Still Here

Before I could choose for myself to be Catholic,

it was being lived around me.

In the lives of my parents.

In Sunday mornings and familiar rituals.

In a steady faith

passed from one generation to the next.

I did not have to go searching for it.

It came to me first

as inheritance,

as memory,

as home.

As I grew older,

I came to understand

that the Church struggles.

It is human and imperfect,

made up of wounded souls

with different cultures and points of view,

all carrying unfinished stories

and quiet disappointments of their own.

And because the Church is called

to reflect something holy,

its failures often appear darker

and cut more deeply

than the failures of the world around it.

There were moments

when leaving

would have been easier.

But I never truly considered it.

Not because every wound healed.

Or because every Catholic

reflected Christ to the world.

I remained

because the Eucharist was not simply a symbol,

but Christ truly present,

and available to anyone and everyone

in tabernacles in every part the world.

I remained

because I have a parish

where I am known by name,

where burdens are shared,

and faith is lived together.

I remained

because the Church stands

as a moral voice in the world,

reminding cultures and those in power

that human dignity is not negotiable,

that progress should lift everyone,

and that mercy still belongs

at the center of public life.

I remained

because through small prayers

and ordinary acts of kindness,

I am somehow part of something greater.

A Church reaching across the world

with compassion and care.

Feeding.

Healing.

Comforting.

Sheltering.

I remained

because the world is more than

something to consume.

It is God’s creation,

filled with beauty, wonder, and life,

and the Church reminds us

to care for what God has entrusted to us.

I remained

because truth matters.

Not the passing noise of the moment,

but truth, like bedrock beneath our feet,

holding us steady

when so much around us feels uncertain.

Nations rise and fall.

Cultures change.

The certainties of one generation

become the questions of another.

But the Church continues

to look back to Christ,

to the quiet wisdom of His ministry,

to His love for the forgotten,

the suffering, and the lost.

So after all these years,

through uncertainty and grace,

through the weight of life

and the mercy that carries it,

I am still here.

Praying as an act of trust.

Believing love is deeper than certainty.

Belonging to something

older,

deeper,

and steadier

than myself.