observances on observance

Lent 2005 began when I woke up in bed with a (Mormon) boy on Ash Wednesday before scurrying off to mass to get my ashes. It ended last week on Palm Sunday, when I didn't find any time to go to services, opting instead to go to a 'gay sauna' in Paris. I toyed with the idea of giving up drinking for forty days but soon fell off the wagon. I tried to think of other things. For a while, I was trying to read one new entry from my "Book of Saints" for each day but that didn't last long either. In the end, I didn't give up anything -- unless you count going to mass, which I "gave up" on more than one occasion (usually because I'd been out drinking or partying the night before).

And today was Easter. I observed it in the chapel at the nursing home where my uncle now lives. Whenever I go home to Boston for any length of time these days, I spend a major part of that time at the nursing home and a major portion of the time there at mass. My uncle, a priest, was severely incapacitated a couple of years ago with a stroke. He goes to mass in the chapel every day; though he can no longer celebrate the mass on his own, he sits on the altar wearing some of the clerical vestments and joins in on some of the prayers. He can't move or speak as he used to, but deep inside the Holy Spirit is moving.

What is the story with my Catholicism these days? What excuses do I have? None. It isn't as if I've been missing mass for any good reason; I haven't decided not to go. Often when I do go (like this morning) I'm reminded of how important my faith is to me and how sustaining the Eucharist is. I cling to the fact that I'm Catholic. The teachings of the Church, the scriptures and the rituals all have immense value for me. It's not as if I'm a gay man who's been "turned off" by bishops railing against same-sex marriage or something like that. Those social teaching issues are a connundrum to be sure, but for me they are not the core of the faith. That's all posturing; it's not eternal. And what is eternal is what I value.

So why don't I feel the way I once did? Exhaustion? Fatigue? Neglect? Or could it be that I do still feel the way I did? External forms of worship don't mean a thing. I'm not beating myself up for missing mass or for not abstaining during Lent. Those things don't matter in and of themselves. But, when I'm honest with myself, I recognize a diminishment in my spiritual energy. I'm too easily distracted from my faith; I don't pray. That energy's being expended somewhere else.

And, yes, that "somewhere else" is often a bar or a club on a Saturday night 'til 4am (though I've still been known to make 11:30 mass the next morning--but that's usually when I haven't brought somebody back with me). My spiritual energy, though, is also being channelled into my job with the formerly homeless, into my volunteer work with disadvantaged youth. I wouldn't be doing those things at all if I hadn't been raised as a certain type of Catholic, imbued with values by my aunt and uncle. In terms of hourly expenditures of time, I'm probably living out my commitment to Jesus' teaching more now than at most other periods of my life. Yet it can also feel like I'm just riding the subway between Sodom and Gomorrah.

I haven't been to confession in a very long time (since last summer?) and I sincerely love to go. I love it when it really gives you an opportunity to do some honest soul-searching and self-assessment. I don't go all that often because I really do try to take stock and say, "What am I really sorry for? How do I really want to change my life?" It would be hypocritical, for example, for me to go in there and confess the number of times I've had sexual relations with boys when I have no intention of stopping. [Maybe I'll try to be a little less profligate about it, but that's just a question of degree.] Who would I be fooling?

Accepting that drinking, sex and things of that sort aren't necessarily sinful doesn't mean, though, that you're off the hook. In fact, reaching that point opens you up to deeper self-analysis. Those sorts of misdemeanors, the types of sin that get policed prominently by conservative ideologues, don't actually go very deep. They're external acts, that's all. Again, it's the spirit that counts. Rather than listing all the times I've sucked someone's dick (which, though it may shock some people to hear it, can in certain circumstances bring you closer to God), how much more important it is to really discern how I may have turned away from God on a deeper level, how I might be acting out of pride or vidictiveness or pettiness or jealousy. Or anxiety, another thing that God does not want. Or despair.

In other words, I value ritual (whether it be confession or the mass) when it provides a format for deepening my faith. It allows you a way in. Therefore, I shouldn't be beating myself up about my half-assed Lenten observance (and I'm not). I shouldn't feel guilty. Every mass is an opportunity to get more out of the faith that I profess (so is every moment of one's life, for that matter, but a mass is sort of like a pre-packaged opportunity). When you pass that up, you're only cheating yourself.

Luckily, there's always next week.