My life goal was to get married and have 10 kids. I always imagined a big wedding at my grandmother’s parish of Our Lady of the Assumption in Strafford, Pa. It is a beautiful grey stone church built in the early 1920s by Italian immigrant parishioners, who were stone masons, including my great-grandfather and his father. I was baptized in this church, but when I turned six, our family moved, and we became members of another parish.
After I was confirmed, I stopped going to Mass (I was one of those kids). However, I still planned to raise my children Catholic. One day, when I was 19, I spoke aloud about my desire to get married at Our Lady of the Assumption Church. My mom told me that I couldn’t show up to church with a fiancé in hand and announce my plans to marry there. She said that I would have to belong there first. Well, I had wanted to go back to church anyway, so now was a good a time as any to register.
My mom said that the first thing I needed to do was to go to Confession. It was Advent, and she took me to the parish penance service. I couldn’t really remember how to go to Confession, so the priest helped me as I fumbled through it – what relief!
Christmas fell in the middle of the week, so I went back to Mass on a Sunday, then Christmas, then on a Sunday, and then the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, all within two weeks. That wound up being the best scenario possible, because it quickly got me in the habit of going to Mass regularly.
I remembered my grandmother’s periodic reminders saying, “It would be good for you to go back to Church, Emily.” She was thrilled that I had finally done so. I loved seeing her and my other relatives at Mass. My uncles, both ushers, would proudly invite my mother and me to bring up the gifts. My dental assistant, who had kindly encouraged me to rejoin the church, would always give me a joyful and welcoming smile.
Within a few months of steadily going back to Mass, I prayed, “God, please don’t let this be like the gym where I go strong for a while and then stop.” God answered that prayer. I never missed Sunday Mass again for a reason other than illness.
This Advent, give a warm and gentle invitation to someone who has been away from church – or someone you know who has never gone at all! I know a woman who wasn’t raised in any faith, but as a child, had friends who often invited her to church with them. She wanted her kids to have what her friends had growing up. So, she joined a church and raised her kids with that faith foundation.
When you see people at Mass you haven’t see in a while, or people who only go at Christmas and Easter, give them a cheerful, “Great to see you!” Move into the center of the aisle to make room, remembering that no one (not even you) owns a pew at church. Please don’t ever, ever, joke that lightning will strike if a certain person goes back to church. While people won’t believe that will literally happen, such statements make them think that they’re not good enough to go to church – and the truth is, none of us are good enough and all of us are good enough at the same time. We are worthy because Jesus invites us all and we are all in the process of conversion and at varying stages of our journey toward God.
You may be the person God uses to bring his children back home for Christmas.
Sister M. Emily Vincent Rebalsky, IHM, is the program director at Villa Maria by the Sea Retreat Center, Stone Harbor. For more information about retreats at Villa Maria by the Sea, visit VMbytheSea.com. For information about discerning a vocation with the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Malvern, PA, visit ihmimmaculata.org.
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