I’ve often been asked why I became Catholic. So often was I asked that late last year, I wrote a series of blog posts that detailed certain aspects of my intellectual journey towards the faith. This series remains unfinished, not because I have nothing else to say, but because I didn’t feel inspired to write anymore on the subject. You might say the Muses abandoned me in my project, but as it happens, there is still more for me to say. In fact, I have a confession to make: whatever my reasons were for becoming a Catholic, those are not the reasons why I stuck around and persisted in my faith even in moments when I didn’t feel like it.

Yes, it’s true: there are days when I wake up and feel disappointment with the faith that can sometimes seem a burden. After all, it will change every aspect of your life, if you let it. Your relationships will change, your obligations will change, and your priorities will change. Assent to faith does not mean that you will always like what is asked of you or the ways in which you are called to live your life. And even in the moments you fall short, you will see your shortcomings in the context of that faith. But of course, this sounds like an awful burden, so why is it that I stick around? Simply put, I stick around because of a promise that was made:

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Matthew 11:28

The bottom line is that intellectual conviction is not enough. Smokers know that smoking is bad for them, yet they continue to smoke. Knowledge is not an antidote to human frailty: hence, God expects something of us that is more than knowing something. In a way, this is a good thing: not everyone is born a philosopher or a theologian, so to expect those without the capacity to think in such a manner would be unfair. Thus, for me to have formed the conviction on whatever basis that Catholicism is true is not only a very small part of what God must have in mind for my life, but is also is not something that would bring me to persist in my life.

I persist not because I know what is true: the truth is that even the history and notions that led me here are far more complicated than I could ever have anticipated when I first learned them. You don’t know what you don’t know, after all, so how am I to know the intricacies of any particular field before I have even begun to wander into it? My understanding is partly what keeps me going, it’s true. There’d be no point in doing so if I did not believe it still made sense and that these ideas were not true enough, even if they’re only a low-resolution picture of the whole truth. But no; rather, I mostly persist because of what I’ve experienced through the Catholic Church—in adoration, through the sacraments and the liturgy, etc. I persist because my faith is no longer based on the reasons of the intellect, but a cultivated understanding of my relationship to God, whatever that entails. This is a relationship in which one grows in ways they cannot expect, but that are entirely for the better.

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.

Romans 8:18