Finding the right church

[Asella]

I have been looking for the right Catholic church for a few months now. My husband and I are moving to a new house, and I needed to find a parish closer to our new house. I will miss my old parish. It was a good church with a wonderful priest. Finding a new church to attend was more difficult than I had imagined. The city I am moving to has many Catholic churches to choose from, most of which are not far from my new house. I’ve been attending different ones in the area, trying to decide which one to go to once I move. The experience has been exciting, but not easy. I am more of a traditional person, so I look for more traditional things. The biggest thing I looked for was the priest’s homily in each church. Now I don’t mind listening to a priest who is boring, but I do have problems with priests who preach things in their homilies that are not in line with Catholic teaching. Fortunately, I did not run into any of that. I didn’t feel comfortable in all of the churches–for example, there was one church that had such a horrible interior design, that it hardly resembled a place of worship. There was no rhyme or reason to it–you could tell whoever designed it was trying to make it more modern, but I thought it was terribly ugly. But after going to a few churches, I finally made my decision, and I am absolutely thrilled with the new parish I will be attending. The priest is very orthodox, the church has Eucharistic adoration every week, the architecture is beautiful, and it is close to my new home. I’ve gone to church there for the past few weeks, and every time I leave Mass, I can’t wait to go back there once again. It’s absolutely wonderful!! For those of you who have had to go in search of a new parish at some point, please share your story and tell how you came to the parish you are attending.

 

[awalt]

On a somewhat related topic, I enjoy the times I travel and get to visit other churches. I mention this in this thread because I think many of us, especially devout Catholics, can get really caught up in the physical presence of the Church. We forget sometimes that our true faith is in God and Jesus Christ, and if we are in a Church that we don’t like our seat, or it’s noisy, or the priest is boring, or we don’t like the Homily, or the Church doesn’t look Holy enough, or there are too many screaming kids, it is still God’s House.

Going to different Churches on trips keeps me grounded in the right things. I read a book once where it said even if the i a screaming baby next to you, that baby is there for a reason - maybe you haven’t been concentrating on the message of God strongly enough?

For me, it’s hard not to become comfortable in my ways, in my routine, so I try very hard to appreciate every situation in Church as a unique, wonderful, miracle to be with God.