What am I missing?

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littlerose1

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I’m a 17 year old cradle Catholic, and most people think I’m fine. To my parents, I’m the one with a strong, traditional faith, and to most of my friends, I’m your typical teen, stressed by school and college applications but cheerful and fun-loving. I pray every morning and at night, I’m reading St. Augustine’s Confessions, and I read the Bible fairly regularly. But I’m missing something huge about faith or life or… something.

When I first really found my faith around this time last year, I had what you could call the sort of “honeymoon” period – wonder at God and amazement at how He had brought me to Him. Coupled with spiritual direction, I was on fire and over the summer I was so in love with God. My life had meaning again and it was… crazy.

For various reasons, I’m no longer under any kind of spiritual direction, and since that, my faith has been slipping. My prayer is no longer so intimate and focused; it wanders, I’m distracted, or I don’t even want to pray. I can’t wrap my head around the “big ideas” of God… can’t understand Him or love Him like I’m longing to. I’ll opt to sleep an extra 15 minutes rather than pray for that extra time and I’ll read things on CAF or other Catholic websites instead of sitting down and just being with God – I don’t know, it’s like my focus isn’t on Him. Like I’m in love with the idea of God and the community of the Church, but not in love with God Himself.

My life has just been feeling empty and pointless. People around me are sick and dying and struggling, and I’m just another one of them. There has to be something more to life, some bigger meaning and greater purpose… what am I missing? I keep praying, because I can’t ignore how God worked in my life last year to bring me home to Him, but I’m just not getting it.

Thanks for listening and God bless,
lefty22
 
We easily overlook the importance of ordinary everyday life.
Jesus taught us that ‘ordinary life’ can be and should be sacred.
Jesus could have come on earth as God Incarnate as a fully formed adult, but He lived 30 years of daily life that is barely mentioned in the bible. Jesus and Mary did not avoid the ordinary troubles of life, either. Jesus was regarding as ordinary by His own townspeople. When years later He claimed to be the Messiah, they tried to throw Him over a cliff!

He grew in grace and stature, the bible comments, however you can be sure that he lived in practical acts of kindness to other, to His Mother, to all those He encountered. Acts of kindness and love can be very small, a smile instead of a frown, an immediate response instead of a groan, if your parents tell you to do something, for instance.
An encouraging word to another, a helpful deed. These can be large but they also can be small, but they are acts of love and this is what God asks of us.

Jesus said that the commandment that sums up all other commandments and teachings, is ‘love God above all’ love others as you should love yourself/as you would like to be loved…in practical kindness and understanding.

It’s fine to go through a honeymoon period, but what must be done in that time is not only prayer, but establishing habits and tendencies to do good to others even when you don’t feel like it.

Jesus summed up the judgment of souls by Him in Matthew 25, verses 31-46, and His criteria concerned practical kindness to others, and He stated that to do those acts for others is to do them to Him.

Any way we might judge others, act uncharitably in any way, this is against God’s commands of love. What God asks of us is not that we feel delight, but that we live our lives in generous love, and love doesn’t necessarily give us warm feelings or rewards. We are to live in practical kindness of others regardless of whether it makes us feel good or not. Simply to ‘pray’ sometimes is self-centered. This by the way is not a criticism of contemplatives as they too must be kind to one another, and their lives do involve labor that helps to support and feed the community and to take care of their own and others’ practical needs.

There is a beautiful poem written by a Divine Word Missionary Priest:

The following poem “But” was written by a Divine Word Missionary, inspiring us to love of others, even in the smallest gestures of human kindness.
It was only a sunny smile,
And little it cost in the giving;
But it scattered the night
Like morning light,
And made the day worth living.
Through life’s dark warp a woof it wove
In shining colours of hope and love;
And the angels smiled as they watched above,
Yet little it cost in the giving.

It was only a kindly word, a word that was lightly spoken;
But not in vain,
For it stilled the pain
Of a heart that was nearly broken
It strengthened a faith beset with fears,
And groping blindly through mists of tears,
For light to brighten the coming years,
Although it was lightly spoken.

It was only a helping hand
And it seemed of little availing;
But its clasp was warm,
And it saved from harm
A brother whose strength was failing.
Its touch was tender as angels’ wings
But it rolled the stone from the hidden springs
And pointed the way to higher things,
Though it seemed of little availing.
 
Remember we live in a vale of tears. And Satan the great tempter has been displeased about your close relationship with God. Read, or re-read if you already have, The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. A fictional story with much factual insight.

My advice (to myself as well) is to not wait around for you to feel like doing something pleasing to God. Do it out of sheer obedience. Will it into your life. God will strengthen you in that process.
 
littlerose1 said:
I’m a 17 year old cradle Catholic, and most people think I’m fine. To my parents, I’m the one with a strong, traditional faith, and to most of my friends, I’m your typical teen, stressed by school and college applications but cheerful and fun-loving. I pray every morning and at night, I’m reading St. Augustine’s Confessions, and I read the Bible fairly regularly. But I’m missing something huge about faith or life or… something.

When I first really found my faith around this time last year, I had what you could call the sort of “honeymoon” period – wonder at God and amazement at how He had brought me to Him. Coupled with spiritual direction, I was on fire and over the summer I was so in love with God. My life had meaning again and it was… crazy.

For various reasons, I’m no longer under any kind of spiritual direction, and since that, my faith has been slipping. My prayer is no longer so intimate and focused; it wanders, I’m distracted, or I don’t even want to pray. I can’t wrap my head around the “big ideas” of God… can’t understand Him or love Him like I’m longing to. I’ll opt to sleep an extra 15 minutes rather than pray for that extra time and I’ll read things on CAF or other Catholic websites instead of sitting down and just being with God – I don’t know, it’s like my focus isn’t on Him. Like I’m in love with the idea of God and the community of the Church, but not in love with God Himself.

My life has just been feeling empty and pointless. People around me are sick and dying and struggling, and I’m just another one of them. There has to be something more to life, some bigger meaning and greater purpose… what am I missing? I keep praying, because I can’t ignore how God worked in my life last year to bring me home to Him, but I’m just not getting it.

Thanks for listening and God bless,
lefty22
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I know this is going to sound like really vapid advice, but honestly don’t worry about it. It’s completely normal for a person’s faith life to progress like this. Even C.S. Lewis acknowledges that God tends to drop off the radar once we start to mature. At first he throws us a lot of bones to keep us going, and then once we’re strong enough He applies the pressure. If you liken yourself to clay, that last year was Him molding you, and now you’re in the kiln. Just normal progress. If anything be happy that you’ve gotten close enough to Him to hit the darkness. Even Mother Teresa was in it! This is the moment where God really starts to strengthen you, where you get so close to Him that everything seems to go all Pablo Picasso because of your human limitations. It’s basically what St. John of the Cross calls the Dark Night of the Senses, and if a person is doing things right they SHOULD hit it. Like I said, from what I’ve read it’s completely normal. Just do what you can and let God pick up the slack. If you get really burned out try to make a little time for the prayer of simplicity. Just focus on God or one of His attributes and silently adore Him. That tends to pick up the pace a bit. Don’t be worried if you can only keep your focus for a short time at first when you do it though, it’s something that you grow into.
 
I would recommend you read a website called “Scrupulous Anonymous.” This is a site run by the Redemptorist Order of the Roman Catholic Church. It is designed specifically to help Catholics suffering from needless anxieties about their salvation, or about any other aspect of Church teaching. The information there is very accurate and precise. It may help to relieve some of the anxieties you are feeling.

MAIN PAGE - mission.liguori.org/newsletters/scrupanon.htm

Also, here is an article from the “Scrupulous Anonymous” website about the Catholic understanding of prayer. Many Catholics worry excessively that they are not praying “enough” during a given day, not concentrating enough on prayer, not being “devout” enough when they pray. This can be extraordinarily stressful on us. This article is about the virtues about praying to God WITHOUT words, or even without effort.

mission.liguori.org/newslette…ve/SA_0111.pdf

======================================== ======================================== =====

The Gift of Silence

The following is adapted from Finding Your Hidden Treasure: The Way of Silent Prayer by Benignus O’Rourke (© 2010 Liguori Publications).

Some time ago an elderly lady complained to me that she could no longer pray. She said, “I come here to church after my shopping and sit here all peaceful and quiet. But I can’t pray like I used to.”

I tried to suggest that perhaps sitting there all peaceful and quiet was prayer. Maybe it was a gift God was offering her at this stage of her life. But she wasn’t convinced. Prayer for her meant keeping her mind on the words, battling with distractions, concentrating. “Sitting there all peaceful and quiet” seemed like laziness and failure.

What my parishioner was discovering, in fact, was one of God’s loveliest gifts, the purest form of prayer. She rejected it because it wasn’t what she’d been taught. And she’s not alone. Many people who come to the retreat house share her anxiety about praying.

Many of us remember being taught that prayer is a lifting of our minds and hearts to God. This teaching can lay a heavy burden on us. We feel we must make an effort to speak to God—to praise him, to give thanks, to ask for help. We normally use words, thoughts, and images and feel we have to keep our minds fixed on what we’re saying.

But at times we cannot find the words. The well-known prayers that usually inspire and comfort us strike no chord in our hearts. We may be singing God’s praises while our hearts are heavy or empty. And our hearts become heavier because our feelings do not match the words. We are perhaps tired of words, anyway. Tired of asking God in words that have no life. Tired of thinking about God. Tired of being talked to about God. Tired of saying prayers that may be beautiful in themselves but are not bringing God closer to us.

Then, perhaps it is best to simplify our prayers and follow the age-old advice to go from many words to few words, from few words to one word, and from one word into silence.

Sometimes when we pray, our words—any words—can be barriers. They come between us and God. The deepest communion with God comes through silence.
======================================== ======================================== =====
  • Again, check out the “Scrupulous Anonymous” website. I cannot recommend it more highly.
mission.liguori.org/newsletters/scrupanon.htm
 
Here are some further links to the Scrupulous Anonymous website:

THE GIFT OF SILENCE / UNNECESSARY BAGGAGE - mission.liguori.org/newsletters/pdf_archive/SA_0111.pdf

COMPASSION - mission.liguori.org/newsletters/pdf_archive/SA_1111.pdf

THE SA MAILBOX - mission.liguori.org/newsletters/pdf_archive/SA_0810.pdf

THIS HELPED ME - mission.liguori.org/newsletters/pdf_archive/1011_SA.pdf

MAIN PAGE - mission.liguori.org/newsletters/scrupanon.htm

Also, I suspect much of your difficulty with Catholicism comes from reading Catholic Answers itself.

Many of the people writing on Catholic Answers are not spiritual experts. They are not priests, they are not trained in theology. They are thus not legitimate sources of information. Much of the advice on Catholic Answers is simply wrong. It causes extraordinary problems and suffering for many of the people reading it. Such confusion seems, to me at least, to be quite evil.

Just a quick search of some of the forums on Catholic Answers reveals an extraordinarily unhealthy obsession with sin from many of the people here. This is a very great tragedy. Many of these individuals are in need of serious spiritual and psychological help, which they will not receive on this site.

I used to read Catholic Answers regularly. A small amount of the information posted here did prove useful to me. But hardly anything. Most information on Catholic Answers seem intended to provoke needless fear and worry about almost everything under the sun.

The only Catholic website I now read is Scrupulous Anonymous. Although I am not obsessed with sin myself, I find SA to be the only website ANYWHERE on the Internet that contains deliberately accurate and gentle information about Catholic teaching.

I would say to anyone reading this who is overly worried about sin: quit reading Catholic Answers immediately and go to Scrupulous Anonymous instead. RESIST the urge to come back here. It will not help matters. Reading and even writing on Catholic Answers can become an addiction in itself. Especially if one is desperately seeking accurate and gentle information, but is not finding it. If you wish to learn more about the Faith, Scrupulous Anonymous is the place. It is the one website on the Internet that goes out of its way not to burden you with bad reasoning and an exaggerated sense of sin.

I would STRONGLY recommend every day reading one or two of the letters on the Scrupulous Anonymous MAIN PAGE page linked to above. They will gradually replace an unhealthy fear of sin with a gentle and firm confidence in the mercy of God and of Church teaching.
 
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