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On Monday, I would go to Notre Dame, Tuesday, Saint-Sulpice, Wednesday, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Thursday, Sacré-Cœur, and Friday, la Madeleine... I had googled the most beautiful churches in Paris and planned on attending mass at each one during my first week studying abroad. And so every evening, I ventured out into the still unfamiliar city and hid myself behind the massive cathedral columns, peering around at the stunning architecture and struggling diligently to identify familiar French words. And each evening, I would stumble back into the apartment, exhausted but beaming with excitement and a sense of accomplishment.
My new roommate Ali was shocked by my enthusiasm and as we crawled into bed at the end of the week, she asked what I got out of attending church. Taken off guard, I paused. Honestly, not to consider the truth of why I went to church, but instead weeding through various aspects of church that could appeal to a passionate atheist. I carefully constructed an elaborate list of benefits to attending Mass, from the practical exposure to the French language, to the break from the stress of school, to the way it provided a larger lens through which to view life and give it meaning. My list, in fact, was so successful in catering to my roommate, that not only did she appreciate my motivation for attending church, but found it relatable. “You know,” she responded with a smile, “that is just the reason I take LSD. It allows me to relax from work and really attain an outside perspective on life.”
She continued on to describe how drugs remove the brokenness of language, frustration with people’s faults, and anxiety to gain approval, instead providing an individual experience beyond the everyday. I smiled and nodded, but with a growing, sickening feeling of regret as I watched the image of church I had created grow in her imagination. There was something missing. I knew the church was the body of Christ, and so did not simply provide an individual experience. I knew it was founded in reality, restoring rather than forgetting the brokenness of life. And yet, looking back on my week of Mass, I had avoided any interaction. I had deciphered the liturgy without reflection or worship, and had left, yes, with joy, but with a joy at experiencing Parisian culture rather than at experiencing God’s presence.
I had been confident in the virtue of attending church, knowing that the church community springs from the strong foundation of Christ. But was that really the same foundation motivating me to the pews every day? Perhaps with the same ease in which I had modeled an image of the Church to please Ali, I had also modeled my church experience to please myself, to keep my faith aligned with my happy cultural experience abroad and to avoid the inconvenience of being shaped as a part of the community of Christ’s body.
I seemed merely to pay tribute in thought to my belief in the Church as a community and the image of myself as a member of that community, loosely connecting them with the practice of attending church. Confronted with the gap between those views and my motivation, words and habits in reality, I was struck that evening with a new desire, a desire for something to change. But what and how? Church community had always revolved around my family and longstanding friends, in rich, familiar relationships. Now, I found myself abroad in a large city. That following week, to begin my search to establish relationships, I stayed for coffee and snacks after each service, I began attending a young adult Bible study at a nearby church, and I even agreed when asked to read Scripture at a tiny evening service.
As I fought to distinguish my faith from Ali's surreal experience on LSD, I searched for the reality of everyday relationships. I was overwhelmed by the discomfort and messiness of that reality. After reading during service, I overheard someone complain about my American accent. At the Bible study, I learned the leader had just been fired for misconduct. As I continued to attend, each following meeting exposed new feelings of broken trust and disheartenment amongst the group. In the fellowship room after church, I welcomed the friendly conversation of a church usher, a man in his fifties, delighted with this way to connect with the church body, delighted to no longer stand alone in the room, delighted to meet someone on the church staff. But my enthusiasm waned as his questions became more intimate, he followed me to the metro, and he asked to take me to the movies. I cried that night—cried over the dashed hopes, selfish interests and sinful desires lay bare within the Church.
My experience at Mass that very first week abroad had been so much easier. And yet now, I could no longer slip into an empty row in church, away from thoughts of and interaction with the other congregants, without the nagging feeling that the happy bubble I formed around myself was merely a fragile illusion. While I struggled to recognize any benefit to exposing the pain of relationships, I nonetheless persisted in attending a variety of church events, recognizing now more than ever my need for the redemptive work of Christ.
At a lecture one evening, hearing an American politician in Paris recount the significance of church community in her life, I was able to grasp in a new way the heart of church relationships. She described how, traveling alone and living for months at a time in countries all around the world, she avoided loneliness through regularly attending church. Though surrounded by strangers speaking a language she didn’t understand, the unified purpose in worshiping God granted her a love for and sense of connection to those around her. Communion within the body of Christ overflowed from communion with Christ himself. This connection could be found in even the most unfamiliar and messy places when focus was placed instead on Jesus as the mediator. “Christ, grant me union with you,” I cried out in prayer again and again that night.
Practicing attentiveness to Christ and his worship that week, though beset by moments of distraction, allowed me meager glimpses of the love of Christ for his Church. As I devoted myself to considering Christ on the cross, I thought of the beggar who sat outside the church door every week. As we lifted up prayers for the sick, I prayed for the old man coughing behind me. And leaving service, I looked around at these individuals with special interest and love, for their cares, known and unknown, had now become my cares. Attending the Bible study, instead of recoiling from the brokenness, I was now eager to hear people’s doubts, even to share my own, as I passionately hoped for redemption.
Henri Nouwen, in Making All Things New, describes how solitude and community are practiced together because the “space within us and the space among us are the same space,” filled with the loving prayer of God’s Spirit within and among us. The practice of attending church, of interacting with Christ’s body, was now intertwined with my relationship with Christ himself, both centered on an awareness of that space—the space to experience Christ’s love. In a way, church did offer an individual experience distinct from earthly, broken relationships, through restored union with God. But that was only part of the picture. Being restored to Christ meant imitating his example, imitating his path of Incarnation into broken earthly relationships. My thoughts and actions did not, and do not, mimic Christ’s life perfectly, and neither do the struggles of the individuals sitting beside me in church. But in entering into broken communion with each other, as we join in common love for Christ, each of our lives, as expressed by James Alison, “comes, over time, to bear a remarkable resemblance to the story of [Christ].” Unlike the image of church I had provided Ali, modeled after earthly priorities, shaped to satisfy both her and my everyday concerns, the true image of the Church is found only through loving, imitating and being joined to the image of Christ.
