There is something different about going to church now. Not just where we go, but how it feels to go at all.

After we left, we gave ourselves time before we began looking in earnest. We visited a Presbyterian church several times, drawn in by the warmth of the welcome and hopeful that something might take hold. There were good moments. The messages contained things worth thinking about, points I hadn’t considered before. But something kept us at a distance. The pastor read her sermons, and while I understand that many do, there was very little beyond the reading itself. No lift in the voice at the right moment, no sense that she knew it well enough to look up from the page and mean it. My husband found it nearly impossible to stay fully present. And if the person delivering the message cannot quite inhabit it, it is rather difficult for the congregation to either.

So we kept looking.

We had begun to understand something about what we were after, even if it was hard to put into words. We didn’t want to be overwhelmed when we walked in. Some churches greet you so aggressively that you feel processed rather than welcomed. People come immediately with questions and information before you have even had a moment to take the place in. There is nothing wrong with that approach. It simply wasn’t what we needed. The churches we found ourselves returning to were the ones that let you sit. Perhaps one person says hello, and then you are left to settle. That felt right.

Then we visited a Catholic church, and everything was different.

We walked in to silence. Not the awkward silence of a room that hasn’t filled yet, but the intentional quiet of people who had come to do something specific. There was no music, no greetings, no conversation. People came in, moved to their pew, and knelt to pray before the service began. I stood and watched and felt something shift in me. I had attended church my entire life and it had never once occurred to me to pray before the service. Every church I had known opened with someone else’s prayer on behalf of the congregation. This was different. This was personal, and it was chosen, and I have started doing it myself since.

The structure of the Mass was unlike anything I had experienced before. There were two readings from scripture and then a reading from the Gospel, and the priest’s message drew directly from those readings. You followed along in the Source and Summit Missal rather than flipping through a Bible trying to locate whatever passage the pastor had just referenced. I had never realised how much energy I spent doing that until I didn’t have to anymore. Here, you listened to the readings, you followed along, and you were ready. The message landed because you were already settled into it.

We talked about it on the way home. We talked about it during the week. That had not always been the case with church, and we noticed the difference.

We have been back many times since. Mass has become our regular choice, and something has grown from it that we did not entirely anticipate. We downloaded the Source and Summit app and began reading the daily readings together as a couple. We have recently added a daily reflection as well, a short message connected to one of the readings for that day. Our faith is more present in our daily life now than it was when we were attending church three or four times a week.

There is still much we want to understand before we could say with any certainty where this is leading. The Catholic faith is deep and layered and we are conscious of how much we do not yet know. But we are learning, and we are doing so willingly, which feels like something worth paying attention to.

Our faith has not changed in its foundation. But it is being examined more carefully than it ever has been, and that examination has brought us closer to God rather than further away. We talk about faith more now. We think about it more deliberately. We are more intentional than we have ever been.

We don’t know exactly where this leads. But for the first time in a long time, we are not simply attending church. We are seeking something. And it seems, quietly and unexpectedly, that something may be seeking us as well.

— Kate