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Question

Good morning,
my question is: is it possible to find your faith again after many years of not believing?
I’ll explain myself better.
I’m a 2… years-old young woman and my family was always very religious.
Around the age of 15 I lost my faith in God, I stopped going to church and believing, both because, as a teenager, I wanted to “rebel” against the rules imposed by my parents and because, as the years went by, I started having many doubts.
Even if I was not practicing, I always kept faith in the teachings of the Bible, such as forgiveness, compassion, love for the weakest among us.
Last Friday I got the terrible news that one of my high school classmates passed away in his sleep.
This news shook me to my core, but at the same time something clicked inside me.
The next day, I visited Saint Peter’s Basilica and I had the  feeling of finding some answers, a feeling that that particular death, just as every other bad thing that happens, was part of a “project”, that they aren’t for nothing.
So I ask you if it’s possible to find faith again and how to proceed to draw closer to the Church.
I would like to ask you if you can recommend some passages from the Bible to guide me in this path.

I thank you for your attention,
Best regards

Priest’s answer

Dearest,
1. First of all, I apologize for the long delay in responding to you. It has been almost a year since you wrote me your email.
I hope that, in the meantime, you heard the voice of God becoming stronger inside you.
Maybe you have picked up the Gospel (here’s the Bible passage that you ask for), you have opened it and read words that came as answers to your question.

2. Jesus speaks through the Gospels and gives the answer.
It’s not a matter of reading a sentence or a passage.
In that moment, it’s a Person who answers, a Person in which all the truth about man is presented.
After all, Jesus is – as God – the One who created us. He is the one who sustains us into existence moment by moment.
He is the one who “for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work.” (Phil 2:13).
He is the arrival point of our existence.
Those who draw closer to Him quickly understand that He’s the light of the world, the light of their lives.

3. Your story reminded me of that of a very intelligent Jewish girl who, when she was 13 years old, stopped praying and, at 15, declared herself an atheist. Her name was Edith Stein.
She was teaching Philosophy at a university and still an atheist when she was struck by two events.
The first: she went to visit a church with some colleagues for artistic reasons.
She was struck by an ordinary woman of the people who had entered, put her bags down and kneeled in prayer.
It was a shock for her. She had never seen people enter a church on a weekday and gather in prayer. Jews, in fact, go to the synagogue on Saturday and, after the function is finished, the synagogue remains closed for the rest of the week.
She had also noticed that among the Protestants nobody goes to church during the week.
But that was a Catholic church.
In short, she saw an ordinary woman who united herself with God and prayed. An experience that she didn’t live, didn’t feel, from which she had excluded herself.
That was the first blow to her atheism.
She had discovered herself poor. Rather, made poor by her own choices.

4. The second event which struck her was the death of a colleague.
She hadn’t gone to give her condolences to the widow because she didn’t know what to say.
But that widow went to her to ask for help in organizing her husband’s papers.
She accepted and was touched by that woman’s peacefulness.
For an atheist, the death of a loved one, such as that of a spouse, is like being crushed by an enormous and incomprehensible weight.
That woman, even though she was, like her deceased husband, a Protestant, was serene in her pain. Her husband had gone on to achieve the objective for which he had prepared himself in his present life and for which he had lived.
On the other hand, she (Edith), with her atheism and her Philosophy degree, didn’t know why she was alive, nor was she preparing to achieve the objective of her life.
The death of this loved one, a Christian, was like a call who struck her deeply.

5. Finally, the decisive blow.
Edith’s first biographer, sister Teresa Renata, talks about this.
Here it is: “Her work and study with Hedwig Conrad-Martius and her husband had developed into a real friendship between them, that often led Edith to make longer or shorter visits to Bergzabern, where her friends were running a large fruit-farm. Edith, who never shrank from practical work, found the fruit-picking, packing and grading a valuable mental relaxation. She threw herself into whatever was going on. During the day they worked; in the evening they talked philosophy.
It happened, however, that during one of these vacation-time visits both husband and wife had to go away. Before their departure Frau Conrad-Martius took her friend over to the book case and told her to take her pick. They were all at her disposal.
Edith herself tells us: “I picked at random and took out a large volume. It bore the title The Life of St. Teresa of Avila, written by herself. I began to read, was at once captivated, and did not stop till. I reached the end. As I closed the book, I said, “That is the truth.””.
Day was breaking, Edith hardly noticed it. God’s hand was upon her and she did not turn from him”.
This episode happened during the summer of 1921, on the evening of August 4th, the day on which the seventh centenary of the death of the Holy Father Dominic was solemnly celebrated.
Sister Teresa Renata also writes: “In the morning she went into the town to buy two things: a Catholic catechism and a missal. She studied them until she had mastered their contents. Then, for the first time, she went into a Catholic Church to hear mass. Edith Said later: “Nothing was strange to me. Thanks to my previous study, I understood even the smallest ceremonies.”. 

I wish that you’ll live the same experience and will become a great saint like Edith became, she was proclaimed such on October 11th, 1998 by Pope John Paul II and is venerated by all the Church.
I recommend you to the Lord and bless you.
Father Angelo