The 33rd Sunday in ordinary time, or the last “green” mass as Canon P described it. There will be no more green vestments until 18 January, as we make way to Christ the King and then Advent.
That means we’re coming up on a year since my first Mass, which I attended as a non-Catholic. Partly as a culmination of weeks and weeks of sitting in the church on weekday afternoons hoping no one would notice me. And partly as a final snap, a moment of thinking: I cannot not go any more. And so I went. And kept going.
Someone once said to me how she wished she could be a Christian, to enjoy the community and the benefits she saw in people she knew. I said something like “the trick is just to go”. A kind of theological fake-it-till-you-make-it approach. Wrestle with God for a while and see what happens.
Then I came across what Cardinal Newman said, that understanding comes from faith, rather than the other way around.
I’m not sure I wrestled as much as I came to understand where my true nature lay, but this resonates with me. It got to a point where going to church seemed the most natural thing to do. Even if I didn’t understand why. I never felt like I was in the wrong place. I felt the opposite. It was the place I was supposed to be.