I am sorry to say I am not as religious as I was when I was younger. I mean, I presently don’t even believe in an afterlife (although I do still believe in God). It is not deliberate agnosticism on my part, it is just the way I am.
Yet I do still turn to religion and prayer in times of need. Now is no different, with my father’s recent illness. Despite my agnosticism, the thing that most amazes me about the Catholic religion is the way they just take miracles for granted.
One supposed miraculous thing is Lourdes Water. We have some Lourdes Water in the house my mother got in 1993. I place some on my father’s forehead almost every night. (Question: Does anyone know the exact percentage of people who use Lourdes Water who are cured?) I still have the old address of the society that provided the Lourdes Water. If anyone is interested, I may post it here later.
Another interesting thing I got from an old prayer book is a prayer to Our Lady of Mount Carmel called the Flos Carmeli. The most interesting thing about this prayer is that it is said to be never known to fail. Can you imagine, a prayer that has never failed even once! Obviously I pray this prayer alot. And in case God doesn’t like my (unintended) lack of faith, I have been having my (very religious) father pray it too as I use the Lourdes Water on him. In case any of you are curious, here is the Flos Carmeli:
(BTW, here is an article explaining the Brown Scapular mentioned in the prayer, if any of you are curious about that.)
If any of you want to pray the Flos Carmeli for my father, feel free. As I’ve said, I don’t have too much faith anymore. So I may need the faith of other people to pull me thru now .
Thank you in advance to all who read my post and any and all who reply to it too
Jim B., I’ve followed the thread about your father, and I am keeping you both in my former-Catholic-now-a-liberal-Presbyterian prayers and/or thoughts.
I was fascinated by the link your provided to the brown scapular, because I and my five siblings all wore them as kids. And the thing I remember most was that, if I were to die while wearing the scapular, Mary would come and rescue me from Purgatory (or Hell, I guess) on the Saturday following my death.
Looking back on it as an adult, that specificity (Saturday - so please let me die on Friday, rather than Sunday) put the whole scapular thing in the same category as saying “Bloody Mary” 100 times while standing in front of a mirror – i.e., the kind of thing that generation after generation of kids “know.”
And I recognize it as precisely the kind of “taking miracles for granted” phenomenon that you mentioned in your OP. When I was a kid, walking home from Catholic school, I used to fantasize about being confronted by a horrible bully who would threaten to kill me with a baseball bat if I didn’t renounce Catholicism. I would not renounce my faith, and if me beat me to death, it was OK, because I knew I would go to heaven as a martyr. :eek:
You’re doing the right thing to let your dad be comforted by anything that does the job – holy water, specific prayers, whatever.
Yeah, I would just add to what I said that it does matter the spirit in which you say this prayer. I mean, you can’t use this prayer to win the lottery, for example.
Yeah, I have been saying this prayer for over 20 years now, and it really has never once failed for me. But I try to say it the right way. When I say it now, I first make an act of contrition, telling God I don’t wish to offend him, which it true. Then I pray this prayer directly to the Virgin Mary. This may be a little harder now since I am much more skeptical about the RC Church’s doctrines surrounding the Virgin Mary than I was 20 years ago. But it is not impossible, because I do it. And then I have faith the prayer will do its job.
And once again, it might be working, because my father is a little better.
BTW, in case any of you are wondering about my moral and political leanings, I tend to not like political labels. But the label that probably best fits me is “libertarian liberal”.
If you still believe in God , you are not an agnostic - you just have weak faith which is something ALL of us struggle with from time to time. A true agnostic not only does not believe in God, he believes that the question is not even worth serious discussion since it can not be proven.
I certainly will pray with you, and really hope your Dad gets better,
I hope your f
.