Get a Little Wormy & Squirmy
BY KIERSTIN RICHTER
I remember learning about the mysteries of the faith as a kid and being told “that’s just the way it is. And if you don’t accept it blindly, even if it doesn’t make any sense, you have poor faith.” Okay, not those exact words, but that’s how my ten-year-old ears understood it. Some parts of our faith are difficult to understand. And if I have doubts or disbelief or questions, I automatically rule myself out as a nonbeliever or a heretic. That’s like, a lot of pressure on a kid.
But I read a quote once that gave me a little bit of comfort. “Remember, mystery isn’t something that you cannot understand—it is something that you can endlessly understand! There is no point at which you can say, “I’ve got it.” Always and forever, mystery gets you!” (Father Richard Rohr)
It ran alongside something I heard Father Pat Madden explain, which was the idea of our faith being like an asymptote. You can get closer and closer and closer to making sense, but you never quite get to the bottom of things. You never reach a point where you can say, “I know it all!”
Adult faith education, whether that comes in the form of classes, conferences, or spiritual reading, is monumentally important if we are to be good evangelists of our faith. Further faith formation encourages us to keep seeking truth because the deeper we dive into our theology, the richer in the knowledge we are, and the closer we can grow towards Christ. This isn’t to say you have to be super smart to be a Christian. That’s an old heresy called Gnosticism. What I’m saying is that we can never stop finding new ways to love our faith. We grow in our relationship with Christ when we endlessly pursue Him. And you’ll find, there’s always something you don’t know. And you have a brain blast and say, “OH. That’s insane. Never thought about it like that before.”
I wrote an article a while back called “Never Lose the Pursuit,” to which I equated our faith with a marriage. If you say “I do,” one day, and live the rest of your life not seeking to get to know your relationship in new seasons of life, it’s easy, and almost inevitable, to drift away. The same goes for our relationship with Christ. We will enter new seasons in our lives, where we have to reassess and grow in our relationship over and over and over again because, contrary to what some people may tell you, our faith is not a one-and-done deal. We aren’t ‘saved’ and go dilly dally for the rest of our lives. Relationships take work. But it’s good work.
On that note, Pope Francis has instituted a Synod for a silent portion of our Church to have a opportunity to be heard. So for the next year, we will be talking about some hard issues that have left the Church divided. So let’s lean into the discomfort. That’s where we grow and we heal. Let’s talk about the hard things - the things that make us a little wormy and squirmy. Because some of the most misunderstood parts of our faith are the most beautiful parts of our faith. So let’s not run away, let’s lean in and bridge some gaps.
So here’s my challenge to you this month: Get Curious. What are the issues you have with the Church? What are the issues you have with the faith? I’m not just going to say to take those to prayer, but to crack open a book. Read an encyclical. (I know, they’re long.) Dive deep into the teachings of the faith. Talk to your priest. Because you’ll find that most of the answers you’re looking for have already been answered theologically - you just didn’t hear it from the pulpit. Catholicism has homework. It doesn’t end when we leave Mass.