Dear Veronica,

I have been praying for you ever since I received your message, and I will continue to do so.

Do not be afraid for what you are going through, for even though you find it difficult now, it does not mean God is leaving you or you are losing him; what he is trying to do is really to bring you closer to him, and not to abandon or drive you away.

I know that sounds contradictory, so let me explain.

You love God. The problem is you have feelings of doubt, you feel he is almost gone, you feel like you are close to being completely away from him and losing him. Now, to find out whats happening in all of this, lets have a look at the bigger picture. God loves you. God never abandons even the greatest sinner, he always tries to bring him back, that is why he died on the Cross and rose from the dead, so that we could all have life in him. Now, if God never abandons the deliberate sinner, do you think he is going to abandon the person who wants to love him and not lose him?

That means that what now looks like something you are losing must really be in some way a fruit of his love, something God is giving you and not taking away.

How could that be?

Faith is something special. It is a gift God gives us in Baptism, and its like a small seed that we have to make grow into a great tree. At times God uses other gifts to boost this seed and help it grow at the beginning, things that help us develop it, like training wheels on a bicycle. One of these gifts is our feelings. For a long time we feel like he is present, we feel good when we pray, when we make our First Communion, and at other times too like when we see him in the manger at Christmas or look at him on the Cross. These feelings make it easier for us to know he is there and to pray, we find it easy to see that Mary is our mother and the saints are our brothers and sisters there to help us. So our feelings are like those training wheels. But youd never win a race or go mountain biking or really have fun on your bike if your Dad never took the training wheels off it, would you? Even if for a while you feel a little unsteady and are afraid you are going to take a spill, it is still best to remove them.

It seems to me that God thinks it is time to take the training wheels off your faith. When he does that, the only thing that changes is the wheels of your feelings, which are gone. Everything else remains the same. Like you say, you still love him (you wouldnt be so upset if you didnt). For his part, he is still present in the Eucharist and it is still Christ who comes to you in Communion. When you pray he still listens to you. The only change is, you dont feel it any more.

So now is when you have to say to Christ, Ive always known you are present in Communion even though what I see looks like bread. Thank you for the gift of faith that makes me able to believe. I believe you are still present, even though now I dont feel the same way as I used to. Thank you for taking away the feelings, because now I can believe more strongly and I can show you I really trust you. So when your lack of feelings makes you doubt, the solution is not to go looking for your feelings again. All you have to do is reaffirm our love for him, and tell him that thanks to the gift of faith he gave you, you dont need feelings to believe in him.

You see, our feelings usually focus on ourselves, and to really love and be saints we have to go beyond that. Remember what Jesus told us, we are to love God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves. You see how to do that we have to take the focus off ourselves, and that is what this difficult lesson you are going through is all about. Jesus wants to give himself more to you, not less.

When things get really difficult, I find it very helpful to remember how Jesus had to struggle with his feelings, and how he loved us so much that he put them aside like when he was in Gethsemane and actually asked his Father to take this cup away, and he sweated blood, it was so terrible to imagine, and still he said, not my will but yours be done. And when he was on the Cross it felt like his Father had abandoned him.    

So, Veronica, do not be afraid. God will never stop loving you. He wants the seed of your faith and hope and love to grow into a great tree so as to help others, and this is what he is trying to do.

God bless, and as I said, I am praying for you. Im sure many of our readers will too.

-Fr Anthony.