Becoming Forty!

Sheena Sheppard

Growing up Catholic means you’ve all heard about ‘convenient Catholics’. The children are baptised, and then we don’t see anyone again until it’s time for their First Communion, Confirmation, marriage or maybe when it’s time to baptise their own children. And if we’re really unfortunate, sometimes we don’t see them until their funeral.

In fact, when I made my own Confirmation, I noted that most people didn’t come back to church until they were about 40. Now that I’ve finally become  40 myself and having been a fairly okay Catholic during these years (I believe there was one year I only went to Mass twice! The emptiness was felt, so I’m sure that won’t happen again!), I think I’ve figured it out.

Anyway, the reasons I’ve concluded that we tend to return to church around  40 is twofold.

First, we are guilted by parenthood to be good examples for our children. And this generation does not accept the ‘do as I say, not as I do’ mentality. We realise we have to practise what we preach. We bring them to Mass so they can make their First Communion and Confirmation and so the cycle continues.

But on a much more serious note, by 40 we would have experienced the world and found it lacking. Friendships, relationships, children, birth and death, financial issues, career and educational successes and failures; we’ve lived through it, and we have learnt the hard way that the only constant is God.

He is there beside us in trials and tribulations, in love and joy, when our faith is vibrant and when we question it.

By  40, we understand that praying in community is a weekly renewal, that Mass revitalises our sails and blesses the week in a way nothing else can. By  40, we know that just praying isn’t enough. We seek to be of service to God. Our ‘Amens’ and our ‘Alleluias’ carry a conviction borne of the experience of God’s love, His grace, and His mercy.

Turning  40 doesn’t just make us old…it seems that it also make us wiser….

*We do not discriminate against the Catholics who have never wavered in their Mass attendance.