Are you Fallen Away

I will never understand people who proclaim to be Catholic, yet leave the aisles and pews of our Church’s for the glitter and stages of the local area mega churches, and I use the term church loosely in this perspective. There is no way that a Catholic, who truly understands the miracle and magnitude of what happens during Mass could ever conceive the notion that these other options are more spiritually fruitful.

How can anything come close to competing with encountering Jesus, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Eucharist, made present for us in a sacrifice that spans the time and history of the Old and New Testaments, as well as the divinity and participation between the Church Militant, Suffering and Triumphant.

There has truly been some major neglect amongst and amid the Catholic community for so many to have gone astray, preferring a trendy and entertaining exuberance of flashy lights, charismatic speaking, and casual dining to the participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which condescends to bring the Paschal Mystery of our Lord’s death and resurrection to our very temporal existence and experience. A true Holy Banquet of not just human food, but spiritual food and life.

By the Grace of God, I did not get sucked into this trap. I remained faithful to my Catholic Sunday obligation during many years of misunderstanding and ignorance of the Faith I was born into. Thank goodness the good Lord eventually inspired and lit within me a desire and need to learn more fully the basic and more detailed aspects and teachings of the one true Church that Christ established and left for us, before he ascended into his Glorious realm. We all have this responsibility though, to do this. It is our responsibility to learn and nurture our own knowledge of the faith, as well as to nurture and teach this Faith to our Brothers and Sisters in Christ, both within the Catholic Church and outside it. What they then do with this knowledge is up to them. It is our job to inform, not to convince, and thank goodness for that. The distractions that lead us away are very strong and desirable indeed, playing to the senses, and material appetites and desires of our being. These demonstrations of false piety, though sincerely intended, are not the worship that God has called us to. They are also not universal. They span the tastes and creativity of individual persons and groups who choose how they want to worship and not how God has dictated the practice that is imperative to Spiritual harmony and full communion and Grace with Him.

Jesus left us a Kingdom. He is the King. You cannot love the King and hate his Kingdom. That really doesn’t make sense. Jesus did not want or seek a divided Kingdom, he yearns for a United Kingdom. You cannot leave his Kingdom, for your own preferred choice. That is a kingdom where you are King, and Christ is rejected. That leaves us all short, because we must all unite as brothers and sisters in Christ to ascend into the Heavenly Jerusalem.

If you are one of these “Catholics”, reconsider your choice. Come to know and realize what you miss when you omit Mass and Catholic Tradition from your life. Come home, and if you have confusion or difficultly, then take up the task of understanding and searching for the Truth within the mysteries of what we believe and celebrate. You will be surprised and amazed. I know that I was.