A reader offers his testimony after attending Mass for the first time since deciding to explore the claims of the Catholic Church.
Editor’s note: The following are SeekerAnon’s own words, with some clearly delineated commentary from me and some light structural editing to give the original forum style posts better flow and readability.
Going to my first Mass ever. I’ve gone to weddings in Catholic churches, but never have I gone to a Mass as a spiritual seeker.
Service is over. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home.
Let me preface it by saying that it was indescribable.
SeekerAnon made good on his pledge to report back and posted the following upon returning home:
Yeah, I wasn’t prepared for how the Ash Wednesday Mass would make me feel.
At first, my expectations were low — religion was dying, right? I figured the church would be full of a few elderly worshipers, with pews sparsely populated.
Well, I’m happy to say that I was wrong.
The pews were packed — and not just with old people. Every age group was there, from babies to grannies.
More importantly, families were there.
This meant the church was a healthy one.
And remember, this isn’t Christmas or Easter, but the first day of Lent. Ash Wednesday isn’t “celebrated” by the secular world; there’s no “Ash Wednesday Bunny.”
I knew this was real.
I turned off my phone and my watch — for now, it was just me, the congregation, and the Lord.
That’s an important point about Ash Wednesday. As holidays go, it’s nowhere near as high-profile as Christmas or Eater. Nor is it a holy day of obligation, so the effects of any “Ash Wednesday bump” on attendance would be minor.
When some lay women and the priests read from the Bible, it felt real. They read the part about hypocrites and Pharisees, and already I was thinking of virtue signalers who want to be seen as good instead of being good.
They also spoke of the significance of the number 40 — the 40 days and nights of the Great Flood, the 40 years Moses and the Israelites spent wandering the desert, and the 40 days Jesus spent fighting the temptations of Satan.
I couldn’t sing the hymns because I didn’t know them, but the lady next to me did.
So I just clasped my hands and closed my eyes whenever there was a hymn.
I did know the Lord’s Prayer, so I said that one right along with the congregants.
But I spent a lot of my time contemplating the crucified figure of Christ above the altar.
All of the worry, all of the disquiet in my mind, all of the anger — it all vanished for that moment.
Apologies for the editorial interruption, but this next part is a vital data point in support of the theory that ritual is how people apply the wisdom of tradition to their daily lives:
Due to the amount of contemplation about morality that I had done, I knew that this faith right here was the real thing.
Not some LARPy convenience to fulfill a political aim, but the source of morality. All else was arbitrary and tyrannical.
I just felt…loved. Like I belonged there.
I know for sure that I want to go back. Because I do need it.
As do we all.
So yeah. That was what Mass felt like. And no snarkmeister or cynic or skeptic can convince me otherwise.
I was not expecting to feel what I felt.
It sounds like God granted Anon what theologians call a sensible consolation. Think of it as God meeting us where we are on a level that’s accessible to our interior senses. AKA, the warm fuzzies.
However, because God is pure spirit, He wills that we eventually advance beyond the level of the senses to know Him on the higher intellectual level.
In t hat regard, Anon’s next statement is encouraging.
Now on to the next challenge: Lent itself.
It sounds like he’s already ahead of the game!
Bonus: Near the end of the service, one of the priests mentioned the Shroud of Turin, and how it shows us what Our Lord looked like.
Also, just eyeballing it, but I don’t recall anyone checking their phone during the service.
Not even the kids.
And it was seeing so many families with kids at Mass that gave Anon a broader cultural insight:
A possible reason for the Based Japan meme could also be that Japan appeared to achieve what the wignats and neopagans wanted: pre-1960s demographics with post-1960s morals.
But the resulting low birth rates put an end to that mirage.
The next time you hear some redditor or an account with a sun wheel avi proclaiming the Church dead, remember they’re citing stats from the same Death Cult that claims garbage like The Last of Us Part II and The Marvels are popular.
Not to mention the same media that lies about the Church habitually.
Here are some other numbers that paint a far different picture of the Church’s future:
Fedora and tree LARP bros, I don’t feel so good.
If recent events have taught us anything, it’s that our own lying eyes are far more trustworthy than official statistics.
Everywhere I’ve had occasion to make direct empirical observations of the Church, I’ve seen more signs of health than decline.
It’s not just me, either. Or SeekerAnon. Multiple readers have told me for years about standing-room-only Masses overflowing with young families.
Do conditions vary by region? Almost certainly. You’ll most often find signs of decline in dioceses overseen by “Spirit of Vatican II” bishops whose liturgical sensibilities are stuck in 1976.
But none of my local parishes have the Latin Mass, yet the Novus Ordo parish nearest me just built a huge new church. And attendance is already exceeding capacity.
The “Religion is dying!” meme is a psyop.
Don’t fall for it. The people parroting it are just pushing FUD on Christians.
As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
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Awesome. I was unable to attend Ash Wednesday due to illness in the family, and I definitely missed it. Still, Lent is an amazing time for self-reflection and study.
I hear from a lot of people how the Church is dying, and in my rural parish cluster (one priest for three churches) it might seem that way. But the stats in that chart are very encouraging, and we have two seminarians from our diocese discerning for the priesthood right now. It’s a small diocese, so two more priests would be welcome, particularly orthodox and conservative ones.
Praying for vocations to your parish!
Heck, even if it were true, I can’t see why believers should be ruffled out of following the Way, the Truth and the Life because none of the other kids are doing it. That’s clearly the intent of the people who spread this, but… what, do the highest and most fundamental truths of the universe get voted out?
Yep. The Enemy wouldn’t be spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt if he wasn’t afraid.
I’ve been to enough churches over the course of my lifetime to know God is stirring the hearts of young people. You don’t need statistics, only eyes to see how many more young people (families included) are attending Mass and ears to listen to how more orthodox the priests are during their homilies.
We are in a time of rebirth in the church after dealing with many decades of turmoil. It’s an exciting time to be alive.
The next papal enclave will probably be more of the same. But the one after that …
I’ve warned more than one Missal of 62 fan that if we get the traditionally minded “Yes, let’s excommunicate again” pope that they crave, that the Mass they attend (or pin their hopes to) is so gone. They don’t seem to believe me. 🙂
The Pope that promulgated the Council of Trent Mass gave everyone less than 2 years to get on board in the beginning of the printing press era. Allowing an older Mass to linger on and cause obvious divisions inside a church is a pastoral indulgence for the tiny (but loud) minority. A future Pope more focused on unity isn’t going to upend Vatican II, but make it clear that if your Mass is not a current and approved that you’re not in communion with Peter.
Yes, even strict traditionalist theologians admit that having two parallel forms of the Mass within one rite is a historical and liturgical oddity that has to end.
That’s one reason why I’ve never gotten up in arms about Francis placing additional restrictions on the extraordinary form. In all filial charity, I’m not a fan of how he’s gone about it. But the Latin Rite needs to get everybody on the same page sooner rather than later.
God bless you and this blog! What a great story to hear.
Never in my wildest dreams would I imagine an argument that a Mass in the vernacular would *turn away* people. I am very thankful to have grown up (sort of) attending a boring old “Novus Ordo”* in a gym, with everyone standing to receive communion. I think it involved heavy doses of “On Eagle’s Wings” and guitar, although I admit I don’t remember much of the music. My wandering away from the faith was about lack of education and connection to God. I knew music could be annoying or whatever. It’s just life.
My current personal experiences at Mass are in part because I am living in a growing area. My old stomping grounds are a different story. That said, my very formal and reverent to Vatican II specs Mass is overflowing with people. But so is the huge liberal “All hugs” parish that we drive past since COVID. Indeed, even that Mass has improved. Thanks to a particular priest, our attendance this last Ash Wednesday to the “All hugs” parish was very fruitful. It was even a relief to not have to muddle through the Latin parts of our more formal parish.
So much of the online conversation is dominated by the assumptions of the RadTrads. My reality is that where there is the Holy Spirit, Vatican II and her Mass is working as intended. What cradles we can get to stay are far more familiar with Scripture and Christian culture/stories/parables without even realizing it than the reports from the 1950’s. Mass practices have visibly improve in my lifetime. Like it or not, the vast majority of those in love with the Missal of 62 were formed and evangelized by the Ordinary Mass. I think it’s safe to say that without the Mass a few of them have come to loath/fear they’d have very little appreciation of the older Mass. The irony abounds there.
*It’s the Ordinary Mass of the Roman rite more properly. I just thought of it as “Mass”
Religion dying is based on polling data since Obama when religious people got too scared to report to the census their religion for fear of persecution. Therefore the polling data looks like less people are religious when in reality more religious people juat don’t want to officially declare their religion to a government hostile to religion.
Maybe there’s some smoke there, but there is some fire. When one can get raided by the FBI for being pro-life, one can be excused for exercising a bit of discretion.
But such discretion has consequences. Satan can say to himself, “Distorting the truth has never been easier. Christians distort it already!”
If even half of Christians had refused to go along to get along at the first sign of Satanic legal perversion, we wouldn’t be in Clown World.
But it is what it is. We are outlaws now. The choice of speaking out or keeping one’s head down is each man’s to make.
Oh, no, religion isn’t dying. It’s consolidating and intensifying.
Our church is packed with converts, and only growing more so– some of them coming from no-religion, and more coming from dying protestant denoms. Everything I’m hearing from more traditional Catholic friends mirrors this (we’re EO), but if anything the numbers still indicate that fewer and fewer Americans are checking the “Christian” tickbox on polls, and mainstream protestant denoms are still withering away.
The influx is happening in the traditional liturgical churches. I’m curious if the Copts are seeing it too, or if they’re still too ethnic/insular. I’d expect at least a trickle of seekers to be showing up there too.
What this says to me is that the social cachet of “christian” is pretty much gone so people have stopped claiming that as a default identity: “I’m Christian because that’s what normal people are” no longer applies. And those that remain, or are drawn *toward* religion are, at this point, skewed heavily toward those who are really serious about it.
Wheat, chaff. I think we are disambiguating.
We have come to similar conclusions. Christianity isn’t fading away. It’s boiling off the lukewarmers.
“Religion is dying”
What a weird flex to attempt on people whose Lord and Savior rose from the dead.
“… for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.”
A fun anecdote possibly related to all this: when I was at my last evangelical mediumchurch, from 2017-2020, there was always a lot of what I’d describe as “woke pandering” trying to make a more “inclusive” environment for this church of almost entirely suburban white people to be more appealing to blacks. It never worked of course. It just alienated people like me fed up with marxist narrative-framing.
At the Orthodox parish I’ve attended for almost four years now, which is about half Eastern European/”Cradle” Orthodox, half converts, we have quite a few black people. Even women. Some Asians, Latin American, others you might not expect. Our parish never talks about race or any of the progressive talking points, yet draws all kinds of people hungry for the truth. Fascinating how that works.
An observation that’s been made by others in the dissident sphere is that Woke-ism was an outgrowth of New England mainline Protestantism. Yankee puritans went from lying awake at night worried someone somewhere was having fun to lying awake at night convinced that Hitler was hiding under the bed.