Never Lose the Pursuit
Sometimes, we treat our faith like a stale marriage. Typically, after the wedding, you don’t just shrug and say, “Okay cool! So we’re together forever now... Awesome.” and then spend the rest of your life eating ramen noodles on a futon without speaking to each other. That would be kind of unhealthy and awkward right?
Marriage is a perpetual commitment to finding new ways to love each other. Maybe you have children. Maybe you decide to foster kids. Maybe you get a parrot or start a tree farm or something, I don’t know.
We become different people throughout our lives as we mature and grow. And as a couple, you learn to love these new versions of your spouse. You love them as a newlywed. You love them as they become a parent. You love them as they develop a mid-life obsession with fast cars and wanting to start a bee farm.
But my point is that it’s not over after the honeymoon. And I think that’s where we sometimes go wrong with our faith.
We go through all the sacraments, and say “Yay! We’re saved!” and then quit. We quit trying. We quit finding new ways to love God after the party’s over. And when we hang onto an immature view of Christianity, we project that on other people in an egotistical way. “Well, we’re the saved ones.” And you negate the point of being a Catholic. It’s not a club you’re initiated into as a kid and never go to another meeting.
The pursuit doesn’t end after the honeymoon, and it works the same way with Christ. The pursuit doesn’t end with your eighth-grade Confirmation, lest you live the rest of your life with an eighth-grade understanding of God.
So this month, I challenge you to try something new. Haven’t been to confession lately? Try it out. Don’t go to daily Mass? Go for it. Never prayed a novena before? Take a shot.
The reason religious traditions exist is to ground us in our faith. It’s easy to say “Yeah, I’m Catholic” and let that be it. But it’s a daily renewal and commitment to let that permeate every aspect of your life, every day. It’s a grounding renewal of our relationship with God, making the invisible, visible.
We grow in our faith when we don’t stop trying. We keep finding new ways to love and embody Christ. We read books. We pray. We study. We listen to people we don’t agree with to tug and tear our convictions and build them up stronger than they were before. It’s not an easy ride, but we were never promised one. There’s a reason the door to Heaven is a small one.