{"id":5452,"date":"2017-07-19T18:47:02","date_gmt":"2017-07-19T08:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/?p=5452"},"modified":"2017-09-25T20:10:10","modified_gmt":"2017-09-25T10:10:10","slug":"feelings-of-doubt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/feelings-of-doubt\/","title":{"rendered":"Feelings of Doubt"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

Feelings of Doubt<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Adapted from a sermon by Fr Lazareth el Antony<\/strong><\/p>\n

I continued being an atheist until my mother died. I suffered from my own doubts and fears. I suffered externally and internally. God was not a presence in my life. I suffered 4 years and I never found consolation. I read a lot about Buddhism and Hinduism but it was a taste only. I didn\u2019t arrive at any deep personal commitment with any of these religions.<\/p>\n

When my mother died, I felt a hole in my heart. It hit me that I had no mother and no source. I didn\u2019t understand that God was the origin and the reason for my being. After a year of grieving my mother\u2019s death, I went back to the hospital where she had died of cancer. I wanted to remember the days of her suffering. I wanted to go to her room and recapture that last moment with her. For me, death was a darkness that I could not escape. The nurses told me that the hospital room was being used and that I can come sometime afterwards. They sent me to a library to wait for them there.<\/p>\n

While in the library, I found a book about the life of a monk called Thomas Merton and I began to read it. The nurses forgot about me and I forgot about them. The book was so engrossing. It was an exact copy of my whole life. Thomas Merton was a philosopher, studied politics and his mother had died.\u00a0 He was a fan of films and books that I had liked. The only difference is he grew up in America, while I grew up in Australia. After his mother died, Thomas worked his way to a Roman Catholic monastery. Well I thought to do the same. I ignored the pages that talked about Thomas\u2019 growing faith in God. He had a friend who converted him to God but I ignored reading that part. I just took the simple idea that Thomas had exchanged his university life to a monastery life. I wanted to do the same because in the monastery, Thomas had found peace.<\/p>\n

The next day, I telephoned a Roman Catholic monastery and asked to become a monk. The head monk answered the phone and asked which church I went to and who my confession father was. I told the monk that I did not go to church and I knew no priest. On hearing that, the monk closed the phone. He thought I was crazy and that I had a weird idea about monasticism and he wasn\u2019t going to buy into that. I looked into a phone book and I found another monastery. It was a Serbian Orthodox monastery. I rang and asked for a visit. The bishop of the monastery answered the phone and without questioning me, he said \u201ccome and see.\u201d Later I understood why he said this sentence. Rather than ask me questions like the Catholic monk, he didn\u2019t want to prejudge the issue so he said \u201ccome and see.\u201d I was pleased with that, and I went.<\/p>\n

I arrived to the monastery on a Saturday, which is the day they commemorate the dead. \u00a0As we entered the cemetery, the bishop asked me to walk with a certain lady and gentleman. I later realized that they were a couple who had lost their daughter in a car crash. The couple was bitter over the death of their daughter and so was I, over the death of my mother.<\/p>\n

After the cemetery, the Serbian monks went to the church for prayer. They started to pray in front of the icon of St Mary. I had seen icons as part of Art and History but I knew very little of them. I had heard of St Mary but I knew nothing personal about her. I had no understanding of her role in the church or as a Theotokos. This was the start of my journey to Christianity.<\/p>\n

Despite the doubt, every experience I had was a stepping stone to the true faith.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Feelings of Doubt Adapted from a sermon by Fr Lazareth el Antony I continued being an atheist until my mother died. I suffered from my own doubts and fears. I suffered externally and internally. God was not a presence in my life. I suffered 4 years and I never found consolation. I read a lot … Continue reading “Feelings of Doubt”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5454,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5452"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5457,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5452\/revisions\/5457"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}