For many years after my adolescence and again after leaving the Episcopal Church more than a decade ago, I did not attend Church regularly. I came up with one excuse after another and thought that hey, as long as I continued to believe in Jesus, pray to him occasionally and not kill, ,maim or otherwise harm anyone, all was well.
Jesus was my God, and my buddy. He understood.
I've learned since that I was in fact a fool. There's a nurturing in the Church I was not receiving. And of
I am a fool today in numerous ways but I was a bigger fool then when I chose not to regularly attend Mass.
It's with that as backdrop that I quote Pope Francis' words in a homily he delivered earlier in the week:
And so the Church was a Mother, the Mother of more children, of many children. It became more and more of a Mother. A Mother who gives us the faith, a Mother who gives us an identity. But the Christian identity is not an identity card: Christian identity is belonging to the Church, because all of these belonged to the Church, the Mother Church. Because it is not possible to find Jesus outside the Church. The great Paul VI said: "Wanting to live with Jesus without the Church, following Jesus outside of the Church, loving Jesus without the Church is an absurd dichotomy." And the Mother Church that gives us Jesus gives us our identity that is not only a seal, it is a belonging. Identity means belonging. This belonging to the Church is beautiful.
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Let us think today about the missionary activity of the Church: these [people] came out of themselves to go forth. Even those who had the courage to proclaim Jesus to the Greeks, an almost scandalous thing at that time. Think of this Mother Church that grows, grows with new children to whom She gives the identity of the faith, because you cannot believe in Jesus without the Church. Jesus Himself says in the Gospel: " But you do not believe, because you are not among my sheep." If we are not "sheep of Jesus," faith does not [c]ome to us. It is a rosewater faith, a faith without substance. And let us think of the consolation that Barnabas felt, which is "the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing." And let us ask the Lord for this "parresia", this apostolic fervor that impels us to move forward, as brothers, all of us forward! Forward, bringing the name of Jesus in the bosom of Holy Mother Church, and, as St. Ignatius said, "hierarchical and Catholic." So be it.
I encourage those who are believers but who shy away from weekly attendance with a faithful community to rethink your absence. I particularly speak to you lapsed Catholics who are choosing not to go to Mass.
Read Pope Francis' words.
Let not your faith be without substance. Let it not be a rosewater faith.
Get ye butt back in the pew.
For Christ's sake. For your own.
Carry on.