Faith Bubble

I was brought up in a typical Catholic home. My grandparents were Catholic, all my cousins were Catholic, my mother has been a catechist for 12 years, my father is a Grand Knight in the Knights of Columbus, and my siblings and I were always very involved in our Faith Formation program. Even now, as I work at a Catholic company there are plenty of times that I took my knowledge and faith for granted.

When you’re surrounded by your faith, it’s hard to remember that there are people with no sense of true peace in their lives. You get comfortable and don’t think about the people that don’t know God or don’t like the God that society has portrayed.

It’s easy to tell yourself that someone else has told them about God and believe that they’ve already decided that it’s not for them. We don’t know their background and we don’t want to be rejected or made fun of, so we say it is someone else’s problem.

It wasn’t until I was talking to my boyfriend last year that I realized that he didn’t know what Easter was even about. He shyly asked me what Easter was all about and I laughed. He was so confused as to why Catholics chose to celebrate the death of Jesus. It wasn’t until I explained that we didn’t celebrate his death, but his resurrection, that he learned that Jesus rose from the dead.

This was after a year and a half of us dating.

I felt terrible! How could I call myself a Catholic, say that I proclaim the glory of God, and yet my boyfriend had no idea what my whole religion was founded on? How many times had I just assumed that he knew? How many times had I assumed that everyone around me knew?

As embarrassed as I am, I’m glad I had this experience. It reminded me that living in a bubble is too easy to dismiss. You can surround yourself by Catholics and tell yourself that everyone else’s faith isn’t your problem, but that’s false. It is our responsibility as the people of God to do just that: Evangelize.

Lent is the perfect time to ease into it. With ashes on our foreheads, fasting, and abstaining from meat, the conversation has already been started for us. It now becomes a matter of us choosing to say, “Oh, I’m Catholic,” or doing our research so we can tell people our reasons for fasting. Tell them why we get ashes. Tell them the story of Jesus Christ’s resurrection.

As silly as it may seem to you, they may not know. Don’t get too comfortable in your faith bubble, because that is not what we are asked to do. Paraphrasing Pope Francis, we were not made for comfort. We were made for greatness.