It’s no secret that one of the biggest challenges facing the Church today is the ever-increasing number of lapsed Catholics – those who were raised and identify as Catholic, who have sadly fallen away from living out the faith in their daily lives.
I used to be that kind of Catholic – I sat through CCD class and received all my Sacraments in my early years, but nothing much beyond that. For many years, starting after I received Confirmation until about the time I left for college, I seldom went to Mass or participated in the life of the Church at all. I became a lapsed Catholic.
The biggest reason why I (and I suspect many other self-identified Catholics) stopped going to Mass was a misunderstanding of what exactly the Catholic faith is and why living it out is so important. I used to believe that Christianity was basically just about believing in God and being nice to others – not a bad start, but not nearly enough.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t alone. According to a 2024 study from Pew Research, only 29% of Americans who say they identify as Catholic attend Mass weekly. Today, approximately 50 million U.S. adults identify as Catholic, meaning roughly 35 million self-identified Catholic adults do not attend Sunday Mass.
When I first arrived on campus in my freshman year of college, despite years apart from the Church, I felt a growing conviction from the Spirit that I needed to come back. With what I now consider to be a total gift of grace, I decided that this would be that time to return to Mass and give Christianity a deeper look.
I challenged myself to go to Confession for the first time in years at the Newman Center on campus and began to dive into many Christian organizations. I studied the Bible for the first time with my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ and read through every verse with the Bible in a Year podcast.
In the Bible, Jesus gives us a preview of what happens when we meet Him at the end of our earthly lives. For those He will accept into Heaven, He says, “Well done, My good and faithful servant” (Mt. 25:23), and to those He will not, “Depart from Me, for I never knew you” (Mt. 7:23).
What I learned in my course of studying the language of Scripture more deeply is that to “know” someone in the way the term is used in this passage describes having a close, intimate relationship with them. The same term is used to describe the relationship between the first couple, Adam and Eve, in the Book of Genesis, as well as many other times throughout the Bible to describe that kind of personal connection between two people.
This intimacy is what Christ wants for His people more than anything else, and it is the crucial detail that I didn’t grasp during my time away from the faith. He wants us to be able to have a relationship with Him, closer to us than even our spouses. This is why He desires to make Himself so accessible to us through the Blessed Sacrament. The reason why the ordinary substances of bread and wine change into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ is so that He can work from within us to change our hearts and build the relationship with Him that He wants. Once I realized that, I made it my number one priority to give everything I am back to God, because He has given His Body as a gift to me.
My life as a devout Catholic began when I realized that Christianity is not just about believing the right things about God, whether it be the truths about the Trinity, or the Resurrection, or the virgin birth. Yes, those things are still vital to our faith, but we don’t get to Heaven by merely accepting what we were taught in CCD; rather, our Catholic faith is about our willingness to conform our lives to God and follow Him with all the gifts He’s given us, regardless of who we are, where we come from, or what we’ve done in our past.
Now that I’ve become a member of the churchgoing crowd, I feel a responsibility to extend the welcoming love of Christ to everyone who enters our parishes and to provide a home for them there. When I first worked up the courage to go back to Mass after so many years apart from the Church, I was greeted with a community that was excited to help me grow in my relationship with God. That became one of the biggest factors that helped me feel at home in the Church. Our welcome means more to others than many of us realize.
Our faith shouldn’t be something that we set aside for later. Our Lord laid His very life aside to give us the opportunity to reconcile with Him. He calls each of us to take hold of that opportunity with a firm grip and to hold it fast, and He promises His aid to each of us when we grow weak. I encourage anyone who is on the fence about returning to the Church to take that step now. You won’t be alone. God has always been on your side – He’s just waiting for you to let Him in.
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