Author Topic: A thought on converts (Read 1560 times)

DeMaistre · « **on:** May 15, 2009, 12:04:44 AM »

At first, a convert or revert is on fire with the faith, he is in love with Catholicism - he kneels in awe at the Holy Mass - which is still mysterious to him- he prays his Rosary thrice daily with fervor, he casts his eyes down when walking in public, he goes to Confession weekly with sincere contrition, he reads every day a spiritual book, he receives Holy Communion with fear and trembling....

...and then, as he becomes accustomed to the Faith, he begins to drift away, the world pulls him back slowly but surely, the Mass becomes the same ancient formulas repeated each Sunday, he seldom prays his rosary - if he does, it is a hollow repetition of empty equations, his old mortal sins reclaim his soul, his confessions are hollow and his penance meaningless, receiving Communion, when he seldom does, has become nothing more than eating a bit of bread -even if he cries out to heaven to help his unbelief, to increase his piety, his prayers fall to seemingly deaf ears, in short, the magic of that first moment he attended the True Mass is gone.

That is how I am feeling now.

DeMaistre · « **Reply #1 on:** May 15, 2009, 02:13:02 PM »

Has anyone else experienced this? Advice?

Matthew · « **Reply #2 on:** May 15, 2009, 02:26:20 PM »

It's the same as a person who went on a diet and got in shape -- they should replace their old habits (unwinding in the evening by sitting in front of the TV with a half-gallon of ice cream) with new, interesting activities to make their change permanent. Get into gardening, walking, bike riding, taking the kids to the park -- any of a thousand good activities.

They should get into new hobbies, activities, etc. that will reinforce their new lifestyle -- their new, healthy 150 lb self (as opposed to their previous, unhealthy, 300 lb self)

Those who lose weight and gain it all back usually fail to change their life enough -- though they were fervent about losing weight while they were on the diet.

That why they say you need to REPLACE everything bad with something else good. Don't just pull up the weeds; plant vegetables there and put mulch all around them! If you leave the ground empty/fallow, weeds will eventually take over again, because "Nature abhors a vacuum".

I hope you understand the analogy, how this applies to your case.

Matthew

trent13 · « **Reply #3 on:** May 15, 2009, 02:27:45 PM »

I tend to think that excessive fervor in the beginnning has more to do with how the faith makes one feel v. it being about one's relationship with God. I am a revert from the NO - I was/am enthusiastic b/c it was such an eye-opener for me to become traditional. There was so much that I didn't know. I don't believe I have ever lost that, and it still amazes me to see people who were raised traditional Catholic take their faith for granted. It is a great feeling to feel the spirituality of the true faith, to really be touched by how Holy the Catholic Church is, but in the end it's not about how we feel (that is a happy blessing from God, that perhaps He sends us to help us convert in the first place), it's about acknowledging the truth of the Faith. My advice is to contemplate on one single Mystery of the Faith, when you are praying, explore it, examine it as far as your intellect will allow, and then pray for even more understanding about it. After the Faith has lost it's "newness" it can be easy to get distracted, just try to focus your mind on God.... or you could always go on an Ignation retreat - there is nothing quite like one of those give you a good kick in the spiritual butt!

Matthew · « **Reply #4 on:** May 15, 2009, 02:33:02 PM »

Actually, I *can* relate a little bit to what you're saying.

I was in the Seminary for 3 1/2 years, and having to return to the world after that was very hard on me. You don't have time for the same spiritual exercises you were accustomed to, and you feel like you're being forced to be less holy -- by taking a job, for example. Also, most places don't offer a daily TLM, including where I live. Living in the Seminary was like living in the antechamber of Heaven.

Fortunately I learned that true holiness consists in doing your duty of state well -- loving God by doing His will. But it's easy to get deceived by your feelings.

Before I entered the seminary, I was excited about leaving the world, learning more about the Faith, etc. but now that I've read lots of books and studied the Faith for many years, it doesn't seem as "new" anymore. Combined with a very busy life, I don't get nearly as many "Nice internal feelings" (Bishop Williamson's term -- he calls them NIFs) from the Faith as I once did in my first fervor.

But NIFs aren't important -- all they are is "consolation", which God sends us as we need it. Just like a baby needs milk. But the spiritual life is a constant change from consolation to desolation, and back again.

God wants to know if we want and love Him, or the consolations. So He starts withdrawing the consolations to test us.

Keep the Faith, and keep up the good fight.

God bless,

Matthew

Lybus · « **Reply #5 on:** May 15, 2009, 06:46:43 PM »

I have difficulties with this myself. However, one cannot get the "feeling" of love and real love mixed up. Love begins first with the intellect. First, you must ask for the grace to acknowledge your unworthiness, and your faults. Then you must ask him to allow you to have full confidence him; to be willing to give over everything for him. This takes a long time to achieve, but once it is, you have an inner peace. You feel that whatever happens, Your Creater will be there to nurture you and shelter you. There is more to it, but that's the first two steps.
Dont' worry if you don't "feel" that you love God; it is far more important that you "know" that you love God. To know that you love him simply means that you are willing to serve him no matter how you feel. Ask for the grace to be willing to serve him, and everything else will follow. Eventually, you'll get that "feeling" back, and it won't be as hard :)

Like I said, I'm still a nooby at this, still working at getting that will. I need a lot of

Peter · « **Reply #6 on:** May 17, 2009, 03:11:54 PM »

DeMaistre,

The only point I can stress in addition to the good advice above is a fostering of your devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Devotional works such as "The Glories of Mary" by St. Alphonsus is an excellent start. See web URL :Glories of Mary In addition, my confessor also suggested simple utterances such as "Most Holy Mary, preserve me from mortal sin ... etc." Additionally using devotional pictures while praying the Rosary (or while attending Holy Mass take Holy cards showing pictres of Our Lord's Passion) to aid your imagination have also helped me. In the end, do not fear and have faith in the Most Immaculate Heart of Mary.

cheers,

Peter

spouse of Jesus · « **Reply #7 on:** May 17, 2009, 06:55:44 PM »

Quote from: DeMaistre

At first, a convert or revert is on fire with the faith, he is in love with Catholicism - he kneels in awe at the Holy Mass - which is still mysterious to him- he prays his Rosary thrice daily with fervor, he casts his eyes down when walking in public, he goes to Confession weekly with sincere contrition, he reads every day a spiritual book, he receives Holy Communion with fear and trembling....

...and then, as he becomes accustomed to the Faith, he begins to drift away, the world pulls him back slowly but surely, the Mass becomes the same ancient formulas repeated each Sunday, he seldom prays his rosary - if he does, it is a hollow repetition of empty equations, his old mortal sins reclaim his soul, his confessions are hollow and his penance meaningless, receiving Communion, when he seldom does, has become nothing more than eating a bit of bread -even if he cries out to heaven to help his unbelief, to increase his piety, his prayers fall to seemingly deaf ears, in short, the magic of that first moment he attended the True Mass is gone.

That is how I am feeling now.

The same thing happened to me. Although not exactly as it happened to you.

Raoul76 · « **Reply #8 on:** June 10, 2009, 02:08:56 AM »

This happens to everyone, it is part of how God tests us. It's called "spiritual dryness" or "the noonday demon."

The latter term "noonday demon" came about because of monks in the early days of Christianity who felt they had reached the peak of spirituality. They were bored, and in the middle of the afternoon, the hours would seem to stretch our forever. The devil would attack them and try to get them to leave their monasteries for pleasures outside the walls. If the devil could convince them to commit just one mortal sin, then despair would hook its victim.

A love affair with God is like a love affair with your wife. There will inevitably come a certain point when it is stale and stifling. This doesn't mean your love isn't genuine. It's just overfamiliarity. There are worse things than being overfamiliar with the Almighty.

God will test you. He wants to see if you'll obey Him even when He is not lavishing His attention and kisses on you, even when He makes you feel abandoned. If you pass this test, He will then rain down more graces on you than ever before, and these will then last eternally in heaven. Of course you are far too young to be in these final stages. You must develop the attitude of the marathon runner. Think of nuns who were in the convent from 8 to 80. You don't think they had moments of ennui, of tedium?

I have been Catholic for less than a year but I can already see this process beginning to set in. There are some days I will neglect to pray the Rosary or my morning prayers. I don't feel like God has specially taken me under His wing anymore, like I did at the beginning, when I felt like I was selected out of BILLIONS OF DELUDED PAGANS, I AM GREAT AND WONDERFUL, I AM THE HIGHEST OF THE END-TIMES ELECT. If anything, I feel His disapproval more than His love, especially for my laziness. I'm almost 33, and I don't have a job and don't know what to do. Instead of feeling special and chosen I now feel like a slob and like God is in a constant state of pique and frustration with me. That's okay, I don't want Him to flatter me if that flattery is leading me in the wrong direction.

Catholic Samurai · « **Reply #9 on:** June 11, 2009, 09:11:26 AM »

Love for God is like a fire. It has to be kept fueled lest it goes out. The best way to prevent this is to make Spiritual Communions. Making a Spiritual Communion is like throwing some kindling and a log on a fire thats going out... throw enough logs on the fire, and you have a furnace.

"If you ever feel that the love of God is growing cold within you, make a Spiritual Communion. A Spiritual Communion fans that spark of love into a roaring flame!"~St.John Marrie Vianney

Here is the Spiritual Communion that I was taught:

O Lord Jesus, since I cannot receive Thee in Thy sacramental presence, I beg of Thee to come into my soul and enrich Thy holy grace and make me truly Thy own forever. O Jesus living in Mary, come and live in me, in the spirit of Thy holiness, and in the fullness of Thy power, in the communion of Thy mysteries, and in the perfection of Thy ways. O Divine Guest, grant my soul a strong lively faith and unbounded trust, a perfect humility, and an abiding sorrow for my sins, a total abandonment to Thy divine will, and a perfect loving union with Thee in mind and heart. O Sacrament most holy, O Sacrament divine, all praise and all thanksgiving be every moment Thine. Amen.

We thank the O Lord Jesus for the graces and blessings though has given to us through this Spiritual Communion. Amen.

Dulcamara · « **Reply #10 on:** June 11, 2009, 11:54:08 PM »

Another very important thing people need to remember...

The Catholic Faith is a body of truths... be they truths about God Himself, truths about how we need to live, or how we have been commanded to worship God, etc... But all are truths.

When dealing with the Faith, we need to remember that Catholicism isn't just "a way of life" or "a thing we do" or "a frame of mind" ... it's a whole block of objective reality, like mathematics or physics... every bit as real, even if we can't experience them through the senses always.

Through the teachings of the Church, we are informed or learn of these realities which simply are what they are. They exist outside of ourselves, and as realities, do not depend upon our feelings.

Every person is probably going to experience desolation or spiritual dryness at some point. But faith is an act of the will, not of the emotions. We CHOOSE to believe in the reality presented to us in the Catholic Faith. We decide to accept those truths with our intellect, because they are revealed by God whether directly or indirectly (expounded via the Church... EXPOUNDED, not CREATED). Any sane person knows that the reality in which we exist does not change or bend to our whims, feelings or delusions. The same holds true for religious truths, which are part of the body of that reality. The Holy Eucharist being the Body and Blood of Christ is every bit as certain and definite a reality as 2+2=4, or as the ground under our feet.

Emotions wax and wane, and can change from moment to moment. But we know that the reality of things will not change. If I stop believing in gravity, it won't go away. If I am totally full of feelings that gravity no longer exists, the reality does not change. So, too, whatever feelings we may have about the Eucharist, we can still know, believe and accept with our will and intellect, that the REALITY is what God says it is... "this is my body, this is my blood..."

Sooner or later, we have to stop depending on our feelings, which can be toyed with by the devil, and depend upon the intellect and the will to guide us through the darkness. If we firmly accept and believe the reality presented to us by God via the Catholic Church and His true Faith, then our feelings cannot take that away from us. We must simply continue to hold firm to the truth as we know it.

Think of a person who is schizophrenic, who sees things that are not there. Suppose they keep thinking they see a monster slinking around the room. Well, that person has two choices. Either they can tear up the room, irrationally trying to destroy something that isn't there, or they can follow reason and tell themselves, "look... I think I see this thing, and my feelings about it are very real to me... but the fact is, the reality is something else." The person can choose with their will to ignore their irrational feelings or delusions. By their reason and will, they can thus avoid the disaster of being constantly led about by them, and becoming a slave to them.

So, too, we Catholics are GOING to be tested in our Faith by dryness, or temptations of disbelief. When that happens, we, too, have a choice. Either we can accept the delusion AGAINST reality that our emotions are setting before us, or else we can choose with our intellect and will to "stubbornly" adhere to what we know the reality to be... that these truths were made known to us by God, Who is no liar, and that they are as absolute and real as every other part of reality around us, whatever our feelings or temptations may be to the contrary.

The free will is a very precious gift from God. With it, we can reject and overcome feelings and temptations, however severe, by in the end simply adhering to the truth, and holding it, in spite of what we may be feeling, or what thoughts may be tempting us to think otherwise. Because of our ability to do this, we are not helpless prey to our emotions and temptations, forced to go along with them just because they're overwhelming or vivid. We have a choice in the matter, and the sane thing to do, is to make up our minds to accept the truth no matter what we feel in the moment.

spouse of Jesus · « **Reply #11 on:** June 12, 2009, 07:39:02 AM »

What you said is true. but...

Dryness can lead to sin. If you have big emotional needs and voids, and can't fill them with any interior sweetness, you may end in feeling them with sins. for example gluttony, backbitting, and watching useless movies.

If love beggins in the intellect and is about the will power, then how can it fill our emptiness? There are many things in our intellects, things we know about ourselves, our friends and the world, and yet none of them fills our hearts.

DeMaistre · « **Reply #12 on:** June 13, 2009, 12:40:54 AM »

I don't care so much about the "nice interior feelings" or whatever, I just want to BELIEVE.

Dulcamara · « **Reply #13 on:** June 13, 2009, 01:16:17 AM »

Quote from: spouse of Jesus

If love beggins in the intellect and is about the will power, then how can it fill our emptiness? There are many things in our intellects, things we know about ourselves, our friends and the world, and yet none of them fills our hearts.

God and man are like lock and key. He's the only One Who can really fill our emptiness. Everything that we love, is merely our loving what is infinitely true about Him.

But in this world, there won't be any rest or peace for some souls, and in any case, ALL must carry the cross, and be pierced by it's nails. For some, the cross will be interior desolation.

Some of us won't know peace or happiness until the next life. Is their faith dead? Or are their lives hopeless? But because those people who will bear such afflictions all through their lives, have the ability to choose to believe the truth and live it in spite of their feelings, those people can still attain their eternal salvation.

For some (and I suspect this is true of more and more people in this evil age... sin being the cause of suffering), this life is little better than a long stretch in a prison of flesh, wherein the only consolation is that (because of God's goodness) if they suffer it willingly, their misery will have an end and they will know (in some cases for the first time in their lives) what things like love, peace and happiness are. For someone with a parched heart going through this world that is a desert in terms of charity and peace, it may come to the point where they virtually never feel any consolations, from their Faith or anything else. But they can still embrace it as real and true, and live according to what it teaches, simply accepting their heavy cross here, which can really obtain God's very real heaven for them.

Unfortunately, though most of us will not face a whole life of interior desolation, most of us will still not have peace and happiness in this life. That is why this is called "the valley of tears". Those things... peace and happiness... belong to heaven. But while spiritual dryness and lack of consolation can be very heavy crosses in this life, they perfect the virtues in us because it is in such times in our lives, when living the virtues and the Faith have the least reward for us, and can be, then, out of the purest motives.

It's easy to love God when He sends us happiness and interior peace. It's easy to love God when He invites you to joys and gifts that are sweet. But you must love God truly to love Him still, when He asks you to wear the crown of thorns, and thirst with Him on the cross. When He gives you the best gifts... those which purchase for us salvation by paying for sins... then it takes true love to be faithful to Him.

Remember that Christ Himself, in His passion and death, was willingly stripped of everyone and everything so that we might have eternal life. As the Bible says, the servant is not above the master. We all must, to a greater or lesser degree, follow in His footsteps. Even as Christ said, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" while He was hanging upon the cross, and yet knew (obviously) that His Father had not abandoned Him, so too, He sometimes asks us to have faith in the blackest moments. But even if we could suffer a whole lifetime, so that our life was utterly devoid of consolations, it would be a small price to pay for an eternity in heaven with that good God, after all of our sins.

It helps if we remember that suffering is not a bad thing. It is, after all, a fulfilling of divine justice, and the 'coinage' by which we purchase heaven. Holy joy and peace are not mere emotions, but are grounded and stem from the knowledge of God, eternal truths, and God's goodness. While we experience them emotionally, they are very different from the "easy" feelings of consolation we get when something pleasant happens to us or comes our way. Holy joy or peace can exist in the heart in the blackest moments, in the heaviest trials... through literally anything. What can bring us greater peace, or truer joy, than to contemplate God, His goodness, and the eternity with Him that awaits those who persevere in the Faith to the end, in spite of all suffering? The kind of joy or peace we feel ordinarily are just emotional reactions to things that are pleasant. The holy kind reacts to eternal truths, and the reality that a good life of faith leads to to God's real heaven.

Dulcamara · « **Reply #14 on:** June 13, 2009, 01:26:27 AM »

Quote from: DeMaistre

I don't care so much about the "nice interior feelings" or whatever, I just want to BELIEVE.

Unless you believe God would lie, you DO believe. Temptations, however vivid or powerful, cannot force us to disbelieve what our reason tells us is the case.

God is the way, the TRUTH and the life. And if He said, "this is my Body" ... then we can be more sure of that than we can be of our own senses. As a very wise bishop once said, in the case of our senses, something may be wrong with them, or we may be fooled by them. But God, and God's word, and reality are absolutely certain... more certain even than what my senses tell me (which CAN err).

The devil can only wish that our free will could be wrenched from us by such illusions or feelings or temptations as those we are talking about in this thread. But God gave man the gift of free will, to decide his thoughts, words and deeds according to the powers of his mind, not enslaved to the passions of his heart. So it always comes down to choice... what we make up our minds to accept in spite of anything that goes against it: either the truth, or a lie (for instance, a temptation). But it is by our WILL... and the thoughts, words and deeds that we CHOOSE... that we will either go to heaven or hell. Those we don't choose are just temptations, as long as we CHOOSE to refuse them and not give in or accept them.