Benefits

01-21-2024Pastor's LetterFr. John Bonavitacola

Dear Friends,

It seems almost weekly that new polls, studies, and research are paraded before us regarding religion and the practice of religion or abandonment of practice. Whether it’s from a worldwide or US perspective or a denominational practice census, the numbers indicate that religion is still a constitutive part of the human experience.

Religiously observant people are often either put down, look upon with suspicion or bemusement and sometimes even derided by the larger society these days. Which makes me admire them even more. But one question that researchers don’t seem to ever ask is why do people stick with religious practice when it obviously would be easier not to? What’s the benefit of it? Often overlooked are the unseen benefits to regular worship in a Church or Synagogue. And what are they?

First and most importantly regular Church attendance helps us avoid idolatry. We come to Church because the human person has an inbuilt need to worship the Creator and religious rituals give proper expression to that. And because the human person needs to worship God, in the absence of proper godly worship, human nature will find something to worship. Hence one of the key questions the Old Testament prophets often asked: “where is your god”? We worship God on a regular basis because we know from experience if we don’t, we’ll be worshipping power, money, ego, relationships, sex, drugs, and rock & roll! And when any one of those things becomes our god, we experience short-term gain and long-term pain. This is also why the Church makes it the highest of our moral obligations, under the pain of sin if we excuse ourselves from Sunday worship.

True it’s better to come and worship God out of love then obligation but often our motivations are less than perfect. Plus, it is so easy to slowly drift away and before you know it you are worshiping at the altar of a false god. This brings us to the second important benefit of regular religious practice: accountability. People who make Church a regular habit are making themselves accountable. Most of us would rather not be accountable, easier to get away with things and live in self-centered bliss. But accountability is the key to human growth and the only way to avoid behaviors that leave real big scars on you and others.

Whenever I hear a religious leader has fallen into sin and scandal, I know that he or she found a way to skirt accountability. Accountability saves us from ourselves. It takes courage to be accountable as well as putting aside personal sensitivities and allowing someone to ask: where have you been or what is really going on with you? Catholicism has some forms of built in accountability: insistence on regular Sunday Mass attendance, the Sacrament of Reconciliation, adherence to the Church’s teaching on Marriage, temporal support of the Church to name a few. All of these put us in a position to have our behaviors measured and hence be held accountable. Another benefit of inserting yourself into a religious community regularly is that it challenges your worldview, your prejudices, and your moral code among other things. Again, a key to human psychological growth and spiritual development is to have the ego punctured now and then so we can admit we don’t have all the answers and that “my way” may not be the best way. Exposing yourself to things that challenge your own thinking often leads to deeper and deeper conversion.

Finally, one of the more unique benefits of belonging to a Catholic community is that it is easier to express and share solidarity with the entire human family. After all we are a universal Church, actually the first all-inclusive community, if you will.

I know that it can be hard to be regular at anything in a society where lives, jobs, and living situations change regularly or when endless options are dangled before us. And additionally, when less and less of your family, friends and coworkers are doing the “Church thing” it would be easier to join them and not the Church. Know that I admire and notice all of you who make it a regular thing and I worry when I don’t see you for a time!

I say all this not to pat ourselves on the back but simply to remind ourselves of the often unspoken blessing that come to us when we are obedient to spiritual principles. So, keep coming back!

Love,

Fr. John B.