Words from Will: Home - In Church

We all understand how a close-knit local community like a parish, a service organization, or even a club can come to feel like home. But as we scale up, creating and maintaining a sense of community get harder. Leaders seem more distant, connections are more easily strained, and consensus is harder to find. Our consumerist mindset works against us as well. We can “parish shop” to find the particular music style, homily content, ministry focus, and even political leaning that matches our preferences. But there’s only one Catholic Church, and odds are there’s something somewhere within her that is not the way you want it.

To find a home in the Church, the whole of the Catholic Church, is thus more complicated than finding a home in a parish. Finding unity in a globe-spanning Church is hard. Learning to rely on her as a mother—accepting thousands of years of teaching and doctrinal development that is not in lockstep with our surrounding culture (to put it mildly) is harder. Yet, at the same time, unity is there, if you look for it. I have had the pleasure of experiencing Mass in five foreign languages and seven foreign countries, and in each case, I encountered the structure and beauty of the liturgy, the reality of the sacraments, and the peace of Christ (passed in a culturally appropriate way). What makes something as large as the Catholic Church feel like a home? It’s the communal act of coming into the presence of God, in union with fellow believers across the world. I’ll talk more about finding our home in God next week.

Challenge: How much do you know about the experience of Catholics around the world? Do a web search for “Catholicism in [insert a country name here]” and see what you can learn.