Many years back my mother tried to lift my spirituality by coaxing me to the Sunday mass. I was a late riser and Sunday mornings were busy so she used to take me to the Sunday evening mass. I had nothing against religion so I went there with her. But more than the scripture, I enjoyed the ten-minute walk with my mother. We used to take part in the mass more frequently. We participated in the Vespers before the church Feast several years in a row singing the same set of hymns and listening to the same bible readings. The Vespers hymns were always my favourites based on Psalms. Upbeat and always in major scales. The Feast of our church is the messenger of the upcoming Christmas. I loved the feast not because of anything but because it filled me with anticipation for the coming festive days. Who doesn’t love Christmas? I never believed a coloured cement statue of Mother Mary could do a thing for living beings no matter how beautiful it is.
In the year 2012, we went to the Christmas mass and the midnight service on the 31st of December. It had become a habit to the point missing a mass had an impact. The Christmas sermon that year was the most puzzling sermon I have ever listened to in my life. Even for today, I don’t know what the point the priest tried to bring out. God forgive me, but it was just a gibberish story about a man bringing a packet of milk powder home. Believe me, I was wide awake.
When the December 31st night mass was over I felt I was at a loss. No more special events. In the absence of an event, my mom and I went to the January 1st evening mass. I went there because I wanted this festive frenzy to keep on continuing. But it became a mass I remembered for different reasons.
That evening I sat with my mom in the pew listening to another wordy sermon. The church looked sad and I was sad. The decorations from the past days hung on the ceiling fans like ghosts. The Christmas tree stood like a lost man. Most of the pews were empty. And I felt a huge emptiness within. Where was the cheer? The joy? The anticipation? We are back at the beginning of another year when we had to wait for another 11 months to have a little dopamine hit. But only if I knew that was the beginning of my real connection with God.
For some reason, we didn’t go to the mass again. People may judge us for that. They DO. They ALWAYS DO. People love to play God. They send us to hell even before God decides what to do. But in the years to come, I realised that we do not need a separate building or a congregation to experience the love and protection of God. I realised that we do not need a negotiator between God and us. I realised that no one has to listen to the same bible verse every single week to follow what Jesus taught us. To put his words into action. Rather, God is a highly personal experience. The God you experience is different from the God I experience. Reality is different for different people. And God is reality.
I met God when my parents survived a deadly train accident in 2015. I met God when my father survived a massive heart attack in 2018. I met God when my mother survived breast cancer in 2022. I experienced God’s love and protection without any difference on all these occasions even though we no longer sat in the mass singing hymns and reciting beautifully worded prayers. I realised that God does not judge us because he doesn’t see us in the church pews or chip into the Sunday collection.
I never met God in the church or the mass, in the hymns, or in the bible readings. But I met him in my stress, fear, insecurity, sickness, pain, uncertainty, and loneliness. I saw him in sincerity, love, generosity, selflessness, empathy, hard work, and honest efforts.
When sickness struck, I believed in God’s word more than the medical reports. When good wishes were granted, I was grateful for his blessings.
I still have God in my life and he will continue to sustain me and my family. Not inside dedicated walls adorned with stained glass, marble angels, and intricately carved crucifixions but out in the scorching sun, and rumbling rain, in fields, in streets, in hospitals, in courtrooms, in prison cells, at workplaces, and home.
Looking back at my life, I realise that it was only God who saved me from the snares set by people. If you ask me, I have a few decades of God’s miracles. He was there when I was seated at the pew wondering what the priest was blabbering. He was there when I spent sleepless and anxious nights alone at hospitals with my parents. He was there with me on uncountable occasions which I won’t share here. All I know is this. God was with us, is with us and will be with us regardless of our attendance in his so-called “holy house”. Don’t try to convince me that he marks our attendance to decide our eligibility to enter a heaven no one has seen. If God is with me, I don’t care about going to hell, even.
So dare not judge me, because I might know and follow God far better than those who sit at every Sunday mass.