An Agnostic Experiences a Miracle

I was just about to leave the seminary after losing my faith in God and in the Church due to several traumatic experiences in the seminary that shook my faith and led me to question everything I believed about God. I knew all the philosophical arguments for God’s existence---and yet my pain haunted me to the point that I ended up losing faith in God and wanting nothing to do with the Catholic Church anyways.

God, however, had a surprise waiting for me. A woman approached me at the hospital after I visited a friend and she saw that I was a seminarian. She told me that her son was scheduled the next day to have an operation because of a tumor. Her son was having convulsions due to high fever, and so she asked me to pray over her son. 

I didn’t want to offend her feelings nor her simple faith. Was I supposed to tell her that I stopped believing in God or that I had a crisis of faith? And so I gently followed her request and touched her son and I started praying: “God, dear Lord, I do not even know if you are real. I’m having doubts with my own faith. But if you are real, to whom shall we go but you? Please heal this man because his mother is grieved.” 

His head was very warm and I could feel the high, soaring temperature in his body. The mother was so happy and kept consoling her son saying that he will be alright---because she believed that they were blessed that very day. Oh, if only they knew that a doubting, agnostic seminarian just prayed over them!

The next day, however, I received a call from the mother of the boy. She was crying and rejoicing, saying that the procedure would not push through because the tumor suddenly vanished along with her son’s fever. She thanked me so much for being a blessing and for giving God’s miracle of healing to them. I told her to thank the Lord and not me. 

After that call, I went to the chapel with anger in my heart. I told the Lord: 

“Oh, so you will heal that boy but not me?!?!

“What kind of a f***ing God are you?!?!

“Where were you when I needed you?

“I could have been a better seminarian and a better Christian if only I did not have these traumatic experiences. 

“The seminary hurt me! 

“The Church hurt me! 

“I have just lost everything that I have and it’s all your fault . . . and yet you would heal that boy but not me?”

I had just witnessed a miracle of healing . . . and yet I was not happy. I struggled with God just like Jacob, like Israel. Perhaps I really did not want the Lord to leave me without giving me a blessing (cf. Gen 32: 27).

I still ended up leaving the seminary, carrying my doubts and my struggling faith. I practically became an agnostic. Today, I still carry the wounds of those hurts I received in the seminary---but at least I have reconciled with God and the Catholic Church. I do not know what will happen to me now, but I am certain that God wants me to walk the dark night of faith.

Antonius is a contributing writer for Collegium. He wishes to keep his identity anonymous.