Wait, now do I really believe all this stuff?

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Regarding the Catholic Church:

This, too, is also tied to love. For if we love God, it should be our desire to actually want to be in the Church He established, which we as Catholics profess is the Catholic Church.
 
Is it possible that the “church” Jesus established, the fellowship, the gathering of believers, th ecommunity, is something that transcends cultures, ages, races and what we have come to call speperate churches? We just saw the death of Billy Graham, a non Catholic. He most likely was just as much living the love of Christ as any Catholic.
 
Regarding missing Mass:

These are disciplinary matters, which can be adjusted by the Church for a just cause.

However, we cannot ignore wholesale the Lord’s teaching that “unless you eat my flesh, and drink my blood, you will have no life within you.”

The Church’s precept to assist at Mass on the days appointed is enacted pursuant to the Lord’s teaching.
 
Ah, yes. Maybe I should have rephrased that. You’ve got nothing to lose after death if you keep on trekking.

I’ve got too much invested in religion to change at this point.
 
Sorry, I have got to and get ready and go to Mass or else I am in danger of eternal damnation.
 
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And Christ’s Church has been enacted in every culture:

There are some twenty something Catholic churches sui juris in full communion with the Roman Pontiff.

What we cannot fathom, however, is that Christ left each person to make up his own doctrine, for the night that he was betrayed, he prayed that “they may be one as you and I are one”.
 
Am not going out of fear of mortal Asian and damnation. I am going for love of Christ. There is a big difference.
 
I have those moments. All I can say is that my best reasoning tells me absolutely there is a God. I mean I’ve already addressed all those doubtful thoughts about God’s existence. So the answer isn’t more thinking. I’ve already done plenty of thinking.

I don’t know the solution but I think it is trust. I think it is submission. I think it is in a sense giving up. By that I mean giving up the idea that if I just think enough I’ll have certainty. I believe I need more childlike wonder at the mystery of the world.
 
What I usually think when these questions pop up in my head is, where is this suggestion coming from in the first place. That usually shuts things down pretty quickly 😃
 
I think Chesterton’s ‘Orthodoxy’ gives some insight into this, in particular the chapter, ‘The Maniac’. The books is available for free on line and even as a free audio book. It helps me to listen to it every now and then.
 
Even refrigerators go through a defrost cycle occasionally. I wouldn’t worry too much about it 🌞
 
Pascal’s Wager no longer works for me. Faith requires affirmative believe. I’ve denied much of the secular world’s offerings for the kingdom. Hookups, drugs, born mockery for suggesting a clump of cells has an immortal soul. If there is no kingdom, my life is a waste, because the trifles of this world are all there is, and in the end, I did none of it. Faith is a risk, a belief that everything matters, or nothing matters. Hedging your bet leads to a medocre life satisfying to none.
 
Whenever I have doubts, I think about what St Thérèse of Lisieux had to endure for her final eighteen months. It all started for her on Holy Thursday night 1896, when she coughed up blood for the first time, which signaled to her the first symptoms of tuberculosis which would ultimately end her young life. Then coincidentally by Easter Sunday, she found herself plunged into darkness so dense, that it blocked out the very existence of heaven. And this darkness would not abate for the remainder of her life! And I try to imagine just what that must have been like for her.

Tuberculosis at that time was an extremely dreadful and very painful ordeal. And now imagine if you will, on top of all that, you’re plunged into this abyss of darkness, to the point that your faith, once so vivid for her, has now completely vanished! When you need that faith more than at any other time…vanished!!! How far did this darkness penetrate her you may ask? Deep enough that she said this to her fellow Carmelite Sister Teresa of St. Augustine; “I do not believe in eternal life. It seems to me that after this mortal life there is nothing more. I cannot convey to you the darkness into which I am plunged.” That to me is quite astounding, coming from someone such as Therese!!! One of the more frightening things she penned in her manuscript was this;
"Then suddenly the fog that surrounds me becomes more dense; it penetrates my soul and envelops it in such a way that it is impossible to discover within it the sweet image of my Fatherland; everything has disappeared! When I want to rest my heart fatigued by the darkness which surrounds it by the memory of the luminous country after which I aspire, my torment redoubles; it seems to me that the darkness, borrowing the voice of sinners, says mockingly to me: “You are dreaming about the light, about a fatherland embalmed in the sweetest perfumes; you are dreaming about the eternal possession of the Creator of all these marvels; you believe that one day you will walk out of this fog which surrounds you! Advance, advance; rejoice in death which will give you not what you hope for but a night still more profound, the night of nothingness.”
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