What is my Purpose in Life

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This is a serious question. I struggle with mental health issues a lot where I am sometimes tempted to end my life. I deal with a lot of health issues it seems, too. the main one being diabetes. I converted to the Catholic faith I think in 1989. When I had children, even though I struggled with these other health issues, I knew my purpose back then. I raised my children. But now my children are grown and I have no friends and my days are filled with a little housework and sitting at the computer. At least I can say I’ve learned a lot from Catholic Answers since I discovered it. But really. If each child was created by a living God I wonder why I exist at all. My mother became pregnant with me through a rape. I had an unhappy childhood where I suffered sexual abuse at the hands of my stepfather. I was a very promiscuous teenager. I’ve been married several times. I just seem to have made a big mess out of the life God has given me. I am finally making the attempt to become serious about my faith but that is going slowly.
Does the Church teach us what our purpose is in life?
Johannah
 
First of all, the Church teaches that the past can be redeemed. You don’t have to think of yourself as the person you once were for the rest of your life. If you have confessed your sins they are forgiven and gone. Today is a new day and tomorrow hasn’t come yet, so you (and all of us) can make a new start each new day, if that is what we need to do.

Have you had good, solid counseling to help you deal with the bad things that happened in your life? If not, seek it out. You need to put your past into proper perspective so you can move on with your life.

As to our purpose in life, it is to love God and neighbor–to love them with the love of Christ. This means getting involved in ways as you are able. If you have a prayer life and are attending weekly Mass you have made a good beginning with loving and serving God.

Loving and serving our neighbor can take many forms from simply encouraging others to volunteering at a soup kitchen. Contact your parish for opportunities to volunteer or your community. Because you have suffered in life you know what it is to suffer. Share that understanding with others who are suffering now.

I will pray for you. 🙂
 
Love Della’s advice.

Our purpose is to be a child of God and live to serve others. Whether its our children, or friends, neighbors or the poor and troubled - we are called to do what we can to help others.

Get some counseling for your past if you can to assist you with those feelings. Since the kids are grown maybe you could volunteer at the church, or other organizations that need whatever time and talents you have to offer. Perhaps your church or diocese is looking for someone just like you to help in a special area or ministry. Most have many different activities that may interest you. If you but ask - I’m sure they will put you to work.

To give of one’s own time and talent to help others is a gift and helps fulfill our own purpose in life and enrich us. Good luck in your search and God Bless.
 
Thank you both for your help. I’m 52 now and the story my mom tells me of my conception still bothers me. She used to tell me when I was a child that if abortion had been legal she’d have gotten one. I suppose maybe I should look into some sort of counseling but I’m kind of afraid to. I get my psychiatric care through a state mental health clinic. I don’t have to pay for my treatment or medications (can’t afford them). I would be assigned a counselor to talk to and I’m just kind of afraid he/she wouldn’t be sympathetic toward my faith, weak as it is. It just makes me nervous. Do priests do any sort of couseling?
Thanks for the help.
Johannah
 
Definitely talk to your parish priest!

Our purpose in life is to know, love and serve God in this world so we can be happy with him in the next.

We know Him through prayer and reading scripture.

We love Him by following the Commandments

We serve Him by doing works of mercy.
 
Laudatur Iesus Christus.

Dear Johannah:

God is love.
God is a Trinity of Persons who love one another totally and without reservation.
God the Father made you – you specifically and particularly – as a gift for Jesus His Son.
Part of your purpose is to cooperate with the Father’s gift by dedicating yourself to Jesus and to assisting Him to do what He wills to be done.

Jesus wills to express His gratitude and praise to the Father for the gift of creation;
Because of His total love for the Father, Jesus also wills to give all that is His as a gift to His Father.

As Jesus’ disciple and “co-worker,” your purpose is to act in cooperation with Him and on His behalf to do these things.

In part, you are to praise the Father, to notice learn about, appreciate, and delight in as much of creation as you can and to express your appreciation in praise to the Father. You are to conjoin your efforts and praise to Jesus’ in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Mankind is fallen. Because of this, sin, evil, and suffering have entered into the world. Your accounts of your conception, your mother’s cruel statements about abortion, and your previous life all attest to this fallen state. For a time, these horrible consequences of human sin made the world of men offensive to God. He was offended because the sins committed by man and the suffering which they caused were both unfit gifts for Jesus and were contrary to Jesus’ will to praise and offer all of creation to God the Father. These things flow from the decision and will of man rather than from the will of God.

To rescue man from the consequences of his sin, the Father sent the Son into the world. The Son took on human nature and, by voluntary submission to suffering and death, He miraculously converted the horrible consequences of sin – victimhood, suffering, and death – into a means of love and praise of the Father. This made it possible for the damaged world of men to be sanctified, that is to be dedicated to and used in the Son’s love of the Father.

To further this work and to make it available to all people yet to be born, Jesus established the Roman Catholic Church and sent the Holy Spirit into the world.

In part, your purpose is to cooperate with Jesus and the Holy Spirit in sanctifying you, so that you become a more and more effective disciple of Jesus and more and more pleasing gift to the Father. In part your purpose is to help other people to enter into Jesus’ service, so that they too can help Christ through His Church to praise the Father in appreciation of the goodness of creation, to sanctify the lives and persons of as many people as you touch, and to make the people around you the fit gifts from the Father to the Son that they were created to be, and the pleasing gifts from the Son to the Father which Jesus wills them to be.

Dedicate your joy and delight in the good things of creation to the praise of God.
Dedicate your suffering and pain, those damnable consequences of man’s sin, to the praise of the Father, joining your suffering to Christ’s and offering even that in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Dedicate your time and your efforts also to bringing others to appreciate this high calling and open invitation to sanctity, the salvation of men, and the sanctification of all of creation.

Think what a delight and glory it will be for God, if even a life so afflicted with the evils of man’s sin as yours has been can be turned into a conduit of the Son’s love to the Father, in the Holy Spirit.

Your purpose is to practice the Faith of the Church: Praise God in every moment, by direct worship in the Mass, by praise in prayer, and by making the world a more and more fitting gift for the Father, as the will of the Son judges fitness. Give yourself entirely to this, and you will have the joy of the eternal and abundant life of the Most Holy Trinity.

Pax Christi tecum.

John Hiner
 
John, thank you. All that answered my question in a really big way.
Thank you again;
Johannah
 
Johannah:

You have received good advices from other posters.
By all means talk to your priest. I don’t know about your Parish, but mine has her own Catholic psychologist gives out counseling.
In our parish, a person talks to the priest first. If the priest thinks the person needs counseling beyond his ability, he will refer the person to our Parish psychologist who is a church member. So check out with your priest first and he may point you to the right direction.

Also, I want to remind you that even your children are grown-ups, you are still their mother. They still need you. Children always need their mother no matter how old they are.🙂

Everyone is God’s precious child, the apple of His eyes.That is why He created you. You are precious in God’s eyes.

I’ll keep you in my prayer. God bless!
 
Love God with all your strength and with all your being. Then love your neighbor as yourself. When it comes down to it, that is what we are all supposed to be doing. Try to find out how God is guiding you to do this. As other posters have probably suggested, find a good priest who can help guide your spiritually, and perhaps point you in a direction that will help you find how to better dedicate your life to God. Peace and God bless! You will be in my prayers!
 
Laudatur Iesus Christus.

Johannah:

How do you pray? Do you have a daily cycle of prayers? Do you pray the Liturgy of the Hours?

What thing in the world do you know of which delights you the most just by its existing?

Pax Christi tecum.

John Hiner
 
If you have nothing to do, actually you can pray for holy souls in purgatory, pray for people, attend daily mass, volunteer in Church groups, etc.

You need to get a help to overcome your wonded heart. It’s difficult, I know, but nothing is impossible with God. The very fact that you are here today as a Catholic means that God loves you and there is something that He still wants you to do.

I firmly believe that God never makes a mistake and there is a purpose/reason for everything that He does. As Cardinal Newman said

*God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission - I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of Truth in my own place while not intending it - if I do but keep His commandment.

Therefore, I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirit sink, hide my future from me - still He knows what He is about.*

It’s just my 2 cents worth. 🙂
 
St Paul tells us in Christ we are a new creation, God’s work of Art who he has prepared to do good works and beautiful things. Our post-baptismal struggle is to live this out, in the quest for holiness and union with God, in so far as is possible in this life. One should examine the fruits of the Spirit St Paul mentions in Galatians:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”

And also one should examine these as well:

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” (Phillipians 4:8)

And consider how these beautiful things are blossoming forth in your soul and your actions in terms of the supreme law of love, which Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 13.
 
Hi John,
The thing(s) that delight me most simply by their existence are kitty cats. I believe cats are living proof that God has a sense of humor. We have four and they always bring me such joy and appreciation for God’s creation.
I don’t know a lot about prayer. I try to pray the rosary but often don’t get very far before becoming distracted by other things.
When I feel bad, all I can usually pray is the Jesus Prayer.
Thanks for writing.
Johannah
 
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