Per Christum Catholic Blog

Per Christum contributor Chad recently blogged about his enjoyment of running, and noted that he feels like he is just doing the minimum in terms of his faith. He writes:

Went to Weekday Mass today for the first time in a while. I went even though I hadn’t kept the fast and just didn’t receive. I’m going to make it a point to go more often. I’d also like to get back into daily rosary and hitting the LOTH more often. Lately I’ve been feeling like I converted to lapsed Catholicism, just doing the minimum and not giving a hoot otherwise…

I know Chad is exaggerating, but I think he touches on something that many of us struggle with. First, that Chad is still attending Mass on Sundays shows that he is far from lapsed. Second, what Chad is going through seems normal enough to me, although we would all benefit from the extra graces of daily Mass and regular recitations of the rosary.

It was hammered into my head for years that there are two types of Christians: those who do the minimum out of habit, and those who get excited about their faith. The former probably weren’t really born again, and the latter probably were. There was an underlying assumption in many churches I attended that you were only truly Christian when you were excited about it, you know, “on fire.” If you didn’t sway or get excited during the worship service, something was wrong. One reason I think I became attracted to liturgical Christianity was because you didn’t have to always be excited, or even worse, fake excitement, to be considered a true Christian. The mother quietly participating in Mass, who is being the best mother she can be for Christ, may very well be living out her calling better than the person with hands stretched out at Mass, “getting into” the service.

Like Chad, I go through some periods when I am more excited about my faith, and more devoted, and other periods, when I just do “the minimum.” However, I have to remind myself of a few things. First, I teach religion 180 days of the year, so I am constantly involved with my faith. I also blog about my faith, and write about it regularly. These daily activities are part of my vocation, and I try to do them, excited or not. Yes, in a sense, this is the minimum. However, we need to recognize that even on days we may not recite the rosary, or wake up “excited” about our faith, we still can be living our our vocations, although as I said above, reciting the rosary is always a good thing! Many Catholics live out their respective callings everyday without giving much thought to it, being good parents, spouses, employees, students, etc, and even though it may just be “the minimum” at times, they are still being faithful. Let’s face it, some days, after teaching the faith all day to semi-receptive teens, I just want to run, play basketball, or read about vitamins or different foods or whatever it may be (you can see that a side interest of mine is health). Thus, I need to remind myself that not feeling excited about reading the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church for a few nights isn’t tantamount to losing my faith, or becoming a lapsed Catholic. I guess sometimes it is hard for me to shake the “excitement=true faith” thing I learned as an evangelical.

I am suspicious of those who judge a person’s fidelity by his level of excitement. Let me give an example. Lately, I have really enjoyed praying the Liturgy of the Hours, and have been really excited about it. However, for a few months I just prayed the minimum, choosing only short Psalms, rather than longer ones (at our house we currently modify Morning Prayer to include one Psalm, because of time). Did I still “mean” those short prayers when I prayed them? Yes. Did I actually “pray” them? I hope so! Was I excited, overjoyed with emotion, to be praying the Liturgy of the Hours every morning, like I was when I first discovered that ancient form of prayer? No. I could lie and say “yes,” but I wasn’t. Nonetheless, and this is my point, I still prayed them. I still carried out my vocation, even if it was just the “minimum” for that period. I am not patting myself on the back, but rather pointing out that we can still be faithful during periods when we do the minimum. After all, with Catholicism, the minimum still involves fidelity and effort.

While I am all for being excited about our faith, I think that connecting faith to emotional excitement is a bad idea, because what kind of faith can you have if, when the going gets boring, you lose your faith? Also, how much faith does it take to be faithful when things are exciting? Perhaps true faith and fortitude show themselves when times get tough, or boring. I have seen many people stop following Christ because their feelings of excitement waned. Unfortunately, this is because their church leaders constantly implied that to be truly Christian they had to be excited, so once the initial excitement passed, they thought there was no way they could remain Christian. So, while I am certainly not saying that doing the minimum is the most ideal course of action, we can still be faithful Catholics during periods when we are not as emotionally excited as we think we should be.