I find many good souls discussing these questions about God and the way the world is changing. One such is a parish priest in France with whom I am spending several days to repair the organ in his church. His view of things is quite radical and apocalyptic, but it is difficult to contradict him. This morning I read the article of my brother priest in England, Fr Jonathan Munn: Why worship God?
That’s why I need to worship God. He has no need of me whatsoever, but He loves me and I do matter to Him. I need to worship Him because my own involvement in this world without Him leaves behind a legacy of failure, emptiness and suffering.
This is where I find the essential of this blog post. The mystery of evil dogs me very profoundly too, but it seems to be this “weak” argument that prevents the flame from being snuffed out. Problems are much worse for atheists than for believers. Deny God or whatever name we give to the universal consciousness and the spirit in all creation – and we are left with nothing other than ourselves and the nastiness we have for each other.
Things hit home when the hatred comes from other Christians and clergy, and conversation has become impossible. To be honest, I think of the cleric in America who twists the meaning of everything I say in criticism of his “Muscular Christianity” and the ideology that pervades his thought. I come out of that one dazed and flattened spiritually, faced with the notion that Christianity is about hatred and an “evil God”. Humanity seems to be in the process of being divided into sheep and goats – us and them – almost in a rehearsal for the Last Coming. The idea is utterly chilling.
With God there is hope. Without him there is nothing.
Today I will be finishing the pneumatic system for the basses, then it will be tuning. After that I will be going to collect an outboard engine for my boat – and then home and Sunday Mass in my chapel. Life goes on…
The Blue Flower 
I started to feel a deeper sense of inner peace when I I dropped philosophizing about God and just turned to prayer based on simple things like the Divine Office, Eucharistic Adoration and the Jesus Prayer. Permeating life with that mystery we call God can really only happen if we connect with Him through prayer and by holding to the various signs,symbols and rituals that have been handed down to us to make that connection.
Sometimes I return to my baptism and my initial conversion when I need a recharge. In the Eastern Tradition baptism is like a seed of Grace in your soul that continued to radiate the Divine Energies from the inside out. It cannot be totally wiped out. There’s that seed that can be obscured and muddied but not effaced or erased. When we pray and stop worrying so much about all the things that we have no control over that seed starts to radiate again,clearing the muck from around it.
All I know is that I really felt something years ago that has never left me, and that only prayer sustains for me.
The major churches are dying,rotting in their coffins or being buried by secularism, over thinking, phariseeism or Islam, and yet the grace present in the world is not dependent on the bureaucracy and ineptitude of popes,bishops,cardinals and corporate yes man priests. Grace is always present,even if on an institutional level it seems like the sky is falling.
Just think Father, when you pray the Office or offer the Mass in your small private chapel you are standing in a stream going back to the time of Christ, you are surrounded by countless saints, angels and our Lord Himself. Even if you cannot see it and if the world laughs nevertheless you continue because on some level you intuitively sense that it’s real and true.