Should I became a protestant?

[Trishie]

In my weakness You are strength

Jesus, thank You for those who see my faults or misunderstand my motives and who thus reveal my need for conversion and healing. I repent my unworthiness, and ask that You offer me as gift to God in each broken moment restored.

Gather up my lost moments, Jesus! Cleanse and shape them with my sorrow merged with Your sacrifice. Burnish and set them with Your forgiveness, and illuminate them with Your love as treasures of witness, intercession, and atonement! Thus, make my flawed life into a gem of praise, service and delight for You in the Communion of Saints.

Praise to You, Jesus, who make treasure out of ordinary and fallen human beings!

“I live in a high and holy place, but I am also with the contrite and humbled spirit, to give the humble new life…I will heal and console him.” says the Lord God.” [Isaiah 57:15, 18]
“In my ‘little way every thing is most ordinary; all that I do, little souls must be able to do likewise. (Saint Therese of Lisieux) Her little way “is the way of Spiritual childhood…of trust and absolute self-surrender.”

 

[Trishie]

Offering

God, I offer You my abilities and achievements. I offer You my failures and deprivations, with my love that gutters and flares, and with my flickering insight. I offer You my faith and hope that repeatedly requires renewal. Along with my prayers and efforts to love You and others, I offer You the intercession and thanksgiving that I fail to make, and my inadequate service and worship.

I offer You everything, including what I am most reluctant to relinquish or to face—trusting that in Your loving-kindness You will deal with all these things to their best disposition. I ask that You will free me from anxiety regarding success or failure in my life or apprehension for my loved ones. I commit these to Your care.

I trust that Your Spirit will assume freedom to love and trust, to live and move in me. Then, as beautiful, vibrant witness and channel of You to each person that I encounter, or for whom I intercede, my life will worship You.

Grant me faith, constancy, hope and love, even where I feel none. Make me an overflowing chalice of Your love, a living tabernacle of Your presence, a powerhouse of prayer, and an open doorway into God for others. I may not hope in myself, Jesus, but I adore You and hope in You for my loved ones and for anyone You desire to draw into Your love through our lives.

 

[Trishie]

Seeking God’s will

God, You see me anxious about discerning the right course, and then my subsequent doubts. I fear that if I misconstrue Your will, someone may be denied what You would delight to give through me. Bless them, supplying what my selfishness or confusion denies them.

I trust that whatever good I honestly attempt will be guided and transformed by You, regardless of my obvious failures. Perhaps when I die, I may discover that my present life hides the overflowing richness of Your love embracing others through my efforts and prayers.

Accept my gift of myself to You. Temper my faith and faithfulness in Your love within the events of my life. Burn away my sinfulness and apathy through daily responsibility and prayer. Let everything for which You created me, be completely fulfilled. Worship and delight Yourself in my life. May 1981

*“If the greatest sinner should repent at the moment of his death, and draw his last breath in an act of love, neither the many graces he had abused, nor the multiplied crimes he had committed, would stand in his way. Our Lord would see nothing, count nothing, but the sinner’s last prayer, and without delay He would receive him into the arms of His mercy.” *(Saint Therese of Lisieux)

 

[Trishie]

Finding Christ’s peace

Jesus, You desire to give us peace! While on Earth, You blessed others with words of peace. In Scripture, in Liturgy, in the Sacraments, in the prayers and blessings of the Church, You constantly offer peace.

Yet, what is the peace that You offer? It is not ease and comfort, or wealth and success, for there were little of these in Your life. You offer example of God emptied of glory and possessing few of this world’s gifts or loyalty. Friends deserted You when things became difficult. Religious leaders betrayed their heritage by destroying You, who were so obviously the promised Messiah, though you wished them peace. You sacrificed Yourself for this unworthy humanity, You who are peace and salvation of humankind.

Please wean me from choice and habit that impedes witness of Your love. Grant me proper self-esteem but free me from self-indulgence in all its insidious forms. Grant me trust and gratitude to handle everything, whether joyful or sad, in light of Your Love for me. In this is found Your peace.

If I lack the peace of knowing that God is transforming me, then please give me the peace of trust that God will benefit others though me just as I am. I choose the peace of creative obedience to God’s will as the particular person I am created to be. Jesus, do not let me fail to fulfil Your wishes and dream for my life. Thank You. 1981

“God, create a clean heart in me, put in me a new and constant spirit.” [Psalm 51:10] “Help me my God; save me since You love me, and let them know that You have done it, that it was You, who did it.” [Psalm 109: 26-27]

 

[Trishie]

[Self made crosses [/CENTER]

God, I want the burdens I carry be only those that You intend. Let self-made crosses no longer weaken me for genuine crosses that You permit! Lift from me those crosses that I construct out of fear, doubt or self-accusation. Free me of those I subconsciously build in desire for appreciation and love. Free me from crosses of mistaken sense of mission. I want to accomplish the mission that You intend for me.

Free me from the errors of trying to carry and solve others’ problems where it is only my task to offer understanding, prayer, and what help that I can actually offer. Otherwise, in sleeplessness and anguish, I carry a cross of impracticality and helplessness that leaves me worn out, aiding no one. Yet inspire me to undertake, powerfully and sensitively, any means of genuine assistance to others.

Help me to recognise my areas of personal weakness or scarring that otherwise lead me to behave in ways unhelpful to others and myself. Fill me with the Holy Spirit’s prayer for them.

Please give me wisdom, faith, and charity to overcome tendencies and habits that impede me from Your service. Thus I, unhindered, am impelled to You in everything, in cooperation with the graces You desire to flood through my being at every instant, however secretly. Then, I am free, and I rejoice! For by Your mercy alone, my life is centred in You God, in self no longer!

 

[Trishie]

Detachment

**Our God, how patiently You wait for moments in our lives when we seek Your grace, guidance and sovereignty, while confessing our sin and dependence. You prepare us for these moments, nurturing Your life in our daily events and activities, just as Jesus, through years of ordinary human endeavour, prayerfully prepared for His mission.

How unobtrusively You lead souls who reach out in faith! If we await blinding revelation, we may fail to hear Your quiet invitation in the events and encounters of life. Our kaleidoscopic thoughts, our bustling activity, our pride, our prejudices, our fears and our compromises easily deafen us. You behold the shrinking of our eternal destinies, of our part in Your plan. Have mercy upon us!

You foresee our self-deception with its lack of peace. You observe the complacency that stifles spiritual growth. You see the brevity of our pleasures and satisfactions, knowing our grief, loneliness, or boredom due to reluctance to centre life in God. You see how poor is our motivation, how incomplete is our repentance, how dim is our awareness, how subtle is our self-deception, how entrenched is our tenacity of opinion, prejudices and cherished attachments!

Regardless of how ordinary we are, the events of our lives are sanctified by love. Please convert and recreate us in childlike trust and self-giving. Free our ears truly to hear You, in Your Word, in our hearts, and in other persons. Enlighten us to comprehend with the light of Your truth, no longer through our prejudices. Let Your love flow through us in praise and gratitude to You, and in intercession and loving witness to others.

In fully desiring Your will in our lives, and living the fullness of Your love within ourselves for You and for other persons, we are at last truly alive**.

 

[Trishie]

Conversion: Your way

**God, if You wish, You can cure and convert me instantly. All goodness comes from You, so any ‘merit’ of my life is already part of Your holiness. Therefore, so that no moment of my life is wasted in sin or emptiness, please transform me with Your holiness now, as a channel of grace to others and a delight to Yourself!

That You do not hasten to grant this prayer reminds me that You are God who creates in gradual progression, moulding Your masterpieces, no one like any other. You hold each creature in profound love that touches and moves each instant of life!

Help me to accept the quiet evolution of my life to wholeness as You seek my cooperation, while respecting my free will. Your wisdom neither transforms souls on demand nor coerces the unwilling person.

Like the greatest silversmith, Your love delicately forms each tiny second and each unique shape of holiness and wholeness in our lives. That is Your glory in us, to form us in our prayerful obedience to the fire of love and the sharp tools of effort and tribulation.

God please grant me patient faith to accept Your fashioning. Yet, if anyone can persuade You to purify and sanctify all in my life from this instant, please let it be so! If not for me, please grant it to my dear ones, to some other soul. **

 

[Trishie]

Self-denial

Jesus, my life is not always centred on You.

Wincingly, I drag across the broken glass of trial and duty, inspired by Your willingness to accept responsibilities, regardless of joy or calamity. For in the self-denial of serving others we are freed from selfishness and sin.

You died agonisingly for each person, obeying God’s will despite Your human vulnerability and dread. I stand humbly at the foot of Your salvation, its totality of giving shaming my reluctance to sacrifice self wholly to You. I offer my own will, constrained though it is by cowardice and compromise.

Jesus, how can I carry the cross that Your true followers must bear? How shall I emerge to embrace true commitment in ministry of others? You who are Son of God, sweated blood in contemplation of such abandonment of self. You asked the Father that you might forgo such a burden.

Were not Your divine origin, Your innocence, and Your sacred prayer, enough to save and sanctify us? Yet in anguished awareness deeper than mine or any other’s, You complied humbly with the Father’s will to sever our bonds of unlove, with the shattering of every fibre of Your humanity. In Your example, therefore, I place my trust and my cause for others’ and my salvation and blessing. I give myself to You, trying to bargain, raising reluctant, pleading eyes to Your thorn-encircled face: “Not this, Lord! I cannot face this loss, that difficulty…”

Dear Jesus, I appeal to You for grace to relinquish my fearful grip, releasing to You the full extent of my bondage. Will You lift this burden with its splinters of lack of charity and trust? I offer the grief of a soul betrayed by itself, in plea for Your forgiveness, healing and for my freedom to love You above all and others as myself, in harmony with Your will.

**You know me in my human vulnerability and perfidy, my striving and hope—for You love each person with such depth that I flickeringly suspect its intensity and intimacy. If only I believed, understood and reciprocated! Please accept the teared jewel of this fragile communion of my desire with Yours. Please so draw me into Your love that it is revealed through me in glory and wonder! **

You emptied Yourself to become subject to human limitation and suffering. You struggled against ignorance and selfishness, against dullness of spirit and mind in others, battling unto death the powers of evil for our sakes. Battle thus within me also, Jesus, defeating in each moment of my life the power of sin.

With Your flooding love, please drown my protests, pacify my fears and raise me from anxiety regarding pain, grief, disgrace, loss and abandonment. Live in me the cheerful, creative dedication owed to the duties of my vocation and relationships. As gift to the Trinity, allow me to share fully in the great love You consummate for us. Thank You for the privilege to follow Your path all my life, then to share in Your eternal life with all my family, and friends.

“He who rejects discipline despises his own self; he who listens to correction wins discernment.” [Proverbs 15:33]

 

[Trishie]

Harvest

Beloved Jesus—from the compost of my sins, failures, faults and omissions please enrich the soil that nurtures the harvest that You prepare of my being and life—for Your delight, and for others’ benefit.
From the flower and fruit of all grace and good sprung from You within me, please bountifully glorify Yourself and bless all whose lives touch mine! 1981

My selfishness

My selfishness and personal consciousness gives me a great gift. With its desires and attachments, it teaches me how much caring and blessing I desire for others. I desire all good, no less for ANY person than the most that God’s love can give anyone.

My life, prayer, Masses and all my Communions are equally, totally, given to and shared with each of my family, with each soul in Purgatory, and with EVERY person however unknown or “unworthy” from all ages, races or religions. For each, I desire all blessing. To each I give ALL that God gives to me.

 

[Trishie]

The taming of ‘brother ass’

Heavenly Father, whatever defects lie amid its wonders—this intricate gift of sharing in humanity from tiny cells grown large—it is the only pathway to our God, entrance to true being, of the soul which animates it!

This wonder of body that You give—that I may joy in Your created things yet still renounce their mastery: thereby to share in the sufferings of that perfect Man who makes me glad receptacle of His pure flesh and blood, and thus eternal life—I consecrate in all its weakness, to Your will, that I in Your hands become what You intend since time began.

O Father, with His, Your divine Son’s redemptive sacrifice—of body desecrate and abused…of mind comfortless yet clear…of spirit anguished yet forgiving, sustained by faith and love alone—I humbly beg: accept my unworthy submission joined with His perfect atonement—for all appetite untamed…all corporal sin…all spirit denied.
And by communion with His glorified humanity by my impoverished own, may I be drawn through His divinity into the life of Your triune Deity.

As I consume, let Him consume me whole!

Hear my pleading that You make and keep my body pure, with gladness transcending transient pleasure’s lure—whose insidious indulgence by degrees corrupts my spirit, cheats me of peace, of grace, depletes my strength to bear Your Cross, my will to serve, denying the nature of its creation—to make my body portal of death not life: as sin corrupts all that is withheld from You.

So Father grant that He who conquered flesh and death for all who choose His ways—our Saviour Jesus, almighty God, and caring brother—shall command for me all evil’s source—“Away! Tempt not —with this ephemeral body, temple of my soul, belonging now to God. I live in Him—For I am child of God!” October 4, 1980

 

[Trishie]

The Cross in my life

Jesus, my cross is sorrow for others in their anxieties and afflictions, and in the limited help and comfort that I can give them. The nails are my mistakes and inadequacies that distress or fail others. No sooner do I inhale the breath of Your grace for others than it fouls with my failings. I must again drag up on my nailed wrists and push up upon my transfixed feet, in order to exhale the vapour of lukewarmness and sinfulness—so once again to draw in Your grace.

The faults that characterise much of my life, scourge my soul until it is bruised and faint, sapping my hope and faith. Acts devoid of generous love lash into the wholeness of Your image in me. I am sick with hunger, for I accept too little food of loving, sharing and serving in each moment of Your offering. My hunger is the more intense because others may suffer deprivation for my omissions and sinfulness.

A crown of idle thoughts, and words, of prayer neglected, of reparation postponed, of temptation undefeated, binds up my head with wounds. My inconstancy and unlove are my nakedness. The taunts are my lack of witness of Christ. My every nerve is pain, and it pours from my body in stinging sweat of regret. My lack of love makes my soul a living wound—at times benumbed, or raw with returning consciousness. Repeatedly I seek to escape this crucifixion, but I remain nailed to my weakness, fighting for hope and trust.

“Why do You abandon me, Lord?” Yet not You! Why do You allow me repeatedly to abandon You, in this lingering death of my faults and negligence! Yet, Jesus, because of Your mercy I affirm faith in Your love that brings marvellous blessing out of wretchedness, failure and sin. I cannot transform or resurrect myself, Jesus, but I offer You all that constitutes me, humbly asking that You will do what I cannot.

I give my self, crucified in its egoism and materialism, its pride and disobedience, its unbelief, unlove and ingratitude. Offer it to the Father with Your own crucifixion, so that in You I die to all these imperfections and rise again with You forever in the love and life of the Holy Spirit. Your mercy thereby draws many souls after me. Thank You, Jesus for this resurrection that You share with us.

I could keep going, Adolfo, but hopefully there’ll be at least one prayer amongst those that speaks for you and lifts you up to try again…as Jesus did on the way to Calvary, and as we all must time and time again.

 

[MDK]

I am catholic and I believe the catholic teachings, but my heart will not change and is not of Christ… I am thinking of trying out a protestant faith in the hope I will see a change. WHAT SHOULD I DO???

There are no advantages to being Protestant. Satan would be pleased by your leaving the one true faith. This is likely where your doubts are coming from.

There can be a difficult time in the life of the Catholic in understanding the faith, when one has some amount of learning of the faith, but a lot of questions. The course is to stay with the Church and continue learning. I promise you that you have not fully understood the beauty of the Church. This same beauty simply does not exist in any other church.

 

[MDK]

Whether or not you should convert to Protestantism is between you and God mate, I won’t tell you that if you do you’ll automatically become closer to God. There are a great many who call themselves Protestants who struggle with exactly the things you do probably. That is why I tell people that I’m not in a religion really, I’m in a relationship with Christ. I have to pray all the time that the Lord will sanctify me and keep refilling me with his Holy Spirit. I pray “Lord, give me Chastity” and try to meditate on the good things of God.

If you have the desire in your heart to live a holy and righteous life, God WILL give you the strength to do it. Whether or not you stay Catholic is up to you, but I would strongly suggest that you seek a deeper more personal relationship with Christ and with his Spirit.

God doesn’t call us to simply sit around in a relationship with Him. He calls us to act on our faith, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked…, we are called to partake in His Sacraments. Christ calls us to His one Church, and nowhere else.

 

[Ignatius]

I am catholic and I believe the catholic teachings, but my heart will not change and is not of Christ… I am thinking of trying out a protestant faith in the hope I will see a change. WHAT SHOULD I DO???

Spend an hour a day in front of the Blessed Sacrament and watch this:
catholicscomehome.org/epic/epic120.html. And read the book “Rediscovering Catholicism” here: catholicscomehome.org/donations/free-book.phtml

May God bless you and lead you to the Pillar of Truth.

Your servant in Christ.

 

[jean8]

I am catholic and I believe the catholic teachings, but my heart will not change and is not of Christ… I am thinking of trying out a protestant faith in the hope I will see a change. WHAT SHOULD I DO???

adolfo,
If you haven’t found Chrust in the Catholic church, you won’t find him in another church. .
First you must pray that the Holy Spirit will guide you and fill you with His presence.
How much time do you spend reading God’s word? How well do you know the Cathoilic faith? If you decide to attend a different church you will certainly have to study their doctrine, although the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are present there as well.
Have you met the holy Trinity?
Look for God In Mt.28:19 Acts 8:14-17 Rom.6:3-7, 2Cor.13:14
Happy hunting.

I’ll pray for you,
jean8

 

[Agatina]

Please don’t leave your Catholic faith. When I was young I did that and became a very good Protestant and loved and grew in the Lord. I thought I was doing fine. Then a time came when the Church began to change important doctrines and practices and beliefs were even up for grabs. You can’t depend on any Protestant church to guide you.
There is no Authority; ie. the Pope and the Bishops to guide you.
The most important thing is your growth in loving and especially knowing and loving Jesus.
Jesus gives himself to us in the Eucharist. The Catholic Church has protected this belief and practice for two thousand years while Protestants have changed it and only think it is a symbolic practice.
Sometimes when we don’t “feel” our faith we have to make a “decision” to believe. Also if you get involved by doing the things that our dear Lord had taught us to do in the Beatitudes and prayer; maybe helping the poor or the sick or the youth then your faith should increase. The most important thing is to PRAY for an increase of faith. I always pray for that. Every day.
I wish I was a better writer so I could express how much I regret having left the Catholic Church. I’m back now as of May of 2008 many times a day I think “I’m Catholic!” and I say that out loud in Joy of Love for My Savior and for the Eucharist. May God Bless You and my prayers will be with you.

 

[Crimson_Seraph]

God doesn’t call us to simply sit around in a relationship with Him. He calls us to act on our faith, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked…, we are called to partake in His Sacraments. Christ calls us to His one Church, and nowhere else.

Of course he calls to act on our faith, my point was that in order to have the power and ability to DO that one must have a true relationship with the Lord. As for whether or not I’m in His “One Church”, I’ll let him be the judge of that.