I feel.. faithless

[Ash Wednesday]

[quote name='Duc_In_Altum' date='Mar 8 2005, 12:13 AM'] what in particular do you mean by "on fire" ?

-Joe [/quote]
Well, my pal philippe and I got in a bit of a fight and I dumped gasoline on him, and....

[Piccoli Fiori JMJ]

[quote name='Ash Wednesday' date='Mar 8 2005, 01:51 AM'] Well, my pal philippe and I got in a bit of a fight and I dumped gasoline on him, and.... [/quote]

[Philippe]

hahahahaha ash . what i mean by onfire is that i was just totally into my faith and i felt really close to Christ. I was "in the zone" now i feel like im loosing it.

[Duc_In_Altum]

[quote]i felt really close to Christ.[/quote]

Key words. Interesting how you mention how you feel. So many times, we talk about feeling close to God. These certainly aren't false statements because at certain times and in all honesty, we do feel closer to God than we do at others.

That's the cool thing about God though; His Love, providence, revelation, mercy, etc. are NOT dependant upon how we feel. Our standing with God doesn't change whether we feel like Ned Flanders or if we feel like Moe (For the "the Simpsons" literate).

There's a heirarchy at work here:

God
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Human Intellect
^ ^ ^ ^
Human Will
^ ^ ^ ^
Human Emotions
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Human Body

Before the fall of man, our Intellect, will, emotions, and body were completely in line with God.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

God
___________________

Human intellect <<<<<<

Human will<<<<<<

Human Emotions < > ? ^ ! ~

Human Body /\____/\____/\____/\___/\__/\_/\_/\/\/\/\____________________


After the fall, we became spiritually seperated from God (in a sense), our intellect became focused in on itself, the will began to seek it's own desires, our emotions became unruly, and the body began to suffer and die.

The point in all this is that , since we are sinners, we should not rely on our emotions (how we feel) for our relationship with God. Our intellect is naturally and spiritually closer to God than our emotions. We always need to rely on what we know about God to maintain our relationship with him. We will have much stronger faith when we rely on our intellect. Our intellect is less likely to lead us astray than our emotions.

Clinging to the Church and Sacred Scripture is a primary source of our knowledge of God. We need to be in Adoration, in Mass, petitioning Mary and the Saints, praying Scripture, etc. [i]especially[/i] when we don't feel God. Basically, the established tradition of the Church will lead us through these times when our emotions tell us that we arent close to God. Don't discredit your feelings. Acknowledge them and then pray in the arms of the Church. God will lead you through.


el paz,

-Joe

[Luthien]

God is constant, He doesnt wander from us, we wander from Him.

[Cathurian]

I don't really know what to day besides I'm praying for you.