Last summer I learned that it’s impossible to be Catholic. 

I grew up in a devout Catholic home and as a child I had a great, personal love for Jesus in the Eucharist. However, as I proceeded into my teenage and early university years, my faith began to vacillate between enthusiastic conviction and doubtful mediocrity.  When I felt Catholic, I was Catholic. But in some seasons where the feelings would wear away, my faith would lose its legs. 

Up until last summer, I would describe my relationship with Jesus as an “on again, off again” relationship. Yes, I loved Jesus, and I loved being with him, but would we end up together? I wasn’t always sure. 

If my relationship with Jesus was on again, off again, then last summer I started slipping into a season of “off again.” Physically isolated by Covid-19 lockdowns, I found my spirit tumbling into spiritual isolation. 

The loneliness wasn’t new. I had experienced it in my life before but it was amplified by pandemic isolation. Catholicism started to feel like an absurdly difficult task that I had to complete all on my own. Jesus seemed distant and the Church's teachings started to dismantle itself in my mind. 

For the first time in my life, I reached a point where I started to believe that it was impossible to be a Catholic. 

I had reached a point where a dramatic exit from the Catholic Church seemed certain for me. However, this didn’t happen. 

To this day, I am deeply grateful for the faithful friends who I had around me who did not judge me for my doubt, but who rather gently, yet persistently invited me to return to the Sacraments. 

I hadn’t been to confession for a long time, and one day I impulsively decided to return to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Why not give it a final shot? 

When I walked out of confession that day, I felt a peaceful assurance that what I wanted was not to leave the Church, but rather to be closer to Jesus. 

I didn’t want to be flaky with Jesus anymore. No more “on again, off again.” I wanted to be with Jesus for life.

But the thing is, although I felt peaceful walking out of confession that day, I also felt skeptical. I had gone to confession and had walked out feeling rejuvenated, but was it really that easy? I had been struggling with being a follower of Jesus for so long. I did believe that through confession my soul had been healed and that I was close to Jesus once more, but I knew I needed to reflect on the patterns that had led me to a crisis of faith, if I wanted to avoid a repeat. 

How did I reach the point where I was inches away from leaving the Catholic faith that I loved, and still love, so dearly? Reflecting on my journey has been invaluable in reinforcing the faith I have today. 

Last summer, I had not participated in the Sacraments in months due to the pandemic. My community had been largely severed due to the lockdowns. I was spiritually and mentally vulnerable, as many of us were last summer. However, I can see that the spiritual heaviness of the pandemic was not the sole reason that led me to consider leaving the Catholic Church. 

For me, loneliness and struggles with a few of the Catholic Church’s teachings were the main stumbling blocks I encountered in my faith. I believed these two issues were the main problems I faced as a follower of Jesus. But I was wrong. Loneliness and my issues with Church teachings were not the main problem. 

The problem with my faith was that I was attempting to be a Christian without Christ. 

Through the years of my on again, off again relationship with Christ and the Catholic Church, I had reached a point where I was depending on myself for the strength to be a Christian. I was attempting to manufacture grace out of the sheer grit of my own intellectual capacities and the strength of my own willpower.

I was even trying to pray on my own. If a prayer time was “good” it was because of my effort. If a prayer time was “bad,” it was because I was weak. 

I had slipped into a worldview where I loved Jesus, but I didn’t ask him for help. 

As I invited the Lord back into my heart and He mercifully reassembled the relationship that I had flattened with my doubt and self-dependence, he changed something within me. 

Jesus showed me that it is impossible to be a Catholic. 

He showed me that it’s impossible to be a Catholic without utterly depending on Him for the grace I need to walk the path of Christianity. 

St. Therese of Lisieux understood the reality of our utter dependence on Jesus. She said, “It is your arms, Oh Jesus, which are the elevator to carry me to heaven!” My worldview changed: I went from living like I had to strong-arm my way to heaven to realizing that the very weakness I was trying to avoid was the key to closeness with Christ. 

The loneliness and struggles that I had once perceived as stumbling blocks were now transformed into profound opportunities for intimacy with Christ. 

My doubts pulled me closer to God. 

How can this be? By taking the mantle of human nature and ultimately dying on the Cross for my sins, Jesus took what is weak and suffering in us and transformed it. 

The loneliness and struggles with the Church’s teachings that I had experienced (and still experience) are no longer an occasion for me to turn away from Jesus. Rather, these struggles are now opportunities for me to turn to the Lord with even more fervency. 

By the grace of God, when I now encounter seasons of loneliness, I see my loneliness as an opportunity to lean deeper into the heart of Jesus. On the Cross, Christ cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”(Mt 27:46) Jesus knows the loneliness I carry in my heart and by stepping into my humanity he has created a space where my loneliness doesn’t have to draw me away but rather closer to Him.  

In those moments where I find it so hard to follow, instead of turning away from Jesus in despair or frustration, my desire is to turn to Christ and say in my heart or out loud, “your grace is sufficient, Lord. In my weakness, your power is made perfect” (1 Corinth 12:9-11). “This is impossible for me, Lord, but what is impossible for me is possible for you” (Mt 19:26). 

I have often gotten frustrated because the idea of “relying on grace” seems so abstract and unrelated to the practical struggles of everyday life. For me, speaking to Jesus either mentally or out loud in times of suffering or struggle has been a tangible way that I can lean into grace, rather than slipping into the old habit of self-reliance. I talk to Jesus with the simplicity of a little child, chattering away to her father.

To be a Christian, to be a Catholic, is impossible for me. It’s impossible for all of us. But through Baptism, we have all been subsumed into a life of supernatural grace which empowers us to do what is otherwise not possible. As a follower of Christ who leans into grace and uses my weakness to propel me closer to Jesus, I—you—can do the impossible.