Why Do We Go to Church?

There is so much turmoil surrounding the Catholic Church at present, yet Mass is celebrated daily in every parish and people continue to attend services. The number of people at Mass has grown fewer, but still many come. Why?

For some, it is simply a matter of habit, a lifestyle. It’s just what they do. A custom. Their parents and grandparents went to church. They identify as Catholic because that’s what they more or less know, so they go to a Catholic church where everything is familiar.

Over the next three years, a grassroots re-education of American Catholics about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist will ask us to examine our devotion and faith. What is our knowledge about Catholicism? What do we actually believe?

The Reasons

The catch-all question is: Why do you go to church? The main reason given on surveys is that people who believe in God want to worship and feel closer to God. We know that is pleasing to God as well. Throughout the Bible, God asked for our devotion.

Being with God is what heaven is about and going to church is a preparation for heaven. As discussed in a previous blog, churches are intended to be peaceful and beautiful to give people a place of respite appropriate for encountering God. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/musingsfromthepew/2021/12/the-spiritual-value-of-beautiful-churches/

God loves us and wants to be with us in a special way. Some who profess a belief in God but do not go to church say that their special way to get closer to God is going out into Nature to see God’s creations. That’s where pagans find gods and goddesses too.

Others who don’t go to church have fussier excuses: I can’t find one I like; I don’t like the pastor’s sermons; I don’t like sermons at all. Others cite poor health or lack the time.

As to this last reason, if you can’t find time for God, your priorities are messed up. Even if you spend time with God in other ways, you still need that time in church with other believers to fortify your faith with guidance and grace.

Guidance and Prayer

My very first blog for Patheos Catholic was about the need for guidance. Taking on the complex questions about God, life, death and so on is not something that any of us can handle on our own. We need the teachings of the Holy Spirit through the Church. https://www.patheos.com/blogs/musingsfromthepew/2021/08/why-do-we-need-church-guidance-because-no-one-knows-it-all/

Ever wonder why, when the Blessed Mother speaks to us in an apparition, she usually asks for a church to be built? She wants to see her children, and especially she wants to see them gathered together to receive guidance and be with God.

It’s not for Mary’s glory because glory goes to God. She asks for a church to inspire prayer. Think of the thousands who flock to Lourdes and Fatima. Think of the faithful who crawl on their knees as they approach the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

A church gives us an opportunity to show some effort on our part and not just talk to God when it’s convenient or comfortable. For Catholics, church is the only place that we can participate in the Eucharist, which is the whole purpose of the Mass.

Eucharist

Catholics know that communing with nature may give you a feeling of closeness to God, but it does not bring God directly to you in the Eucharist. That is one of the reasons why this Eucharistic renewal being offered by the bishops is so important.

Once people accept that Christ’s Body and Blood are actually in the bread and wine, church will become more important to them. A friend of my Bible study teacher once told him, “If I believed that Jesus was really in the tabernacle, I wouldn’t ever leave church.”

Indeed, we need to treat each Catholic church with the reverence of the ancient Jews toward the Temple in Jerusalem containing the sacred Ark of the Covenant. God is in our tabernacles just as surely as God was in the burning bush for Moses.

That’s awesome! That’s life-changing if you know that you can get that close to the living God. That’s something to be shared.

Seriously contemplate the question “Why do I go to church?” for your own edification. Then ask others, especially former Catholics, to join us in our re-examination of the basics. Help them find the meaning of the Eucharist in the heart of Mass.

They will be eternally grateful for the invitation, and I do mean eternally grateful.