keep on learning what no one besides myself wants to know or believe or practice? what else can I do with it, if not share?

Unitarian Universalists all want to learn the same things together and share in what the others are learning - as long as it’s relativistic and not Catholic. Pagans all want to learn the same things together and share in what the others are learning, as long as it’s friendly to Paganism.

Why not Catholics? Why do so many - seemingly most - Catholics prefere to remain ignorant of their own faith? I don’t get it. It’s perplexing, troubling. How can the One Church, the True Church, be filled with so many vincibly ignorant people who honestly just don’t care - or who even get angry if someone so much as mentions a theological-sounding word?

 

[Neophyte_Rose]

I’m not saying we all need to be theology masters or anything. but why the closed attitude towards anything concerning our faith? why no curiousity at all?

I’m so frustrated. It’s not the Church’s fault. It’s mine. I’m not cut out to be the odd one out all the time, to be alone in the knowledge I gain and treasure. I’m a communicator, a writer, poet and song-writer, a public speaker, a talker. The only thing I am good at is gaining information - and then turning around and sharing it. I don’t really use it that well myself, unless you count trying my best to develop a strong prayer life - which again, is really communication with God more than anything. Communication and Communion.

I feel burnt out and tired and frustrated and ready to give up, and I only just started. I feel like, maybe everybody else is right. maybe I care too much. Maybe Catholicism and Christianity is a religion where a person is looked down upon for learning quickly and exploring deeply and sharing widely (amongst Catholics). Maybe if I want to go deeply into things, I should go to a faith that encourages it… or maybe I should remain Catholic, but not dig any deeper.

both prospects depress me, and so I keep going. but I’m starting to get so… exhausted. and I feel like - no one wants to hear it, anyway, so why bother saying it? lets just talk about the weather and the star trek episode and the monopoly board - and pretend that these things contain the secret to a deep and lasting love for one another. lets ignore our faith, even when it’s supposedly common between us, because no one wants to know. faith is for Christmas day, New Years day, and Sundays. for rhyming prayers at meal times and lighting candles in advent. but not for exploring.

I’m sorry. I’m venting, and looking for a reason or a person to blame my feelings on when really all I have is… I dunno… that maybe I am at fault and need to learn when not to communicate with people, when not to speak up or share.

I did go to Mass… my SD told me that now more than ever, I have to keep up my prayers - every single prayer that I normally pray every day, I have to keep praying every day all throughout this time of “spiritual dryness” and trial.

Pax Christi,
Esther Rose

 

[kage_ar]

With all the passion you have for learning and sharing, once you are a Confirmed Catholic, please call your Youth Minister and volunteer. Those of us who work with teens know those teens NEED young adults like you who are so passionate about the Faith!

 

[Muzhik]

I think the reaction you’re getting from most other Catholics comes from being a Cradle Catholic. Too many people who were born into Catholicism take their faith for granted. They cruise through Mass and the rituals without putting any effort into their faith, then they join some fundamentalist sect and complain that “they never taught us ANYTHING about Christ’s sacrifice on the cross when I was a Catholic.” Frankly, the only reason I know what I do is because I’ve always been one to poke and prod and make a nuisance of myself.

The great majority of converts I know and know about converted from some other Christian faith, or from some faintly Christian background. As a former pagan, perhaps you should study the lives of some of the missionary saints, to see just what they suffered (both spiritually and physically) to bring this Light to different people.

To be honest, when you were talking about “feeling cold” and the “on-fire” priest, all I could think of was this Polish martyr from a thousand years ago whose name I can’t recall. The king was convinced the queen was being unfaithful. He couldn’t find any proof, but he was convinced none-the-less. Finally, he called the queen’s confessor in and started interrogating him. The priest kept politely but firmly telling the king that the seal of the confessional was absolute – he could not reveal the queen’s confession. The king got so angry with the priest that he ordered the guards to hold the priest. The king then took a torch and held it against the priest’s chest until the skin turned black, but the priest refused to reveal the confession. The king finally ordered the priest to be put into the dungeon until his sense improved.

However, the next day, the king learned that the priest had died during the night. He was afraid of what would happen if anyone found out that he had killed the priest trying to get him to reveal a confession, so he ordered the priest’s body to be dumped in the river at night. The secret got out, though, and the people revolted and deposed the king.

I think of this priest’s example whenever I talk to people about the seal of the confessional. More to the point, this priest offered his life for all the people who had trusted him with their darkest secrets (even if they weren’t that dark, or even that secret). He did this because he had made a promise to G_D to do so.

You have been feeling abandoned because it seems no one believes as you do; that no one has the faith that you want to have. Ask your SD if he or she has a martyrology and see if in there you can find some sense of the depth of faith these people possessed – faith that often was in no way clear or simple or free of doubt. Yet when push came to shove (or knife came to slicing, as the case may be), they called upon G_D for grace and strength and faith, and were given these things in abundance.

Shalom;

<><

 

[RobNY]

I understand your venting. I have a small group of friends who are very committed to Catholicism, but to be honest, I never would have found it simply in my parish. One went to high school with me, others I’ve met at college.

Other than that, it can be hard to ‘make people interested.’ People often don’t want to be. Maybe it’s just the Cross. It’s repulsive to the world, but a joy to the Christian. Even to cradle Christians the Cross remains repulsive, as long as they are “of the world.”

My interests have become different than many others… but I suppose it’s just more of the gospel teaching that if we are of Christ, the world will despise us. All we can do is prayerfully intercede for our brother and hope in God’s mercy.

Perhaps the ideal is to recommit ourselves to lives of holiness, and thereby to attract people to the vision of Christ.

Your problem is definitely one that we’ve all encountered.

Jesus tells us not to be worried or anxious. He also says his yoke is light. I would take the time to focus on that-- don’t worry about whether you can convert your brother. Your zeal for the truth shows your commitment to God. Commit your brother to God in prayer and don’t be worried or anxious about him. God will do His part, trust Him. Converting or convincing our brother of the truth of the faith is something beyond all of our means, something only God can do-- it would make any of us exhausted just trying to do. Maybe through our secret prayers and living example our brothers will be brought around.

I’ll keep you in my prayers,

Rob

 

[Muzhik]

… but why bother learning all of this if every time I try to share it with anybody, I get told to shut up and go away? even when I try to share it with people who say that they’re proud of me for learning what I am!

At least they’re not chasing after you with a perfectly legal right to kill you.

if the only people I can share this with are other scholars who will likely end up scattered throughout my nation - and throughout the world - then what is the point?

Because you have no idea – NO idea – what G_D has planned for you and your knowledge. There will come a time when this gift of yours will become valuable, enormously valuable, universally valuable, because someone’s soul will be at stake. What’s more, it may very well be some incident where you will have no idea of how essential you have been to G_D’s plan, of how your simple word or kind gesture, inspired by your knowledge, will save thousands.

at least, with pagan information and knowledge, all the pagans want to hear about it, try it, learn it, figure it out, play with it, grow through it, experience it! at least with pagan knowledge, other people want to know too!

Feh. Pagan prima-donnas. Architects are prima-donnas too, always trying to create the most impressive work for their own glory. Catholics are engineers. There are no prima-donnas in engineering. If if doesn’t work it doesn’t matter how amazing it looks or how much it cost you to learn it. You have to work with other engineers to make the final project work.

I was loving all that I am learning here, but why should I keep on learning what no one besides myself wants to know or believe or practice? what else can I do with it, if not share?

Unitarian Universalists all want to learn the same things together and share in what the others are learning - as long as it’s relativistic and not Catholic. Pagans all want to learn the same things together and share in what the others are learning, as long as it’s friendly to Paganism.

Why not Catholics? Why do so many - seemingly most - Catholics prefer to remain ignorant of their own faith? I don’t get it. It’s perplexing, troubling. How can the One Church, the True Church, be filled with so many visibly ignorant people who honestly just don’t care - or who even get angry if someone so much as mentions a theological-sounding word?

Part of it is because when you grow up with caviar and foi gras it doesn’t seem as special as it really is. Even the Israelites got tired of manna from heaven and quail. Also, since you haven’t gown up in Catholicism, you haven’t had to deal with schoolmates who tell you you’re going to hell because you worship the Pope or people coming to your door who try to tell you how worshiping Mary is paganism. You haven’t spent years trying to tell people what the Catholic faith truly teaches, only to be told (usually very politely) that either you’re lying or you’ve been lied to by the Church, since they know for a fact that’s not what the Church teaches. (Jack Chick, on the other hand, knows everything about the Church and how evil it is.)

Please, please, PLEASE, don’t loose faith or become disheartened! The Church NEEDS people like you, who really appreciate the beauty of the Catholic Christian faith, who can walk among us and provide some light, even if you are unaware of the glory that surrounds you.

G_D’s Peace and Joy be with you!

<><

 

[BlaineTog]

Please pray for me, and if anyone can help to convince me of why… paganism is …evil… please – help!

Yeah, I personally find it much easier to resist temptation when I understand why something is wrong. For example, I’ve always known that lying is wrong (no duh, right?), but it wasn’t until I read what Kant had to say about it that it really clicked, and I’m not going to claim that I haven’t lied since, but it did really help me to just not do it.

So, why are pagan practices wrong? Well, let’s start by looking at the Catechism, since that’s probably going to give us the clearest answers.

Divination and magic

2115 God can reveal the future to his prophets or to other saints. Still, a sound Christian attitude consists in putting oneself confidently into the hands of Providence for whatever concerns the future, and giving up all unhealthy curiosity about it. Improvidence, however, can constitute a lack of responsibility.

2116 All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to “unveil” the future.48 Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.

Prayer is an asking, and God can answer “Yes,” “No,” or “Wait,” whichever is best for the situation. Humans have limited means in how we can obtain knowledge, and these means include looking around, asking people, and prayer. Trying to forcibly milk that knowledge out of the universe through means such as tarot cards is wrong not because knowledge is bad, but because what it amounts to is trying to twist God’s arm until he spits out what you want to know. If one needs to know something, God will drop it in their path, and while we’re certainly allowed to choose paths that lead closer to the knowledge rather than further, it is prideful to think that one has the right to cut through the bushes, grab God by the hair, and beat him until he gives it up.

It’s entirely understandable why someone might want to use these methods. They work, afterall (I don’t particularly think they do, but I haven’t tried them and there’s not any particular metaphysical reason why they shouldn’t work), and the pursuit of knowledge is something to be prized above almost all other human ventures. To seek the Truth is to seek God, after all. The difference is that divination methods aren’t seeking, but belligerent attempts to force knowledge. God knows what you need to know, and he’ll see to it that you will find it. Trying to go beyond what God wants is pure pride, putting your own caging of the situation above his.

2117 All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one’s service and have a supernatural power over others - even if this were for the sake of restoring their health - are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. Wearing charms is also reprehensible. Spiritism often implies divination or magical practices; the Church for her part warns the faithful against it. Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another’s credulity.

There are, in fact, two parts to the reason why we’re not allowed to use magic: first, the consorting with demons it may involve (possibly even without us knowing), and second, like with divination, it is the attempt to force something to happen which you should merely allow to happen.

First, any attempt to contact demons is obviously wrong. However, the way that these methods of magic function is unknown, by and large (at least, I think it is; I’m no expert). It is entirely possible that magic works because demons power it, something God allows for the preservation of free will.

Going back to divination techniques, it is also possible that the reason tarot cards often tell the truth is that they are not random, but in fact the ways in which the cards fall are carefully orchestrated by demonic forces. Satan largely tells the truth, though it may often be misleading, because the truth is much more persuasive than lies. In “Othello,” for example, Iago doesn’t actually lie more than a handful of times in the play, and yet he deftly convinces Othello with practically no evidence that his embarrassingly flawless new bride has been cheating on him, convincing him even to the point of murdering her in cold blood.

(second half below)

 

[BlaineTog]

(con’t from above)

The second reason why magic is gravely wrong is because it, again, is an attempt to force providence to do ones bidding. Prayer for a loved one who is dying is perfectly fine, and likely is even a good thing. But humans are small, our field of vision short and narrow, and we often cannot see even to the other side of the room, much less to the other side of the mountain. Thus, while I am certainly allowed to ask providence if they will let me climb it, and while I am certainly allowed to bring icepicks, oxygen cannisters, and snow boots, what right do I have to demand that God pick me up and place me on the other side?

Now, let me say that I really don’t think wanting to do these things – or even doing these things! – makes you a bad person. Far from it! Wanting to know the truth? Wanting to set things right? These are Virtues, virtues to be perfected and extended at every turn! However, the truth is that you always get what you need; all you need to do is cooperate. Magic and divination are not cooperation, but a hostile takeover. You’re not taking what you need, but what you want, what you think you need. Every prayer for an intercession would be best if it were to begin and end with, “But not my will but Yours be done.”

Aaaaand that was a lot of words for what’s not actually that complicated. Sorry, I’m an English/Philosophy major, talking too much is what we do.

My passions desire to praise the moon for her resplendent glory, her beauty as she represents the Queen of all goddesses in her sphere. My passions desire to touch the waters of the lake, to worship the water and receive power from it. My passions desire to light a fire, and dance around it with a circle of pagans, to worship the dancing flames and imitate them with my body as I feel their power course through me again.

I assume you’re familiar with C.S. Lewis, author of “Mere Christianity,” among other books. He has a poem in which he essentially praises Satan as the most beautiful creature in existence (possibly second to Jesus; I don’t know if he counts as a “creature”). And he was! Lucifer, the Morning Star, the first among the angels, with glittering silver wings and luminous feathers lighter than air and stronger than diamonds.

Creation is beautiful, is praiseworthy, is spiritual and glorious. How many people walk through an ancient redwood forest and feel nothing, no profundity, no grace? The only reason Satan, the Father of all Lies, the most Evil being in all creation has the ability to be so low is because he was once so great and beautiful!

But. And there’s always a “but.” Always in our praise of the creation must we be turned towards the creator. The Mona Lisa is great, but if Leonardo da Vinci were in the room, would you look at the painting and say “Wow, painting, you sure are beautful,” you would you turn to the painter and say, “Excellent work there, Leo!”? Nature is God’s portfolio, and though it is great, never forget that there’s a signature on it, right there in the lower-right-hand corner.

but why bother learning all of this if every time I try to share it with anybody, I get told to shut up and go away? even when I try to share it with people who say that they’re proud of me for learning what I am!

if the only people I can share this with are other scholars who will likely end up scattered throughout my nation - and throughout the world - then what is the point?

Not everyone is called to intellectual understanding of their faith. For some, simple faith is so much more profound and moving, and they have their place, just as accountants and historians and plumbers and philosophers and theologians all have their place. Man cannot live on philosophy alone. Simple faith can move mountains, too.

Of course, there are always those who call themselves Catholic but have no strong faith or belief in it, either intellectual or simple faith. They have learned to take Jesus for granted. Hard to imagine for a convert, but to them, Jesus is just part of the landscape of their lives. I live in California, and we have palm trees where I live, on nearly every street. Back east where I go to college, they have no palm trees. So when I showed my girlfriend (she’s from near our college), she flipped when she saw them: how interesting to her they were, whereas to me, they were just there, sitting like they always had. Converts don’t feel this way for their faith. To them, it is new and interesting, and probably always will be. But I’m willing to be a nation of wicca practitioners would soon produce a generation of children who couldn’t care less about it and would sooner litter than… um… so whatever it is they do… yeah…

In any case, I’ll keep you in my prayers.

 

[Neophyte_Rose]

I think that what I’m going through might be more than what I am understanding it to be. This is the second day running where if I have even five minutes to myself to think, all I can do is cry - and it takes so much out of me to stop. I’m scaring myself with what I’m thinking and feeling, as regards to faith, as regards to my friendships, as regards to my education and future, as regards to my life… everything just hurts - except music, it seems, might be rescuing me.

I have to go. keep me in your prayers, and please be patient with me. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m tempted to try and get in contact with a mental health proffessional as well as working with SD as this is also obviously partially at least spiritual warfare.

Pax Christi,
Esther

 

[Mintaka]

Remember, you are not alone. You have a lot of people praying for you. Keep fighting temptation! If you feel yourself slipping, grab for a new hold! And if it seems impossible, remember that you don’t have to do it alone; with God all things are possible.

I recommend that you read the Fathers of the Church. They lived in a world of paganism; many of them had been pagan. These problems were not strange to them.

In fact, just this evening I was glancing at St. Clement of Alexandria’s Protrepticus (aka Address to the Heathen or Address to the Greeks). It talks a great deal about the dissatisfaction that pagans had with their own religion, and of their yearning for the One God they knew must be out there. (The link above takes you to a really good chapter on the Greek poets.)

I also recommend that you read some of the great mystical writings of the saints, to help you develop a prayer life and ever-deeper intimacy with God. Browse around to discover which saints’ ways of thinking and praying make sense to you. St. Teresa of Avila, St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Francis de Sales, Thomas a Kempis, St. Faustina… There’s a lot of practical spiritual wisdom there!

You might also find a lot of help in the Celtic saints. Don’t read what other people say about them; read the primary sources. If you read the Fathers first, you’ll get a better feel for them, though.

Given your feelings of desolation and turmoil, I recommend also that you read St. John of the Cross. The Ascent of Mt. Carmel may be very helpful.

Finally, you may find it helpful to think of St. Francis. He loved Nature, but not as a goddess. Rather, he loved her as a sister and a friend – and frankly, that was being nice.

Nature, for all its majesty, is like a faithful frisking dog before God the Creator. By Christ’s Incarnation, all human flesh became divine. By adoption and by Christ’s blood, we Christians have been made co-heirs and children of that same Creator.

So Nature frisks before us too; and it would just confuse the dear creature no end, if we worshipped it.

 

[Neophyte_Rose]

Hi

I am not really “better” per say, but I am catching on (I think). Even if I don’t want to pray, I do. I at least say the rosary and chaplet each day, and I go to Mass and Holy Communion each day (normally in the morning) and I make a Spiritual Communion before I go to sleep.

Even if I don’t want to.

It’s hard. But I’ve found comfort in one thing; the prayers I offer up now are apparently supposed to be extra meritous. Because it’s so hard to do. Not time consuming, really. Just hard. To think about, to discipline my mind to stay put, to realize that this is a decision of my will - to love God - and not a decision of my passions.

So I am praying now for the people I like the least. I am choosing to love (will the good of for their own sake) and pray for people such as my mother’s ex bf who hit my little sister, the guy from my old workplace who used to creep me out by taking my picture when I told him not to and by boasting of things one would rather be ashamed of, old customers (from the call center) who I recall as particularly creepy, disturbing or mean.

And my family members too.

I take comfort in the faith (an act of the intellect assenting to divine truth) that these prayers are heard and accepted by God. That He uses them to provide whatever grace it is that these people need, whenever that moment is. And that He also uses it to provide the grace my family needs.

And that He won’t let me fall, because He loves me and desires my salvation - my purgation, my illumination, and my unification with Him. In short, He desires my sanctification.

I desire that too. I just am not so sure about all the pain required to get there, but surely He’ll help me through it.

After all, we are all called to be Saints, right? God’s Saints, in Heaven, serving and glorifying and worshipping Him.

I have to go do my chore now, and then I’m going home to eat something. Thank you all for praying for me. I beg you to keep it up, because surely it is the grace of your prayers which God is using to help me now.

Pax Christi,
Esther Rose

 

[PhilotheaZ]

I admire your courage. It sounds like you are on the right track. The souls that are saved through your prayers will thank you when you get to heaven!

 

[DJgang]

I suggest once again, if you haven’t looked into doing so, please start praying some Prayers of Deliverance…

saint-mike.org/spcdc/swprayers/default.asp

I’m worried about you saying I don’t want to pray.

I’ve been praying these prayers for over a month. In addition, I have received about three blessings of exorcism from an Exorcist. As well as received annointing from him.

I also suggest for you to ask a Priest to give you a blessing and denounce Satan in your life. It definitely can not hurt!

 

[Neophyte_Rose]

For all outward appearances, mostly, I am doing much better.

In all honesty and truthfullness, although I no longer am so aware of this … despair … washing over me… I don’t know how long I can keep this up.

I feel like a liar. I go to daily Mass. I try to say at least a decade of the rosary each day (for the past week, that’s been good. tonight I intend to get in a full rosary, but we’ll see how that goes).

Praise and Adoration was the worst. The more I lifted my voice in song, the more I put of myself into the music, the more I felt like a fraud. Like, I didn’t belong there.

Then I felt a presence of a sort beside me, and thoughts kept coming to me like: “this faith is a candle, and I lit myself too brightly. I’m burned down now, and there’s nothing of it left.” and thoughts like: “maybe I could look into different faiths, maybe something else will make me feel alive again”

I rejected these thoughts, and afterwards I spoke to the priest who led the Benediction that concluded the evening. He taught me some words in latin (that I am having SO much trouble remembering) to tell satan to leave, using the holy name of Christ. Then he prayed over me, and afterwards I spoke to my spiritual director.

Perhaps God really wants me to get the point that I can’t live my life as a slave to my emotional state. Maybe I feel like a pagan right now, or an atheist, but I’m not. I feel like I’m hurting, and I am, but it’s a good hurting because ultimately what this is, is God pouring anti-septic on some very old wounds.

I have an appointment on the sixth to see if this is chemical, too. Maybe, because of how crazy my life was as a child, I developed something physical even, just to balance and protect myself.

I mean, I have nightmarish memories starting from when I was four… when I was four, I would cry out in the middle of the night sometimes (particularly when my older brother would whip his stuffed blue dog down, and the plastic eyes would hit me)… and my mother’s then-boyfriend would come in and hit me with his belt until I stopped crying (which would often take a long time, as normally more pain simply causes more crying).

At eight, I decided not to trust any man - I swore I would never fall in love, would never love any man. This was actually a difficult decision for me to make, because I loved my baby brother. I ended up deciding that he was an exception.

At eleven, I stopped trusting my mother (she said she hated me, and didn’t want to see me ever again, when I told her that I was moving to my father’s house), and I decided that I must really be worthless if my own mother couldn’t love me.

That’s when I stopped believing in God. For a while, I continued believing that He existed - but I didn’t believe He could forgive me, a child whose own mother hated her for her crimes. Plus, I thought that it was at least partially my fault that every boyfriend my mother ever had ended up leaving… I thought, I must be so repulsive, so horrible. It must be so hard to have children when you’re dating, I thought.

It was less painful to decide that God simply didn’t exist, that everything was pointless. It also freed my conscience to allow for extremely self-destructive behavior.

If the Mass is a foretaste of heaven (and I believe it), then what I experienced at the age of eleven and barely twelve… that was a foretaste of hell. Repeated attempts at suicide, all of them failing and none of them drawing any notice (I kept taking random mixtures of pills, none of them ever actually hurt me so that I know of it). Complete isolation, complete self-revulsion.

 

[Neophyte_Rose]

As I grew older, I found band-aides to help me cover up the pain of these things. Pagan spirituality and eventually the Wiccan religion. The local Unitarian Universalist youth group, whose continual affirmation of me helped me to at least care for myself again. My friends at school, who defended me (and I them) from the attacks of our peers, and with whom I shared an interest in literature. Oh, yeah. Books and literature.

A lot of academic smarts - good grades. My acceptance into different post-secondary schools, some of them among the best of our secular institutions (by a secular standpoint purely).

All of these things cover up some extremely deep, extremely old and quite likely infected wounds. Spiritual wounds that have been ignored, because the pressure of all these bandaides helps me to function normally and forget about the pain. Helps me to just not feel it at all.

And one by one they are being stripped away. I was pulled, by God I am sure, to a less well known institution. I am no longer the smartest person, or even among the smartest people, by any means, at my school. I am new to everything, and learning from scratch what a lot of people here have at least some knowledge of simply from growing up.

Pagan spirituality, obviously, has gone as well. The Wiccan religion, and my old UU youth activities. My access to endless fictional worlds is now severly limited to almost always, and cetainly frequently, nothing.

My “bandaides”, so to speak, are all gone. I’m feeling what it has been my worst fear, since I was twelve years old, what I hoped and struggled to never experience again. Of course I am drawn back to my old ways. Anything… I want to go home, bury myself in work and books and movies and outings with my friends. I want to bury myself in pagan practices or in the affirmations and support that only a UU youth group knows how to provide. I want to bury myself in academic or worldly prowess.

I want to hide from my own pain, my own issues.

I’m an easy target for spiritual attack right now, because God has stripped away all my bandaides. He’s getting to the wounds, and they’re tasting air and it stings. It hurts.

Now I am hiding behind a facade of smiles, behind endless games of Euchre. But I don’t have anything in me, anything to help me pull off easy essays anymore. I am writing lots of dark, pain-filled poetry again. I am writing music of a similar taste.

It’s like, God is drawing poison out of me. through artwork. and maybe through prayer. Maybe that’s why I have to keep praying right now, because it’s healing me.

It feels like it hurts more, because it does right now. In the long run, though, it’ll hurt less this way. I just have to trust God.

I don’t know what He’s calling me to, or preparing me for. Something useful to His kingdom, I’m sure. Perhaps, perhaps He will use me as proof, one day, that children who go through what I went through, can come out okay. can be healed. and become good. become His instruments.

I don’t know. I still need prayers. I am still calling out to my guardien angel, and to St. Michael, pretty much every single night. I am crying myself to sleep now. I am crying over things that I never cried over when they happened. I am crying over things that I did cry over, but only until I could keep the pressure inside and distract myself till I didn’t feel anymore.

I have to go to dinner right now, then a rosary and then Mass. I might be back later to say more, I’m not sure.

Pax Christi,
Esther Rose