Dealing with Doubt through Prayer, an interview with Mother Raphaela
an interview with Mother Raphaela, Abbess of Holy Myrrhbearers Monastery, Otego, New York
The Handmaiden:
Over the years, I’ve heard many Orthodox women admit that they sometimes struggle with doubt. Although many of our Handmaiden readers might be a bit hesitant to verbalize their doubts to their friends, my guess is that they would be comforted to realize that they are not alone in experiencing such doubts and tests of their faith. Mother Raphaela, since you are the abbess of Holy Myrrhbearers Monastery, and in that role are called upon both to give spiritual direction to the nuns under your care and to give advice to pilgrims who visit your monastery, could you respond to the following questions related to doubt?
• How should I deal with little doubts that flit through my mind “from out of the blue,” like little darts, questioning whether what I believe is true?
• How should I deal with doubts that nag at me when my prayers are seemingly not answered and I begin to wonder whether I trust and believe in God and the power of prayer as much as I should?
• When I am faced with adversity in my life (or others around me find themselves in very difficult circumstances), how can I deal with doubts that cause me to question why God would allow such things in my life, or wonder how a good God could allow bad things to happen in the world?
• How should I combat doubts that trouble my faith intellectually, arising from conversations with non-believers or other Christians who question my Orthodox belief system?
Mother Raphaela:
In my mind, these first four questions about thoughts can be lumped together under one category. If as Christians we don’t have these particular questions, we will have others that challenge our faith and, if left to their own devices, will cause us to blaspheme God, and leave the Church and/or the faith (we can stay in the Church and pretend, or we can leave the Church and have our own private religion). Further, sometimes they can also lead us to justify leaving our spouses if they continue to believe. These thoughts tend to come especially at times when we are vulnerable from stress, illness, etc., but they can also assault us in broad daylight when “everything’s going my way.”
I believe there is only one remedy for them. Such thoughts and questions come from delusion, so while it’s a good idea to keep reading the Scriptures and sound books on the faith, prayer is absolutely essential and is the key to coming out on the other side with one’s life, faith, and membership in the Body of Christ intact. Without a living relationship with God and His saints, all the right ideas in the world won’t make a difference.
This means much more than just “saying prayers,” although that is a start. I know there are spiritual teachers who will claim that one should pray only by reading the prayers in prayer books. I disagree with that. If the saints had done that, there would be no prayers in our prayer books! And we need to remember that Orthodox Christians have been praying much longer than mass-produced prayer books have been available. We have to find our heart, however we may do that—and many times we have to begin such prayer simply by asking God and the saints for help in finding our heart and learning to pray. The prayers in prayer books can indeed help us to keep our heads screwed on straight, and we should use them. I must confess that one time when I was struggling myself with some theological issues, a phrase in one of St. Basil’s prayers that I regularly read as part of my preparation for communion suddenly jumped out of the page and was the answer for me. The bothersome thoughts didn’t go away instantly, but I found that with time, as I repeated St. Basil’s phrase each time the thoughts came, they finally gave up. I felt this was a real way in which St. Basil was present with me, and I have found myself turning to him ever since whenever theological doubts have surfaced in my mind.
I think this discovery that the saints are alive, well, and present with us has been one of the most powerful factors in my own life in the Church. We cannot make it into heaven on our own. If we aren’t members of the Body of Christ, alive to all the other members—including especially those who have gone before us, who have “fought the good fight and received their crowns”—then we are like branches cut off a tree and left lying on the ground to wither and die. Many of us are converts who were raised with the idea that there is something wrong with praying to the saints—we should just go to the head, not bother with the underlings in the organization. Well, even in earthly life that doesn’t work. When we speak with others (including the saints who are not present physically to us) we do so knowing that we speak in the presence of God. If we never speak to His saints, He may not recognize us as part of His organization.
So when doubts and troubling thoughts of whatever kind come, we should become a bit childlike, as we must anyway to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. We can begin by turning to our guardian angel and our patron saint, and ask that if they aren’t the ones who can lead us to the answer, they will send us to the saint(s) who will. This may sound silly, and it may feel silly and artificial at first. But things begin to happen when we really turn to the saints and ask their help. God Himself acts powerfully through them, and we can then turn to Him in gratitude for His help.
I’ve written about this before, and while it feels a little strange to quote myself, when I don’t have anything new to say, I’d best admit the fact. “We also need help with the thoughts and feelings that bombard us both from outside and within our own heads and hearts. The fathers and mothers of the Church tell us that we will never get away from such thoughts and feelings; they always will be there. This is again where simple prayer; a verse from the Psalms; “Lord, have mercy,” the Lord’s name—whatever seems right for us—can be used, almost like a tennis racket to hit the distracting feelings and thoughts away. As long as we can do this—as long as we can separate ourselves from them for even a brief moment—we are not held captive by them. And that little space we create each time we ‘hit’ such a thought or feeling with the name of the Lord or some other brief prayer, gives God all the room He needs to act in our lives. We simply learn not to be bothered by the fact that thoughts and feelings are there” (“Climbing the Spiritual Ladder” in Growing in Christ, Shaped in His Image, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003, p. 85).
Handmaiden:
How should we deal with growing apathy in our lives, when we start to ask ourselves, “Are our attempts to live a Christian life, go to church, and pray worth the struggle?”
Mother Raphaela:
This is a different type of question. Here we have to look at our lives as a whole and ask ourselves some serious questions in turn. Am I apathetic about life as a whole? Or is it just my life in Christ? If I’m feeling really energetic and raring to go in every other aspect of my life, then I should shake myself well and force myself to get back into harness and start pulling my load again, even if I think my own particular share of Christ’s sufferings is more than I can carry. And the advice given above then applies to this situation as well.
However, if we’re apathetic about everything, then we may have a physical, mental, or emotional, rather than a spiritual, problem. We may need to talk with a doctor about our health. Or we may just need to start eating well, getting enough sleep at night, and making sure we get some good exercise several times a week. But when one is very sick, there is a type of praying one cannot do. And God does not ask it from us. We just have to let go and—as best we can, when we can—ask Him and His saints for healing, and let them do the praying for us. There are people with physical, mental, and emotional weaknesses and/or illnesses who are never going to be giants in some kinds of prayer and may never even be well enough to get to church. Yet if they can learn humility through their suffering and not lose the sense that even at their worst, even when God feels a million miles away, He is still there a million miles away, God accepts this. He has allowed this suffering for their salvation and will not abandon them.
Handmaiden:
A final question—how can we help our children regain their faith if they stray away from church in high school or when they go to college?
Mother Raphaela:
We cannot do anything to help our children regain their faith if they stray away from Church as they grow up. Once our children have grown, we have to let go of them and let them lead their own lives and make their own choices and decisions. Whether we have raised them well (and the biggest part of that is giving them an example by the way we have lived our lives and spoken our words), whether we have made huge mistakes that we must learn to repent of before God and His people, or whether we have raised them well along with some mistakes, what is left to us is prayer. Prayer is not trying to manipulate our children from a distance—perhaps even thinking that God and His saints are more powerful manipulators than we are if we can get them on our side. Prayer is taking the time and making the space regularly in our lives to put our children (and all of our loved ones) in God’s hands; asking the saints for their help in doing this; asking their guardian angels and their saints to be there with them. Prayer is letting go and trusting God. Such prayer is also a powerful statement to our children that we trust them. As long as we are taking the time and making the space to rescue them, we are giving them an equally powerful message that we think they are still children, incapable of handling whatever it may be.
Will our children always “turn out right”? No. Especially not on our schedule. But if we truly pray, if we truly love God, then we give them the best possible atmosphere to choose what is good and true, even when it does not seem right to us. And they will know that we love them, no matter what. This is the way God loves. For some of us, part of the Cross we may be asked to carry is to share in the suffering He endures each time one of us turns away from Him in order to pursue our own self-willed agenda.
Overall, the best thing we can do for ourselves and our children (and for all of our loved ones) is really to learn and understand that we are always, wholly, totally in the presence of God no matter what we do or say, no matter what we endure or perpetrate. Whether we recognize His presence or not, we cannot get away from Him. If we accept this presence and the great love that He has offered us and will always offer us, even now we have a foretaste of heaven. This is a simple understanding, but it is the basis on which all theology and prayer rest. Any words of theology and prayer apart from this realization are simply “noisy gongs and clanging cymbals” (1 Corinthians 13:1). When we make the time and the space, with God we acquire the love of the Holy Spirit, and as St. Seraphim teaches us, then God can save thousands around us.
The above interview was originally printed in the Vol. 12 No. 1 issue of The Handmaiden, published by Conciliar Press, Winter, 2008.
Wisdom of the Ages
The heart can change several times in one moment—to good or evil, to faith or unbelief, to simplicity or cunning, to love or hatred, to benevolence or envy, to generosity or avarice, to chastity or fornication. O, what inconstancy! O, how many dangers! O, how sober and watchful we must be!
—Saint John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ
Man’s doubt in Christ is the ultimate revelation of man’s sickness in the great hospital of the world. The world has no medicine for this sickness, for the risen Christ is the only medicine, and if a man will not take it, how can he be healed?
—Saint Nikolai Velimirovich, Homilies, Vol. 1
Have faith that is as unshakeable as a rock, so that nothing frightens you. . . . The person who has deep faith within himself, and fixes his attention on the good path, and seeks to improve the condition of his soul and to adapt his thought to the good is happy. . . . The happiness of man consists in faith in God and in good acts which are done with love. We cure those who believe in us and come to us with faith.
—Saints Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene of Lesvos