I often get the line, "Fr. John, I don?t need to go to church because I am a spiritual person." Half of that statement is one-hundred percent correct and half of it is one-hundred percent wrong. It is one-hundred percent correct to say that we are spiritual people - we all have spirits. It is one-hundred percent incorrect to say we don't have to go to church. God demands that we keep Holy the Sabbath in the Ten Commandments and it is a serious sin if we fail to do so.

For the sake of discussion, let us compare the spiritual and religious person. The spiritual person is one who lives life on their own terms. They will seek and follow God in any way they determine which includes not keeping Holy the Sabbath. Think of who is the center of the statement, "I do not need to go to church"? That is the spiritual person telling God what to do, living on their own terms. With this whole paradigm, spiritual people keep God in the abstract and only bow down before themselves. In the end, we know that can only lead to our hopeless demise.

Religious people seek to live life on God's terms and follow his commands and demands. And God is a very demanding God. What is not demanding about forgiving your enemies, carrying your cross daily, humility, giving without expecting anything in return, living temperately, justly and mercifully according to God's will? Religious people dive into the heart of the church Jesus Christ established for the salvation of all and seek to live life based on God's terms and not their own terms. The Catholic Church offers over two-thousand years of salvation wisdom and grace for anyone seeking salvation. Religious people know that salvation is based on how God says it works, like the command to go to church each week, and not on how they say it works.

Religious people know that God is the opposite of abstract. How could you get less abstract than Jesus hanging on the cross to forgive our sins? Jesus is a Living and Personal God who loves each of us and calls us to the great accountability of that love. Each moment he is seeking, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to communicate the awesome demands and joy of his love. He was seeking us ever before we were seeking him. He is seeking us more right now than we are seeking him. Religious people know this and they know it is their job to live what Jesus demands and not demand Jesus what to do. They go to church and practice their faith to grow in the wisdom and grace of Jesus which becomes less and less abstract as it happens.

Blessed by the BEST,

+Fr. John