When asked why she makes her son go to church, author Anne Lamott writes in her book Traveling Mercies, “I make him because I can. I outweigh him by nearly seventy-five pounds.”
When I was a teenager, my mom outweighed me too, except in this case, I was the one who wanted to go to church and Mom was the one sleeping until noon. Mom was a night owl and routinely slept late in the morning which is how we wound up one Easter Sunday in the very last Mass of the day. Only after we sat down did we realize the Mass was being said in Polish.
“Just move your lips,” Mom said. “No one will know the difference.”
At some point Mom revealed to me that her parents had threatened to disown her if she didn’t go to church. They didn’t expect her to go to the same Mass they did, but they would know if she didn’t go at all. That was when Mom started putting my super-memory in action. My grandparents, not willing to invest in a private investigator to follow us to church, had a simple test to see if we had attended.
St. John’s Catholic Church had three priests who rotated giving the Homily each Sunday. Every Sunday afternoon, Grandma would ask Mom which priest gave the Homily. Mom would turn to me—I had memorized the rotation—and after a long second I would spit out the name—uh, Father Pat or whoever.
Going to church each Sunday is actually an easy habit to maintain once you start. It’s the starting that’s the issue for most people. When I was a teenager, I wanted to go to church because even then I realized there was something missing in my life. At the very least, I missed the simple things, like having Sister Julie give me communion each Sunday. For anyone who thinks that nuns are evil because of whatever they have heard of Catholic school, let me tell you that Sister Julie was the kindest and gentlest nun I have ever known.
For my mom, she had fallen out of the habit of church-going sometime during my teenage years. It’s not that she wasn’t religious. I still remember her telling me late one night when I was little and afraid that there were angels in each of the four corners of my room watching over me—which made me instantly jealous of the octagon shaped house down the road. They had twice as many angels.
But once my mom fell out of the habit, it was hard for her to pick up again. Make no mistake—going to church each Sunday requires a lot of commitment, but at the same time offers such amazing rewards. I have never left church, any church, feeling worse off than when I went in.
After awhile though, I fell out of the church-going habit too. It’s taken me 17 years to find a church I want to go to every Sunday. It’s taken me 17 years to find a church I look forward to going to every Sunday.
If you are out of the habit, try church again. It doesn’t have to be Sundays. It can be Saturday services or Wednesday night Bible studies. I understand that a lot of churches offer dinners on Wednesday night and really who can turn down free food?
