Living a Catholic Life in an increasingly Godless World.
A Sobering Trend
With decreasing Mass attendance, many Churches look, feel, and are empty, which can cause it to feel incredibly disheartening to go to Mass. With more of the world glorifying things that are outside of the Gospel message, it can begin to feel pointless to hold onto those once celebrated virtues of the Christian past. With increasing demands for us to tolerate sin, our opposition to sin can feel mean. With the world turning more away from God and more toward a worship of desires, we can begin to feel as though the Faith is irrelevant, bigoted, outdated, old fashioned, distant, meaningless, even stupid. It is going feel increasingly isolating to be a Christian. So what are we to do?
We need to band together!
The world is already going to be pushing us to feel isolated in the faith. When we are young, still in school, we are surrounded by a large number of people. As we age, the trend is to have our circle of friends shrink. Not hat friendship becomes less valuable or desirable, but as we become busy with work, raising a family, and those around us do the same, there is less time to commit to friendships, many may fade. However, this is not a negative thing. The friends that we continue to hold, the relationships we continue to invest time and energy into will become some of the most profound relationships we will ever experience. So choose well who these few but good friends are. Invest in the person next to you in the pew, the one who is seeking holiness. The small group who seeks holiness together will achieve more than friendships given little thought to.
Live the Faith!
Actually live out your faith! We all have a limited amount of time and energy each day, where do you spend yours. Pray a holy hour each day! Click here for a guide. Don’t invest your limited time and energy into frivolous junk. Go have a coffee with a friend, or a glass of wine or a beer, and share with each other what you have been experiencing in prayer, where you are struggling, where you are finding joy, where you are happy, where you are grieving, where you are excited, where you are stressed. Share your life. Go to Confession, often! Don’t miss Mass. Finally, live the liturgical life of the Church.
Live Out the Liturgical Life of the Church
With the holidays fast approaching, the Bazaar is next Saturday, thanksgiving is the following Thursday, Advent is the next Sunday, the temptation will be to allow your life to reflect what the secular world is doing. STOP! Allow your life to be authentically Catholic! A friend of mine posted this online recently:
“A few years ago, [my wife and I] decided to get serious about the liturgical year. The biggest change for us was treating Advent as it was historically intended to be treated: as a season of penance and repentance. We started having dessert less often, eating simpler meals, and consuming less alcohol in the weeks leading up to Christmas. We also held back on decorating the house: the tree doesn’t get ornaments until Christmas Eve, and lots of decorations don’t come out until that night. And then Christmas morning comes, and there are lights and beauty and, like the Grinch himself, we feast… and we feast... and we FEAST. All the way through Epiphany on January 6. And my friends, it is GLORIOUS. Instead of being exhausted by the time Christmas Day arrives, we are ready to celebrate and enjoy all the good things the holidays have in store. Absolutely one of the best decisions we’ve made in the last decade.
Anyway, one challenge with this approach is that it requires quite a bit of planning. [My wife] got lists of gift ideas from all of our kids last weekend, and she’s already taken care of a lot of shopping. The goal is to have all the presents purchased, wrapped, and ready to go before Thanksgiving. And this is why I mention it now. It takes some effort, and some sacrifice, and some planning, but it is just wonderful. Very shalomy. Very hygge. Five out of five stars. Would recommend.
The one thing that I would change about what my friend is suggesting is that I would say, don’t stop Christmas on Epiphany. Rather Celebrate it all the way through to when the Church celebrates, the Baptism of the Lord on the Sunday following January 6th. OR celebrate Christmas all the way to the traditional end of the Christmas season, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, February 2nd. In other words, allow your Faith to direct how you live, not the store, advertising, parties, the government, TV, celebrities, other influences of the world. Live by the Faith, together let us live well that the fire of Faith will burn brightly here and spread to those around us!