3rd Sunday of Advent, A December 14, 2025
Fr. Alexander Albert St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville
N.B. Technical Difficulties meant the recording failed this week.
You don’t have to feel Catholic in order to be Catholic. You don’t have to feel Catholic in order to be Catholic. Somehow, American Catholics bought into the lie that practicing a faith you don’t feel deep down makes you a hypocrite, that acting Catholic while you have doubts makes you a hypocrite. It doesn’t. How do I know? Because we have an example no less illustrious than John the Baptist himself.
Look again at what happens in the Gospel. John has spent his life in the desert praying and fasting. Jesus says that “among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist.” And what does this amazing example of faith and holiness do? He wonders… he asks questions. Just a few chapters earlier in the gospel, this same man is preaching repentance, baptizing converts, and boldly proclaiming that Jesus will baptize with fire. He is a first-hand witness, he is the first hand witness of the Holy Spirit and the Father acknowledging Jesus as the “Beloved Son” with whom the Father is well pleased. No one in the world has more reason to believe Jesus is the messiah. But fast forward a little bit and we find this same great man, this same radical prophet sitting in jail and wondering… questioning even. “Are you really the one we’ve been waiting for or did I get ahead of myself?”
Does that make John the Baptist a hypocrite? Does it mean all his preaching and good works were putting up a false image of himself and what he really believes? No. Because you don’t have to feel Catholic in order to be Catholic.
People assume that religious faith is supposed to start with a powerful experience of God that leads you to a set of beliefs that then leads you start living a certain kind of moral life. So, when someone believes something but hasn’t had the big experience or when a person practices a moral life but has questions about what they believe, there’s this idea that they aren’t being genuine. That’s just not true.
Every year, there are many people who enter the Catholic Church because they read their way into it. They learned and studied and said “yeah, that seems true, I’ll join.” Along the way they started practicing Catholic morality. Some of these people have not yet had a powerful experience of God. That’s not hypocrisy, it is faith.
Others come to the Church because they see that living a moral life makes people better and happier. So, they start doing what we do and avoiding what we don’t do. This makes their life better, so they decide “why not be a Catholic since I’m acting like one anyway?” Again, they might not have some overwhelming emotional experience of God and they might not be able to explain all our doctrines and teachings, but they practice the faith anyway. Does that make them a hypocrite? Nope.
Some have a powerful experience of God’s divine presence first that makes them sure God is real. For one reason or another, they connect that experience to the Catholic Church and then sign up. Maybe they continue to stumble morally and can’t quite make sense of our teachings, but they show up and try anyway. Hypocrisy? Nope.
For all those examples, there are plenty of people who don’t try. They don’t become Catholic or they don’t stay Catholic. They continue to rely on their own judgment or their own feelings or their own behavior. They allow doubts or difficult feelings or weaknesses to justify giving up. “I’m not sure… I don’t feel like… I’m not strong enough so I won’t even bother to try.” That is real failure. And hypocrisy is something else entirely. It’s not weakness or uncertainty. Hypocrisy is saying “you should be sincere, but I don’t have to.”
So, John the Baptist is not a hypocrite. He is not a failure. He is not a bad Catholic. He is the greatest born of woman, the forerunner of the messiah, and a true saint. He also had questions and uncertainties. And when he in all humility and sincerity brings those questions to Jesus, Jesus doesn’t berate him. Jesus also doesn’t give him a simple answer. Instead, he invites John to reconnect to the act of faith he had already made. He pulls on the strings of prophecy John already knows and the things John has already witnessed: miracles and the proclamation of the good news. It’s not as if Jesus is giving John new faith, he’s renewing the faith John has… the faith that John has been living all along, questions and struggles included.
Being Catholic is not about arriving at certainty, perfect emotional peace, and unfailing moral living. It is about practicing what is true, practicing what is good, and practicing a relationship with God. This is why St. James tells us in his letter to be patient and to endure. Sometimes we caught so caught up in measuring ourselves – or worse, measuring others – that we lose sight of the real mark of faithfulness: that we keep trying. The command to quit complaining about each other is both because it’s a sin and because complaining blinds us to hope.
There are two kinds of people that worry me as a pastor: the person who knows they’re doing wrong but doesn’t even try to do better and the person who thinks they’ve got it all figured out. Sometimes, that second type of person really looks like they do with their understanding of the faith and their emotional prayer life and their very moral lifestyle. But if they’ve lost sight of the patience, the endurance, the striving and looking forward to something that isn’t here yet… it’s only a matter of time till they fall in a big way.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor.” So our Gospel acclamation says. What are these glad tidings? That it’s okay to be poor! I don’t mean material poverty – though that is good too – I mean the poverty of our weakness, questioning, and suffering. This is the good news: your salvation doesn’t require your perfection! Your ongoing experience of inner poverty doesn’t mean you’ve failed; it just means you are a broken human being in a fallen world still waiting for the Lord to come and save us. He has already begun to save us, but the salvation he promises is not yet finished. We should not be surprised when it feels unfinished!
Ask your questions, but pray and go to Mass and do good anyway. Admit your dryness and depression, but be Catholic anyway. Acknowledge your sins for the 10,000th time, but ask for forgiveness and resolve to stop them again anyway. The “sin of doubt” is not the question or the uncertainty. The “sin of doubt” is allowing that uncertainty to justify no longer trying. “I don’t know if it’s true, so why bother doing the Catholic thing?” What, like you’ve got a better answer? Go to Mass anyway, pray anyway, serve anyway because there are no better answers. So, you might as well keep doing the thing that seemed true and good and effective before. Like John the Baptist, let Jesus remind you of what he’s being doing all along. Recall your conversions, your answered prayers, your moments of joy, your insights into the truth. John asked if there was another person to look for and Jesus’ basically said, “you see anyone else out here doing all the stuff I’m doing?” Renew the act of faith. It may not always feel like a renewal, but make the choice to trust again what you trusted before.
And when you do that… when you persevere in the truth, in moral living, in practicing a spiritual life… you will find yourself surprised by joy. Joy that he’s good when we’re not. Joy that he doesn’t expect perfection, only perseverance. Joy that you’re the poor one after all and the glad tidings of Jesus? They are for you.
The message was just what I needed to hear today. I’m going through a process at this time which requires patience and perseverance. Just have to keep the faith!