An Excellent Article from Fr Z in the Catholic Herald

On the Catholic Faith, death, and the supreme role of the liturgy...

'There is a great deal of confusion in the Church today. We have in large part forgotten who we are as Catholics and why we belong to the Church.

We don’t belong to the Catholic Church first and foremost for earthly motives. Bettering the world, improving the lot of others … these flow from our love for God and our desire to be with Him in heaven.

Try as I might, with the possible exception of the fact that Jesus founded her, I cannot think of a more important reason to be a member of Holy Catholic Church than the certainty that one day I will die. I will die and I will be judged. You will too.

Why are we Catholic? Why bother with Mass? With the Church’s teachings about moral issues? Why stand against the wind in the public square and twist in it, just to lose friends, status, and comfort?

Why? Our Saviour established the Catholic Church as our way to salvation. No matter how bad some fellow members of the Church may be, or how alluring the world surely is, or how tough we think we have had it, we are going to die one day, some of us pretty soon. That’s why we are Catholic. Trump that.

I hope by grace and elbow grease to do His will and to serve and worship Him fittingly in His Church. I try to love God. I want to please God. I believe He will help me, a sinner, in my weakness and forgive me when I fail. I strive to make changes when I am doing something that isn’t working. Why? Because I’m going to die, that’s why. I want to go to heaven.

If we love God, we will try to help other people get to heaven too.

We have some problems with that part right now, my friends, because Catholic identity is weary and weak where once it was strong and everything.

We are all men and women of our age. To one degree or other we are subject to prevailing trends and world-views. Also, we are wounded from sin and death is scary. Death yawns before us as that door we must go through to come before the great mystery which is both fearsome and alluring. We are, to our peril, quite willing to avert our eyes from this fearful prospect, death, through innumerable distractions which fog our inner compass. We easily forget the one transcendent source of our being, our origin and goal...'

For full article click here.