Yesterday, I said goodbye to the kind people I’d met through the young adults’ group at St John Cantius, as well as their chaplain, who had delivered a reflection that really, really was what I needed. Saying goodbye was nice all around.

Today I went back to the church for Compline, and began to shuffle out when I bumped into the chaplain again. He said hello, and I said sheepishly, “I thought I’d just come back, you know, seeing as I had the time, and it wasn’t too far out…”

And we talked for a while out in front of the doors, looking out at the sunset. I remember saying, “I mean, it’s a lot of time, so I might come back, because its not like I have any pressure to see the sights or something, and anyway what’s better -”

“- than spending all your time in church, right?”

“Exactly. What’s better than spending all your time in church?” 

Then goodbyes and see yous and bless yous were said and I walked away feeling funnily sheepish. Unsurprising, of course, as I’d spent the whole conversation making light of why I’d gone back, and why I’ll want to go back, and, well, the God-given force that impelled me there in the first place. 

I realise I do this all the time, too: whether it’s a hurried explanation prompted by catching the university chaplain’s eye after turning up to mass twice in 12 hours, or going to great lengths to be casual about turning up to things, or the frizzle of shyness that strikes when I say as mumbly as possible, “… one week since my last confession”, I just really want to play it cool. To look like I don’t need this, like I don’t need the grace of the sacraments or the peace of prayer or the uplifting beauty of sacred architecture well-cared-for — to look like I don’t need God, really. I mean, I was just in the neighbourhood, no biggie.

People do this. I just stumbled into this, they say, didn’t really try to be here, but just happened to… It’s okay to say, I want to be here. I came on purpose. More than that, it’s a lie to say otherwise, and it’s a lie that buries an impulse we’d do well to inspect–it’s as if someone had a crush and kept turning up at places where they could interact with their sweetheart, but kept telling others and themselves that they really weren’t trying at all–you get the point. 

That’s what I learned today: there’s no reason to be apologetic about needing God or wanting to be with Him. Human beans we are, we want to be self-sufficient, independent, masters of our own fates, but we’re really not. Just like we have a primordial desire for relationship, we have a deeper one of relationship with God.

In fact, we might be apologetic to others and to ourselves for wanting to seek God, but He surely was not apologetic about wanting to seek us. God Himself became man, first an infant born in undignified straits, and grew into a man Who died in the most public and grotesque way possible, having been debased and abused, but all the while asserting His divinity and the salvific nature of His ministry. He never said, “It was convenient, so I dropped by.”

He says, “I came for you.” If even one sheep is missing the Good Shepherd would abandon the 99 to seek the one, and so He sought us, you and me, at such a cost!

As Matthew Schmitz writes in a feature from the August 2016 issue of First Things,

Christianity is a religion of losers. To the weak and humble, it offers a stripped and humiliated Lord. To those without reason for optimism, it holds up the cross as a sign of hope. To anyone who does not win at life, it promises that whoever loses his life for Christ’s sake shall find it.