My blog: http://d-isis.blogspot.com
I write about my day-to-day musings as I fulfill my vocation as a wife and mother. I am so thankful and amazed to watch my children grow and that I am entrusted to take care of them here in this world. My prayer and hope is to raise them well and saintbound!
Sarah Isis recently posted..Date nights and get-aways

I can’t say that I can give you any reading material, but I can give you a story of something he might consider “outlandish” that happened to a family at my church.

One of the family’s seven year old son was diagnosed with a pretty rare form of cancer. He was getting special treatment at a hospital in New York. The amazing part was that while this boy was sick and loosing his hair, he still would go around to the patients in the cancer ward and visit with them and keep them company. He always prayed and made sure he received the Eucharist on Sundays. After a while he started to get worse. One week there was a visiting priest that went around to hospitals that specialized in helping ill patients get through their worries and to pray and receive the Eucharist. The boy was adamant that he be allowed to pray with the priest. So they both prayed together and he received Communion and that was it. About an hour later he was scheduled to go get scans and tests done to check on his condition and he looked at the doctor and said that it was no longer necessary. He said that as he was praying with the priest he felt all of the cancer cells “just going away”. The doctor didn’t believe him so he took him for his scan and there was nothing. Where the week before there had been blotches of cancer cells in his stomach area there was nothing that should not have been there. His blood work came back all normal. After two weeks he was released because still nothing was showing. His cancer was completely gone. He’s been back since and there is still nothing.

I’ll tell you now, it’s not your fault. Many of my friends who went to church each Sunday when they were with their parents found that once they were on their own they always found other things they would rather do. My brother has stopped going all together. Honestly there were times when I would think “Oh I can skip today, it won’t hurt.” But then I would feel this overwhelming sorrow come over me that would rouse me from bed and I would literally run out the door to get to mass. After we “leave the nest” is when we are truly tested on whether we hold to our Confirmation. Actually at Confirmation is when we are held accountable for our own actions upon our souls. Until that point it is the parents’ job to make sure we are informed and follow Christ’s teaching, but at Confirmation the Church tells us “It’s up to you now, you are the one who is responsible for your own actions.” Do not think you could’ve done more or less. From what you’ve said it sounds like you did your duty, you gave him his foundation and showed him the Lord and the path that the Lord would have us walk.

Sorry for the book, but since I’m about the same age as your son I felt compelled to tell you that you have done well, and are continuing to do so. You will be in my prayers.

I don’t know why you felt as if God was telling you to get out of the mass because you are a Jew, but I can tell you that I firmly believe that he was not saying it. God is always waiting for his sons and daughters to return to him and when they do he would never ever tell them to get away from him. Everyone is welcome to the mass, the only thing we as as Catholics is that if you come to please refrain from receiving Communion. Instead at Communion time come forward and cross your arms over your chest and receive a blessing from the priest. I could get in to a whole reason why we ask this, but the topic deserves a very large post on a blog instead of just the space in a comment’s box.

I cannot speak for what you actually felt, though I can speak for what I feel you felt. I came to wonder when you said you felt as if you had been “slapped across the face” if in fact it wasn’t God going “Here! I’m right here!”

Since you said you are searching, and that you keep looking for the place to “find God” I encourage you to go to a church, not during a mass, but just go in when it’s quiet and sit. As Catholics at some place in the church, usually in the front or to the side, there will be the tabernacle where Jesus’s body is present so normally when I do this I go sit near the tabernacle or right in front of it if there are no seats near it, and I’ll sit there and just listen. I’ll ponder a couple of thoughts every now and then, normally whatever I’m having troubles with or whatever I’m trying to find an answer to, but my main focus when ever I pray this way is just to listen; to open myself up to anything that God says to me.

I have a feeling your feelings of “Get out” during the mass wasn’t because God was saying to get out, but because you yourself were telling yourself to run; to run away from this new and frightening feeling that you were getting every time Jesus’s name was mentioned during our ceremony of his last supper with us, and for us, before he died to save us. I can’t count the number of times during the mass where I have almost broken down in tears from the feelings that I get during this powerful receiving of grace. During times when I’m starting to feel lost and I’m searching for an answer, I’ll go to mass and I’ll feel so overwhelmed with his presence sometimes that I find it hard to breathe. It’s all together terrifying to the point of where I feel as if I must stand up and leave, but over joyous at the same time.

2) I’m originally from Virginia but I now live in Ohio. It’s been different having to deal with the way northerners approach religion. I find that while I was at home I was surrounded by people of all ages celebrating the mass. Now I find myself in a church where I’m practically the youngest single person there.

3) The Story of St. Rose of Lima: First Canonized Saint of the Americas. I read the story of St. Rose of Lima when I was six, and ever since I knew that I was going to have her as my Confirmation saint. Not only did her prayer for the souls in Purgatory resound with my own soul, but her feeling that God is calling her to do something, but not to do so in a cloister, has for the past five years been tugging at me. I have not yet found out what He does want me to do, but I have looked at joining a cloister, but every time I read about what they do and what their goals are I hear this voice that says “No, that’s not what I want.”

4) My typical day is pretty much work, but I was finding that since I can come in at any time in the morning as long as it doesn’t push lunch time hours I was becoming slothful and lazy about getting out of bed. So now to combat this sin of mine I have created a schedule for my day. A work day goes like this: I wake up each morning at 6 and get out of bed by 7 (I need a lot of time to wake myself up and actually feel awake), I get in to work by 8, I work from 8 to 4 while eating at my desk so that I don’t have to take a lunch break, I get home by 4:15 (I have a 10 minute drive to work, it’s so nice!) and from 4:15 to 5:30 I spend my time in prayer of the Rosary as well as reading the days readings for daily mass, after prayer I give myself from 5:30 to 8 to exercise/eat/get on the Internet and play around, at 8 I take a shower because if I don’t I’ll go to bed with wet hair (no blow dryer here), then from 9 to 11 I spend my time on the Internet or I spend my time reading. If it’s a weekend I’m a bit more lax on my schedule as my “break time” so that I don’t always constrain myself to do something.

Honestly, before I made this schedule for myself I didn’t pray daily all that much. My favorite part of the day was when I finally got home from work (at about 6 or 7) and was happy that I was finally done for the day. Since I’ve started to pray daily I literally count down the last hour at work until I get home to spend my time in prayer. Not just any prayer though. Sometimes I’ll prayer for special things, like on the March for Life day I’ll pray for a respect for life reflected in the laws of this country, but normally I follow my Confirmation saints example, which is the whole reason for choosing a saint to emulate for Confirmation, and pray for the souls that are waiting in Purgatory. I always feel that not many people pray for them any more so the souls are having to wait longer and longer to meet God, so I spend most of my days praying for them. I’ve even taken to getting to mass early on Sundays (yes, I’m one of the rare young Catholics that still attends Sunday morning mass) so that I can pray a rosary before mass. I always end my rosary asking the Lord to take any of the indulgences that he feels that should be given to my soul to give them to a soul in Purgatory.

Now that I’ve made your eyes bleed from all of my typing, I’m internally appalled at the way I’ve rambled instead of laying out my thoughts in order, I will allow you to finish reading.

God bless, and thank you for letting me get a feel for how to lay out my thoughts well. My mind has a tendency to shove all of the information I want to say to the forefront of my mind all at once, so hopefully I can work my way through this.