Spiritual Emptiness in the Tropics

Context: I was in my seventh month of my two year service. November 2010. I sent an email to the Institute brothers, venting out my isolation and dryness of faith. Father responded but there wasn't any other communication made beyond that...In hindsight, I feel bad for the Institute and I feel bad for that lonely soul I was!) Dear Fathers, I am sorry that this message is sort of coming out of the blue. I feel that I am in desperate need of some guidance as I can no longer go on, "guessing" at what I should do regarding faith. For some 5 or 6 years now, I have been taking a more serious look at my faith, especially now that I’m in my early twenties. To sort of set part of the setting: I’m meeting more atheists that are making more sense, demonstrating more critical thinking (to a degree) and are actually using sounder “convictions” rather than “feelings” to lead them to meaningful conclusions. I’m starting to become aware of mindless theism or what I call, “auto pilot mode”. On the flip side, I’m meeting more people who claim to believe in God and also demonstrate superstitious-like tendancies and do things based off of someone “telling them” that it was the right thing to do and of course never think to question it. Its actually frightenly shocking with how much people will agree with and never actually go deeper than three seconds of pondering, if even that. I don’t want to say that “I’m losing my faith”. I feel that this particular phrase is something that people throw out there in a blanketed sort of manner as the explain-all diagnosis. I have something, but I don’t know what to call it. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve lost anything, I’m just gaining something new lately, I new set of eyes. I think most people go through this when they get to adulthood, you make your own decisions. I don’t, however, agree with people when they experience difficulties and decide “I can’t explain or prove anything regarding God, this is crazy, I guess their isn’t anything more than this life.” And then they just sort of give up on it because, “it was too hard” or just seemed “too far fetched to believe in”. I don’t believe in giving up on something because it was difficult. I truly believe that the right thing to do is the hardest thing. That’s why I’m pursuing “the truth” but its been a painful journey and it makes me sad when I face stone faced facts. I’ve been more catholic in my first 20 years of life than most people over the course of a whole lifetime. I also used to be that person who had all the answers too and would always see how I could shed some light on people’s questions about the faith and other times give guidance. Now I always think if I were to say to someone, “I’m starting to see and feel life like an atheist, what do I do?” I know without a doubt I would be told to: 1. Pray to God 2. Go to mass, go to confession, go to a holy hour, Pray the rosary etc. 3. Read the Bible everyday 4. Read about the lives of the Saints or miracles 5. Fast 6. Read what famous catholic apologetics have said and written 7. So on I say I know because this is what I used to suggest to people as a teen or in college. But now, I feel that since I myself am experiencing spiritual technical difficulties, I would be a hypocrite to suggest these things to someone who also had a problem or who does not believe at all as these are thing that seem to be mechanical for me. I was born into a large traditional catholic family (not some modern catholic family) but the hard core Roman traditional Catholic. I grew up wearing veils in mass when most people at our parish showed up in short shorts or tank tops to church. I went to catholic elementary school up until sixth grade and my wise parents knew if they were to leave me in catholic schooling longer than that, especially in if I were to go to a catholic highschool, I would most certainly lose the faith if not come out of the school warped. (If you want your kid to lose their faith, send them to a catholic school haha, so true!). As a young child and a teen, I ate through all the catholic books dreamable from lives of the saints, to writings of the little flower, to novels of Teresa de avila, to the miracles of lourdes and Fatima, to faustina, to padre pio, to jose maria escriba, to theology of the body pope john paul II, to john vianney, to Anthony claret, liturgy of the church by benedict, Walter Ciszek, and so on, i'm sure you get the idea. I said the rosary, prayed the year long saint bridget prayer twice, grew up havng a healthy access to holy movies. Went to mass with my family every Sunday, holiday and in lent everyday. Spent hours on a weekly basis in front of the holy sacrament talking, reading, thinking. Fasted when necessary and even fasted when unnecessary. Nothing was ever forced on me. I had a pretty balanced life in and outside of church. When I went away for college, as I studied my undergraduate material, I continued to go to mass, go to the adoration chapel, go to confession, pray.When I studied abroad, I made pilgrimages to Lourdes and Fatima. In my free time, I researched my faith, (at this time I was definitely surrounded with a more diverse crowd of people who pushed me to go deeper into my faith). I had to have an answer for any question that went my way. I not only researched what catholic apologetics would say but also I read the works of great and famous Atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitches, and so on. It seemed that after awhile, I tried not so much to be a-know it all. The questions about faith and the realities about life started to catch up with me. Soon after I found myself not looking for answers to someone else’s question, but rather, looking for answers for my own self. My own doubts. One of my best friends in college was an Atheist. We spent hours talking and talking. I like to find myself a rational person. I believe that reason, rationality is a good thing. A function given to the brain by God, it’s like someone gifting you with an umbrella but you refuse to open it when it is raining, just like insulting God to not “THINK” when he clearly has given you a brain to think and reason. Strangly enough, this wonderful man and I came to agree on so many things. Crazy how much two opposite people, opposite in regards to the origin of life, can agree about so many things. This was just the beginning of my conversations with atheists in general. In the past I entered discussions ready to impart knowledge but now I leave these discussions even to this day more daunted by the fact of how much I don’t know and how large and vast this world truly is. How much I can relate to non-believers better than I can to God-believers. Here I am post college living in a developing country participating in long term humanitarian services thinking that perhaps getting out into the world would help me put my religious unsteadiness into perspective, but I feel like it’s done the opposite. I find that living outside the comforts of the home turf environment has ripped open some new spiritual scars. I think what happened was, I’m no longer with my family who fed me that spiritual support. I dont have beautiful latin chants at mass. Even in general, the culture and the society are so different that even when I"m not in church and am out in the general public, its hard to think of God. I go to mass here, but mass, and religion for that matter, is sort of a mix between Catholicism, meaningless tradition, superstition and tribal practices. I know to a degree religion around here sort of has bits and traces of old indigenous practices. Something we Americans or Europeans would call “out dated” or “uncivilized”. However, if you look at the world and history from an anthropology point of view, aren’t we the same way? In being the village embassador here, I’ve been to many of the other faith’s religious services, Baptists, Evangelicals, Cuadrangular, Adventists, Jehova Witnesses, etc. Their stubbornness to perpetuate and uphold mindless practices were, in a sense, very similar to what I witnessed inindividuals back home in my very own catholic churches. Lack of critical thinking, doing things because they feel “guilty and don’t want to go to Hell” or they claim to “feel something” as if religion were a drug or because their family was something so they happen to be something too. It made me think, if this isn’t a new phenomena, this mindless religion trait that people demonstrate, then clearly it is something that has been around since caveman days. Furthermore, you find mindless zealots in and outside the catholic faith, in and outside the decision making in catholic magisterium, in and outside those that translate the bible, and so on, where oh WHERE are you guaranteed the truth? Where ever there is human nature there is a large possibility of human error due to those ingredients I stated above. I don’t blame people for being atheist now, I totally understand them when they cringe or question my willingness to believe in somethings because ultimately at the end of the day “someone had said so” be it from the bible, or in a vision because I never had that "conversation" with God himself. Here in this foreign country, I am just as afraid to get into conversations about God as my atheist counterparts. I’m tired of hearing “Amen” in between every other word and making sure to throw in God’s name to make sure that “I’m good with the people”. If I mention that I’m having a problem with faith, people go into “autopilot mode” and start quoting the bible thinking that the quote itself will explain everything and that the person saying the quote need not offer anything else. It made me think how I used to do that, and that people at home and even individuals from the catholic church do the same thing. I can get so upset at theists, I can see their mental ignorance keeping them in bondage, I don’t think God created the bible to be a substitute for rational conversation and reasoning, perhaps a supplement or resource but not as a physical question and answer book. Life isn’t like that, he didn’t’ make life that way. (I think). Sadly, I never feel so lost or isolated here than when I am standing in the congregation at mass, thinking do I really believe in all of this. I start thinking about my struggle to find God. I feel now if I were to take my advice I would be supplicating a superstition. “If I say a 2 rosaries I’ll get three ounces of faith back”. Or if I “ask God for help” depending on how I feel that day, I can interpret whether or not God is helping me or cursing me. I’m questioning myself. I feel like I have no one to talk to. I talk to an atheist and I get depressed. I get talk to a theist and I get frustrated. If I’m left to myself, I get more confused. And if I turn to God, I’m met with complete and utter silence. Maybe my “faith” is being purified, now that I'm stripped of spiritual comforts I’ve had in the past, who knows at this point I can only guess or interpret. No matter who you are, all of us, we have to eventually grow up and re-evaluate our beliefs, and I mean REALLY evaluate, not just, “hmm yeah, its all good with what I already have”. And not just reevaluate once, but constantly, everyday. Whether you are an atheist or theist, everyone needs to pursue truth. I think that is the binding every decent human being can relate to one another. I'm not sure if you can actually put on the eyes of an atheist and eventually from that atheistic point of view are able to rationalize up to your beliefs as why you believe in God. It probably is beyond words, but if you have any advice or suggestions, I am desperately all ears. I know we all have to go through our own struggles but we do have each other for support for a reason. Thankyou for your time.