Spirituality...what gives?

[DD2007]

I grew up Baptist. In College I gave up on religion because I didn’t think any of it made sense. Later in life I started searching for God because I felt scared of my own mortality and decided I would go to the source of the Christian religion…The Catholic Church.

I went through RCIA and was accepted into the Church during an Easter Vigil.

Since then I have never been able to keep the rules. I almost always give in to temptation. I drink alot, and I care about myself much more than I do others. I think that I have a lack of faith because I do things thinking I will be forgiven for them later. I have not been to confession or recieved communion since Oct. 2005.

Now I find myself questioning fundamentals of the Catholic faith and regarding anyone who finds faith as just fine as long as they have it regardless of where they found it. I can’t seem to find any. I don’t pray very often and when I do I feel like no one is listening sometimes. Other times its different… I still pray to Jesus and tell him I’m sorry for being a ridiculous excuse for a chrisitan…when i don’t feel like he’s listening I ask Mary or a Saint to intercede for me.

But the point is, I wish I could be a good Christian and have faith and all. It just seems like I can’t do it for some reason. My personal desires always get in the way and I follow them instead of following the Church. Also I have been divorced from my first wife during this time because she left for someone else, and now I have married another outside of the Church and have had childeren by her.

Am I beyond redemption? What is going on here?

 

[LISA_Annette]

I grew up Baptist. In College I gave up on religion because I didn’t think any of it made sense. Later in life I started searching for God because I felt scared of my own mortality and decided I would go to the source of the Christian religion…The Catholic Church.

I went through RCIA and was accepted into the Church during an Easter Vigil.

Since then I have never been able to keep the rules. I almost always give in to temptation. I drink alot, and I care about myself much more than I do others. I think that I have a lack of faith because I do things thinking I will be forgiven for them later. I have not been to confession or recieved communion since Oct. 2005.

Now I find myself questioning fundamentals of the Catholic faith and regarding anyone who finds faith as just fine as long as they have it regardless of where they found it. I can’t seem to find any. I don’t pray very often and when I do I feel like no one is listening sometimes. Other times its different… I still pray to Jesus and tell him I’m sorry for being a ridiculous excuse for a chrisitan…when i don’t feel like he’s listening I ask Mary or a Saint to intercede for me.

But the point is, I wish I could be a good Christian and have faith and all. It just seems like I can’t do it for some reason. My personal desires always get in the way and I follow them instead of following the Church. Also I have been divorced from my first wife during this time because she left for someone else, and now I have married another outside of the Church and have had childeren by her.

Am I beyond redemption? What is going on here?

I am sure others will state more eloquently than I could---- but, *of course *you are not beyond redemption! i will respond to your concerns as you have written them, so i am sorry if it sounds mechanical—by no means do I intend to belittle your problems or sound cold, so bear with me—I have a personal tendency to be methodical:

YOur drinking is only a problem if it interferes with your life (job and supporting self or family)—or if you put yourself or others in danger.
You feel that you sin against God by presumption—we all have done that, but we repent—and go on. Forgive yourself, and just change this.
The best remedy for this is to return to the sacrament of reconcilliation and receive the Eucharist. You need those sacraments to help your doubting faith----Go to God as the Divine healer. I sometimes feel very wary to go to God, and feel discouraged, but when i think of Him as the Divine Healer, then I have courage again. Just go, and don’t listen to your doubts. Give Jesus a chance to heal your heart and mind.

And we all have the desire to follow our own thing—do stuff that WE want—you are not different. I hope others here tell you that faith IS a struggle at times—it is not easy, but you know what??It is going to be impossible to muster any amount of faith without the Sacraments.

It is okay to fail. Jesus fell on His way to Calvary, but lifted Himself up. It doesn’t mean that you weren’t meant for the road you chose—it just means you need to get up and go again.

I hope you took this in the Spirit it was offered—I hope you do well

 

[Swamp_Yankee]

Hey DD, I’m no expert on spirituality or of faith in crisis, But stop wishing to be, thinking about, and wanting to be a good catholic, and just BE one. Obedience, just like disobedience is an act of the will. Will you, or Will you not. Practice. Take the smallest, most managable temptation that comes along, decide not to persue it, and claim the victory (giving thanks and praise to God of course), and move on to the next one. But, you must ACT . " Wanting" is a beginning, but action accomplishes things. Another poster here said to me once, “during our lives we intentionally or unintentionally serve one or the other, good or evil, whom will you serve ?” Be proactive, Geterdone!

 

[AspiringDeacon]

I have a similar thought to Swamp Yankee - I would say just focus on love of God and love of neighbor. Read the Bible, the catechism, and spiritual books like The Imitation Christ to develop a richer meaning of what that means.

I equate this type of journey to that of a child learning to play baseball. If they started out their experience with baseball by having to learn and memorize all the rules, they would never play the game - there are 1000s! But kids start by just hitting a ball, catching a ball, learning how to throw, and their love for the sport, and interest in learning the subtleties of the sport through the rules, grows.

Faith is the same way. Start small - LOVE. The rest will come naturally if you let it!

I would like to close with the most beautiful statement I have ever read concerning our weakness in living up to Jesus’ “rules”:

Jesus did not proclaim the Sermon on the Mount so that we would furrow our brows in despair over our failure to achieve perfection. He gave it to impart to us God’s Ideal toward which we should never stop striving, but also to show that none of us will ever reach that Ideal.

The Sermon on the Mount forces us to recognize the great distance between God and us, and any attempt to reduce that distance by somehow moderating its demands misses the point altogether.

We are all desperate, and that is in fact the only state appropriate to a human being who wants to know God. Having fallen from the absolute Ideal, we have nowhere to land but in the safety net of absolute grace.

You have fallen, you will never achieve the Ideal. Trust God.

 

[Kevin42]

Go to confession as much as you can, and do not let any thing keep you away from the mercy that God is waiting to give you. We are all miserable excuses for Christians, but we must not fall into despair. You are not ever beyond redemption, and do not allow yourself to be convinced otherwise. If any living person is every ‘beyond redemption’, then every single other living soul on this earth is in huge trouble. Remember, our Lord says, “I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.” God longs for you to come to confession, and receive Him in the Eucharist. You will be in our prayers.

Peace.

 

[Ramalama]

Am I beyond redemption?

How in the world would that ever be possible? Peter denied Christ three times and became the first pope. What could you possibly have done to put yourself beyond the scope of God’s mercy?

Please accept the fact that you are a human. You will fail – many times. Just keep going. As the previous posters said, you’ve got to actually do the stuff. Start right now. Simply ask Jesus to have mercy on your soul. Thank Him for His infinite grace.

Next, reach over, pick up the phone and schedule a confession.

Remember, you have Jesus’ complete attention right now. He wants you to talk to him. He wants to be your friend. He loves you. He wants you to love Him.

God bless you, DD. I’ll be praying for you. (Hey, you made the appointment yet? )

If you talk to him he will become real.

 

[wcknight]

No one is beyond redemption… only since 2005 ??? when I lapsed, I didn’t hit confession for over 10 years … some folks have been away a lot longer.

Never give up hope, and always remember that God will NEVER give up on you. We are all human and we will all sin. We are in a life long struggle to perfect ourselves. You have to trust that Jesus is more powerful than sin, not that you can overcome it on your own. On our own we can’t do it, with God’s help nothing is impossible.

It takes a long time to conquer some sins, the key is to never give up. We are all self centered, selfish and self serving. We were that way from the day we were born. It is human nature for us to think of number one most if not all the time.

What we need to do is to start practicing to be more Christ centered and neighbor centered.

Take a few minutes each day to pray, in the morning, just before bedtime, before and after meals, short prayers at first maybe build up to a rosary. It’s tough sometimes to think of God, when you are really busy.

But just stopping to think and pray can get our minds off of ourselves and help our mental outlook as well. Meditation is one of the best things that you can do for yourself mentally.

Imagine how hard it must have been for Christ to endure His passion. Being whipped or having nails put into his hands and feet. He knew it was coming and He let it happen anyway. And imagine how difficult it was for Mary to have to witness this happening to her Son.

I once had to watch as doctors had to put stiches in my son without anesthetic. His screams shook me to the core. I wished I could endure the pain for him. I held his hand, but that was of little comfort. That is what God and Mary did for us.

Volunteer to help out with either the community or with the parish or simply for your family or friends. When you start to do this for others, you will think less of doing things solely for yourself and more for others.

Everytime you fall, get up and just be more determined not to fall again. God will always be there. He will never turn away from us no matter how many times we fail. We should never turn away from Him. My prayers are with you. God hears all of our prayers, but sometimes the answer is no or not yet. It may not be in our best interest for Him to always say yes.

 

[Belle10]

Since then I have never been able to keep the rules. I almost always give in to temptation.

We all give in to temptation – that’s why Jesus had to die for us! If we could do it all on our own, he wouldn’t have had to suffer for us. Try not to think of them as “rules,” but things that, when you break them, hurt God. Love (not wanting to hurt God, who allowed his son to be sacrificed for us) is a far better motivator than fear.

I don’t pray very often and when I do I feel like no one is listening sometimes. Other times its different… I still pray to Jesus and tell him I’m sorry for being a ridiculous excuse for a chrisitan…when i don’t feel like he’s listening I ask Mary or a Saint to intercede for me.

Jesus is ALWAYS listening. Just because you can’t “feel” him doesn’t mean he isn’t there. Many saints often didn’t feel God, yet their faith was strong and they didn’t turn away from him.
“Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.” ~James 4:8

But the point is, I wish I could be a good Christian and have faith and all. It just seems like I can’t do it for some reason. My personal desires always get in the way and I follow them instead of following the Church.

Again, we all fail. When you are feeling tempted, pray. Sometimes you’ll still fail, but sometimes you’ll succeed, with Christ’s help, in avoiding temptation. Two things happen the closer you get to God:

1. Satan gets mad and tries even harder to tempt you
2. God gives you the strength to carry on if you rely on Him completely and trust his holy will

Also I have been divorced from my first wife during this time because she left for someone else, and now I have married another outside of the Church and have had childeren by her.

I don’t have experience here, so I would talk with a priest about this.

Am I beyond redemption?

No one is beyond redemption! Jesus’ message of Divine Mercy, which he gave to St. Faustina to share with the world, tells us that the more a person is a sinner, the more they are entitled to his Divine Mercy. Go here for information on the Divine Mercy: www.thedivinemercy.org

I’ll remember you in my chaplet of Divine Mercy today. Please, don’t give up hope. Everyone has moments of doubt, moments of weak faith. Ask God to help you in your faith, and he will. God bless. :hug1:

 

[Doug50]

… I don’t pray very often and when I do I feel like no one is listening sometimes. Other times its different… I still pray to Jesus and tell him I’m sorry for being a ridiculous excuse for a chrisitan…when i don’t feel like he’s listening I ask Mary or a Saint to intercede for me.

But the point is, I wish I could be a good Christian and have faith and all. It just seems like I can’t do it for some reason. My personal desires always get in the way and I follow them instead of following the Church. Also I have been divorced from my first wife during this time because she left for someone else, and now I have married another outside of the Church and have had childeren by her.

Am I beyond redemption? What is going on here?

You and Mother Teresa? She suffered with her faith too…for fifty years. Saint John of the Cross (the doctor of mystic theology) discribe what you are feeling as the Dark Night of the Soul. His belief is that the Holy Spirit imposes this darkness to rid one of egocentricism. The reasoning? Since we are finite, filling our soul with to much self crowds God. John is a tough read but there are authors who follow his theology that are easier to understand. I thought Acrchbishop Martinez’s “Secrets to the Interior Life” was approachable.

Here as quote:
Do Not Seek God in Consolation
The first reason it is difficult for us to communicate with God is this: He is “a hidden God.” He has always been thus, even in the days of His mortal life.
How often we grieve over not having lived in the time when Jesus was on the earth! Then we would have known and loved Him, and we would have lived with Him. But even then it was not so easy to know Jesus. Even His very Apostles, who had such intimate contact with Him – how imperfectly they understood Him and loved Him before the Passion! And why? Because always, even in the days of His mortal life, Jesus is a hidden God. But He conceals Himself so that we may seek Him, and to those who seek Him, He manifests Himself clearly, as the Scripture tells us.
How does one seek Jesus? How does one find Him? First of all, there are eyes that always find Him, because they discover Him wherever His is, and no matter how hidden He may be; they are the eyes of faith.
Faith never fails; it never errs; it is infallible. But since it is obscure, it rarely satisfies. We would like to find Jesus, but in our own way, for our thoughts are not His thoughts, nor our ways His ways. For this reason St. John of the Cross says that the great means of arriving at contemplation is obscure faith. The core of the saint’s teaching is that we must go to God by obscure faith without any sensible pleasure. But it is a way that is not pleasing to us, since we would like to feel God’s presence and enjoy His sensible consolations.
We are so dull that, as St. Paul says, we do not know what we should ask for; we do not even know what we ought to desire. It would be stupidity to wish to govern our own destiny and to say, “Now I need consolation; now aridity.” Let us leave to God, who loves us, the work of forming us.
If it were up to us, we would ask for everything except dryness and desolations. And if we would ask for them, it would be rarely, not understanding that they are necessary in order that the divine seed may germinate and develop in the soil of our heart. The best thing is to place ourselves in the hands of God, so that He may give us His grace and His love; and that, as St. Ignatius says, ought to be sufficient for us.
There is no doubt that consolations are good, provided that God gives them; but they are dangerous. Since we cling to them very easily, from the very start our heart needs to be detached from everything, even from spiritual comforts, if we wish to unite ourselves to God. The only thing that the heart should attach itself to is God. Created things always contain a dangerous element, for in attaching ourselves to them, we withdraw from God. And even the graces of God are created things.
contued

 

[Doug50]

Rely On Faith, Not On Feelings
It is not my intention at this time to speak of the importance that the spirit of faith has in the spiritual life, or of the necessity of judging everything with a supernatural rule, or of performing all our works with aims and intentions of the same order. This is what I wish to insist upon and to call attention to in an empathic manner; the chief reason we disregard faith is our preconceived idea that we must feel God and divine things. Although we know speculatively that God is not felt, practically we hold the contrary.
Do we feel a sacrament producing its proper effect? Do we feel the increase of grace in our soul? Do we feel the death of the soul by sin and its resurrection by sacramental absolution? Do we feel the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist in such a way that if we did not perceive Him sensibly, we would not believe in it?
Without doubt there are times when our Lord allows Himself to be sensibly felt, yet it is not precisely grace that is felt, but often something else that accompanies it. We go to Confession to a priest who simply listens to our sins, gives penance, and absolves; and we feel nothing. We go to another who understands us, who helps us in our disclosures to him, who gives us helpful advice; and we feel such a peace and refreshment that upon arising, we seem to be other beings. Was it the grace of the sacrament that we felt? No. It was the profitable experience that we had with the second priest.
To be conscious of a thing and to feel it sensibly are not the same thing; neither is one’s whole spiritual life a thing of continual conscious awareness. If we read the life of St. Therese of the Child Jesus with attention, we shall be convinced that she experienced delight only a very few times in her spiritual life, and that she rarely enjoyed sensible consolation [with God]. She lived by faith, by the obscurity of faith, and she is one of the most marvelous examples of that life of faith.
How many of us, on the other hand, when we go to prayer and experience consolation, come forth content with the assurance that God loves us a great deal? But if we do not feel Him, we come forth brokenhearted, sadly thinking that He has no regard for us, or that we have none of Him. And simply because we do not feel Him!
The first secret in finding our Loud is faith. He does not hide Himself from the gaze of faith, nor can He elude it. Faith never has obstacles; it pierces all veils. If only we would understand the secret of living by faith, of going to God by the way of obscure faith!
We approach the tabernacle, and we feel nothing, just as though we were drawing near an empty tabernacle. We say, “Jesus is here,” but it is as though we were pronouncing words in an unknown language, for they move not a single fiber of our heart. But faith assures us that God is there, and if we would comport ourselves in harmony with what faith tells us, how different our prayer would be! We speak to Jesus, but we do not feel that He is listening to us, or that He is answering us. But faith tells us that Jesus listens to us and that He speaks to us, and that He needs neither external sounds nor extraordinary means in order to speak with us. He is the divine Master, who speaks and instructs without the noise of words. And if faith assures me that Jesus hears me, speaks to me, and loves me, then delights and consolations are not necessary – no, not anything at all.
The obscurity of faith, to be sure, does not accommodate itself to our sensible tastes. We would desire, above all else, to feel; and faith is not for feeling and savoring, but for knowing.
“I do not find God,” you may say. You do not find Him according to your way – that is, in a sensible manner. But do you believe? If you have faith, you already know that God does not stand far from you, because in Him we live and move and are; because He surrounds us on the right hand and on the left, above and below; because He penetrates us and lives by grace in the most intimate part of our soul; because He is present in that flower, in that fragrance, in that ray of light in that glorious sky, everywhere. Consequently, if we know how to profit from faith and to live by faith, we would always find God, and thus we would have solved our problem; we would have discovered the great secret of the interior life. ---- Archbishop Luis M. Martinez

 

[RoyJr]

I grew up Baptist. In College I gave up on religion because I didn’t think any of it made sense. Later in life I started searching for God because I felt scared of my own mortality and decided I would go to the source of the Christian religion…The Catholic Church.

I went through RCIA and was accepted into the Church during an Easter Vigil.

Since then I have never been able to keep the rules. I almost always give in to temptation. I drink alot, and I care about myself much more than I do others. I think that I have a lack of faith because I do things thinking I will be forgiven for them later. I have not been to confession or recieved communion since Oct. 2005.

Now I find myself questioning fundamentals of the Catholic faith and regarding anyone who finds faith as just fine as long as they have it regardless of where they found it. I can’t seem to find any. I don’t pray very often and when I do I feel like no one is listening sometimes. Other times its different… I still pray to Jesus and tell him I’m sorry for being a ridiculous excuse for a chrisitan…when i don’t feel like he’s listening I ask Mary or a Saint to intercede for me.

But the point is, I wish I could be a good Christian and have faith and all. It just seems like I can’t do it for some reason. My personal desires always get in the way and I follow them instead of following the Church. Also I have been divorced from my first wife during this time because she left for someone else, and now I have married another outside of the Church and have had childeren by her.

Am I beyond redemption? What is going on here?

You are definately NOT beyond redemption.

If I may suggest, you may want to make an appointment with a priest, just to talk about what you’re experiencing. What you are going through is similar to what many saints went through, don’t be discouraged. Jesus loves you RIGHT NOW, just the way you are. The fact that you can see your flaws & want to change is the first step.

Frequent the Sacraments of Reconciliation & Eucharist.
If possible, the Sacrament of the Annointing of the Sick (sin is sickness) may be in order. Talk to a priest. Also, begin to form a “habit” of prayer. Pray the Rosary, St. Padre Pio said that it is the weapon.

I’ll be praying for you.

 

[quiet52]

DD, make an appointment with a priest. In the eyes of the Church, you are still married to your first wife. Ask him to help you with a petition for nullity (it is not guaranteed, however). You may not receive Holy Communion while this is not resolved, but that doesn’t mean you can’t work on your journey of faith. Ask the priest to guide you. Know that you’re not alone.