On "Coming Home" to Church this Christmas

If you are yourself in a season of estrangement or distance from the Church but feel pressured to come home to mass this Christmas, I invite you to read this as you consider your relationship to the parts of you that are needing the distance from Church and/or God.

Christmas and Easter are often times when churches welcome Catholics who have been away from church home. In fact, you may even have been encouraged to invite someone you know who has been away from church back to mass this Christmas. But do you know the deeper reasons WHY you are doing it? 

Each person has a unique story. Resistance to God or mass or religion (it can take different forms) always has a context. And very often, if we had discerning hearts and took the time to listen to their stories, we would not only have compassion for them, we may even be surprised at seeing God’s hand in leading them away from church at this point in their lives!

Each person has a unique story. Resistance to God or mass or religion (it can take different forms) always has a context.

If you wish to be genuinely and authentically loving to those who have been estranged from church (in whatever way, shape or form), I entreat you to reflect more deeply before inviting them to come home this Christmas, and to be more conscious and self-aware of where your impulse to ask them to return to church comes from. 

Here are a few questions to ponder if you wish to be truly loving to someone who has not been coming to church:

1.  Do you SEE THEM in their full personhood or are you trying to “fix them”?
Do you know their unique story? Do you know what has led them to stay away from church or do you simply assume you know? Do you assume they are ignorant, sinful, that they don’t care about God, or are you open to be humbled, surprised, saddened or even inspired by their hidden story?

So often what I read and hear from fellow Catholics about people who are not coming to mass are well-meaning but self-righteous and full of dismissive assumptions about the reasons for them staying away. (And we wonder why people don’t share their stories or want to come back…)

People are not problems to be fixed but persons to be loved. To love them, you need to truly see them.

2.  Is this about YOU, or is this about THEM?
Is there any part of you that wants them to come home to church because YOU are unhappy that they are staying away? Perhaps this is a child, a spouse, or someone under your mentorship and care, and their estrangement from church makes you sad, embarrassed or ashamed because you feel that you have failed.

Admittedly, most people who do this may not have the self-awareness that they are doing it. I was definitely one such person in the past! I thought I was loving others when really, I was trying to influence their behaviour so that I could feel better about myself.

If this is about you rather than them, perhaps it is more loving to bring your grief or shame to God instead of trying to get them to ‘come home’ for your sake.

Do you assume they are ignorant, sinful, that they don’t care about God, or are you open to be humbled, surprised, saddened or even inspired by their hidden story?

3.  Would coming back to church help them draw closer to God or push them further away?
Many people who have left or are keeping more distance from church do so because they not only do not encounter God’s love there, they have been scandalised or hurt or find it impossible in this season of their life to find understanding and support within the church community.

So often we do not recognise that God can and does lead people out of the Church as part of their journey to Him – in fact it is quite common! Yet we only tend to celebrate when they come home and fail to recognise that their journey out needs to happen first, and that there are many people whose healing and deeper encounters with God can only happen after they have left and entered the metaphorical desert or wilderness.

If they come home now, will they be safe? Will they be welcomed? Are they emotionally and spiritually ready to return? Will they be met where they are or will they be pushed to conform to be someone they are not able to be authentically?

4.  Might YOU be the reason why they are staying away from church?
The hypocrisy and counter-witness in the private personal lives of many a church-going Catholic is a huge contributing factor to why family members leave the Church or stop going for mass. In fact, very often those who leave are hidden victims of emotional, spiritual, physical or even sexual abuse by someone who has or had authority over them, and whose identity is overtly religious. Others leave because they are deeply wounded by the lack of moral courage and spiritual integrity in the responses of church leaders to these injustices.

This is a tough one because it is almost always the case that the perpetrators remain blind to their own faults and would react very defensively at this very idea. But this happens more often that we would like to acknowledge, and the ones who suffer often have nowhere to turn because their spouses/parents or abusers are seen by the faith community as upstanding exemplars of “good Catholics”.

Have you done your own examination of conscience? Are you open to conversion, repentance and healing in your own life? Are you willing to be responsible and accountable for your possible part in making the Church inhospitable to others? Are you able to approach those who have left from a place of humility rather than superiority?

very often those who leave are hidden victims of emotional, spiritual, physical or even sexual abuse by someone who has or had authority over them, and whose identity is overtly religious.

5.  Where is God in this for YOU?
Is your own image of God making you anxious to bring a loved one home? Are you worried that God is displeased with you unless you succeed in bringing this person back to church, or are you perhaps anxious that God will punish or withdraw his grace from the “stray sheep”?

We often hurry others in their faith journeys because we do not have enough trust in God. Instead of only praying for the person who has left to come back to church, we could instead pray for greater faith ourselves and the grace to know how to love and accompany them as they make their journey without pressuring or hurrying them.

Can you trust that God loves this person much more than you do, and that God desires this person to make his/her own interior journey in God’s time, of their own free will?

REMEMBER:

We should never assume that someone who has left the Church is lost, or that those who never left are truly found. There are many who never leave the Church but whose hearts are far from God and whose lack of love and integrity harm others without them realising. And there are many who leave home not because they wish to, but because they are faithfully seeking the true God whose ways are beyond our understanding.

We all have our unique paths to walk in our journey home to God and the most important aspects of this path cannot be seen with our physical eyes. It may only be discerned (imperfectly) with the eye of our hearts, when we are ourselves rooted in God’s all-encompassing love.

If you truly love someone, genuinely see them, and are accompanying them in a way that honours their boundaries and free will, then you will be able to discern if inviting them to come back to church this Christmas is what they need at this point in their journey to know God more truly and receive God’s love more fully.

Seasons of exile, doubt, trial and crisis are often the ways that God tests and matures our faith. May we be discerning and trusting and unafraid.

As Tolkien famously wrote in The Fellowship of The Ring,

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.” 

Seasons of exile, doubt, trial and crisis are often the ways that God tests and matures our faith. May we be discerning and trusting and unafraid. And if we do invite someone to come home to church this Christmas, may we offer it humbly without conditions and be willing to love and accompany them on their journey regardless of their response!

ADVENT / CHRISTMAS PODCAST EPISODES

• EP 11 | Permission to be "Un-Merry" this Christmas
• EP 107 | Coping with Advent Overwhelm: Trauma Recovery and Faith

Wishing you a truly Christ-centric Christmas this year!