Doubts! Doubts! Doubts!
Here is an account of my very recent experience with doubt, that horrible feeling that Satan raises within us!
It started with a prayer to the Holy Spirit which I had sent to someone. She wrote back thanking me but voiced her concern that there is nowhere in the Bible where someone prays to the Holy Spirit and she was not sure at all if we should address the Holy Spirit in prayer!
“God is ONE “ I wrote back. You pray to one of them, you pray to all of them. I sent an article I found on the web supporting this view, not realizing that it was not from a Catholic perspective. Somewhere towards the end of the article, the same old tired topic of Catholics worshipping Mary, Saints, etc was mentioned and condemned as an insult to the Almighty.
I immediately sent a counter argument, this time from a Catholic source but the seed of doubt had already been planted.
Let me state from the outset that I am a dyed-in-the-wool Catholic, proudly so!
My doubt sprung from the fact that our prayers to God are mixed with those to others, e.g. the BVM.
After the “Our Father” where one’s attention is rightly focused on God, we move on to another prayer, for instance the “Hail Mary” where we now focus on Our Lady. I told myself why not pray to God and God alone first and finish. At another time, I can then pray to the BVM, to the saints, etc.
This morning at my prayer time, I did just that!
Then something happened which I found illuminating.
I have a small book titled “Your Word is My Path” It is a book for daily meditations. After the prayers, I took the book to read today’s meditation. It was, yes, you guess it: “Coping with Doubt”!
For today’s meditation, the author quoted from "Pilgrim’s Reveries":
Read on:
DOUBTS AND FEARS"Then he said to them, "Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts?" (Lk 24:38)
A man went to stay with a friend in Cornwall, England, where there are a large number of deep holes in the ground where there used to be mine shafts. There are no fences or rails around them.
Well, one day this visiting friend took a walk and got lost. It was too dangerous to walk in the dark, but it was too cold to sit and wait till morning. So he moved ahead very, very carefully. But his foot slipped and he started to slide down a mine shaft. He just managed to grab an outcropping rock. There he hung, terrified, with his feet dangling. After about twenty minutes, he felt he was at the end of his strength, and he would soon have to let go and plunge to his death.
Then, much to his intense relief, he saw a little light in the distance and it was coming his way. He shouted with all the strength he had left.
When his rescuers came and shot their beam of light down on him, the first thing they saw was that his feet were dangling within a foot of solid earth. The mine shaft had been filled in. All his agony and fears had been for nothing!
I felt like it was an answer to my doubts: “ My agonies and fears are for nothing”!
I would still, however appreciate some inputs on the point raised of addressing God as well as others together, "in one breath", as it were
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