To My Dear Friend,
I'm so impressed by your persistence and determination as you're enduring this extended spiritual dry spell. It reminds me of the woman in Matthew's gospel (15:22-28) whose perseverance was so richly rewarded. And what a blessing to know that Our Lord shared every single one of our trials during His time of sorrow in that long-ago garden; it seems almost incredible, doesn't it, that His Father truly let Him go it alone?
Of course, I hardly think I have all the answers, and I couldn't presume to have walked in your shoes through a lifetime of ups and downs within our Church. But as I reflected on our discussion, a couple of additional thoughts occurred to me. I wanted to share them in case they might be helpful in your search to "
have what she's having," as we discussed.
One thought is this: Might there be a connection between your frustration with the God of your childhood and your own rejection of so many things that His Church teaches? Unequivocal, absolute sanctity of life, with no exceptions, along with a traditional definition of Holy Matrimony that dates all the way back to the days of the Garden of Eden are hardly trivial doctrines within Catholicism. If these don't make sense to you, that seems like a pretty fundamental difference, don't you think? You say that your heart is open to God; is your intellect? Could it be that you are the one turning away from God, and not the other way around?
Of course, it has always been fashionable to diss the Catholic Church, and our own Bishop takes a lot of heat for his adherence to Church Tradition in matters of faith and morals. It's a popular argument that the Church should "get with the times." Indeed, at first glance it can seem like the Church is absurdly backwards, patriarchal, and repressive. Who are these old celibate men, after all, to tell us how to plan and structure our families?
As it turns out, they're the spiritual descendants of Jesus' twelve apostles. Jesus gave Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven, of course, promising that
"you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" and assuring the apostles
"whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." (Matthew 16:18-19) He also promised (Luke 24:49) and sent (Acts 2) the Holy Spirit to guard the deposit of faith, which has ensured the infallibility of the Church's core doctrine for the subsequent 2000 years.
As I've studied Church history, I've found it startling that despite the all-too-human failings of the human beings to whom Christ entrusted the Church, the Holy Spirit truly has guarded the deposit of faith through all these centuries. "The Church should change with the times," people say. But which times? 21st century secular-progressive USA? 10th Century Norway? 16th Century Germany? 19th Century Spain?
"On this rock I will build my church." The Church is a rock; it doesn't change, and it's one of the very few things that doesn't. To me, that seems valuable, like a compass showing us the true north.
Who am I--a speck, compared with 2000 years of scholarship and holiness, carried out by men, but supervised and guarded by the Holy Spirit--to determine that the Church of Jesus Christ should
change to suit my own ideas about how life should be? Isn't it more likely that I (the speck!) should change? Might it be that through His Son, Holy Scripture, the Apostles, and the Church, God has given us an owner's manual for how to achieve real happiness, both in this life and eternally?
And so, with plenty of prayer, study, tears, feeble attempts at humility, and even feebler attempts at obedience, I have changed. The more I learn about our beautiful Church and her teachings, the more amazed I am at their truth and beauty. I hope I keep changing, because holiness is, of course, the pursuit of a lifetime!
As in Chesterton's awesome quote:
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." I think too many people write off the Church's teachings because they seem so absurdly difficult when compared to our society's portrayal of the path to happiness. Of course they do. God's kingdom involves a "narrow gate" (Matthew 7:13), after all, and even some of Jesus' disciples turned away from Him, saying "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" (John 6:60) Pride and disobedience were also, of course, at the very core of Judas' final betrayal of Our Lord.
My friend, I promised to pray for you. To tell you the truth, I have been all along, and of course I promise to keep doing so. Please keep praying for me too, so that we may both respond as Peter did when Jesus asked if he too would follow the departing disciples:
"Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."
+JMJ+ Thy Will Be Done! +JMJ+
Here at Chez D., we support the governor's attempt to look out for the taxpayers by responsibly managing the state's budget. Of course, we also love public school teachers, and we wish they weren't victims of the powerful labor unions.
