Contact Us Free Sample

Search

New user tutorial

Log In

New subscriber?

Create your password

Not a subscriber?

Subscribe

OR

Log In

Email

Password

I forgot my password

Sorry... user email or password wrong, please try again!

We’re sorry, but that email address is not in our system. If you are certain that you have entered the address you used to register for your PTW account, please contact us to confirm that we have entered it correctly in our system.

User Account Expired

Uh-oh. According to our records your subscription to Prepare the Word is no longer active. Did you forget to renew? If so, please click the RENEW button below. If not and you believe there is an error with your account, please contact us here.

My Account

Renew My Susbcription

| Sign Up

Home
About
HOMILY PREP
LIBRARY
Take Five for Faith
How to
My Account

Home
About
HOMILY PREP
LIBRARY
Take Five for Faith
How to
My Account

Search

Search word or phrase

Search word or phrase

Any word Exact phrase

Limit results to the following...

Sundays

Exploring The Word

Homilies

Homily Stories

Take Five Daily and Weekly

Preaching the News

Pastoral trends

Quotes

Tags

Question Catholics Ask

Results

Practice, practice, practice

Short essays about observed trends in Roman Catholic life - Pastoral trends

Why do we “need” to go to church? Putting theological questions aside for a moment, it is reasonable in our time to look at regular religious practice with new eyes. In a time of concern for efficiency, we know why we go to work or why we go to the grocery store. But why do we need to go to church when we effectively find ourselves doing the same thing, week after week? Why all that repetition? Doesn’t repetition just make it boring and irrelevant? Maybe repetition is precisely why we need to do it. We need the practice, the repeating. When it comes to going to church, it seems, we sometimes fail to appreciate what we have learned about human physiology and how the human brain works. Nerve endings need to “fire to wire.” If we don’t fire those God-connecting, religious-experiencing senses, they will not come together nearly as richly and powerfully as they could. Neural pathways are not guaranteed: We “use them or lose them.” It is similar to the ability to speak a difficult language: much easier if we have learned it and consistently used it from a very young age. If we do not develop those nerve endings, those religious instincts for connecting with God and neighbor and all creation, our capacity to do so will become a shadow of what it otherwise could be. Of course God’s grace is always there, and miracles of transformation do happen. But it is in the little steps of regular practice of the presence of God, each week, each day, that we truly enter into new possibilities as human beings. It’s simply how we are made. People would not scoff at violinists, ballplayers, lawyers, or doctors who practice their discipline, carefully, regularly, over years, repeated. They need to practice. Just as we need to go to church. © 2010, Bryan Froehle.

Authors Bryan Froehle

repetition church attendance practice

Restricted
Exploring the word

16 Jul 2023 - Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

Good parents are, by nature or necessity, persistent people. They call and call us to the dinner table until we straggle in. They nag us about our homework until the last worksheet is covered with the appropriate words and numbers. They ask the same question until they get the desired response: Did you clean your room? Will you change that shirt and comb your hair before we go to Grandma’s? Successful parents get the job done by staying on message for about 20 years per child. It’s an incredibly repetitious position that requires a high tolerance for boring yourself and your kids silly. Does God get bored, we might wonder? God’s been on message now for as long as there have been human beings to receive it. Love, justice, peace, mercy, hope, salvation: Does God get tired of having to repeat the same themes over and over in every new generation? Maybe not. Maybe a low threshold for sameness is a condition that only affects mortals. Recently I heard Dakota and Cloister Walk author Kathleen Norris give a talk on “Life as Liturgy (Laundry Included).” She suggested that God must have a relentless zeal for repetition. Every day the sun comes up and goes down, and every day God says: Do it again! Every daisy is the same as if God has never tired of making daisies and actually delights in each one. Perhaps this celestial joy in repetition prompts religious folks to liturgy. We do the same things over and over and call it worship, because God does the same things over and over and calls it “good.” That careless sower The parable of the sower and the seed begs the question: Why does this fellow waste so much seed? Anyone who’s ever tried to plant a garden knows that some parts of the yard are just no good for growing things. Too much clay there, too many rocks here. Not enough sun or enough to fry an egg—along with your petunias. And don’t put your prize blossoms where the bunnies will munch each bloom away before you get to enjoy them. When it comes planting time, a prudent gardener knows the soil and judiciously uses the seed. But not this guy in the parable! No, he throws seed by handfuls on the path, among rocks and thorns, as well as on decent, viable dirt. If you saw this guy at work you’d think he must own a seed company, the way he wastes the stuff. And in fact, he does. He’s obviously not judging the quality of the soil the way you or I would before he goes to work. He’s got boundless hope and optimism despite all evidence to the contrary. And sooner or later, he will get his harvest of thirty- or sixty- or a hundredfold. Lately I’ve thought of this uneven planting field as the life of the average believer. We’ve all got hearts that are not uniformly receptive to the great work of the Kingdom being sown in us. God, who never tires of the task at hand, keeps on cheerfully offering us opportunities for love, justice, peace, mercy, salvation. This joyous seed is scattered liberally through our days as we duck, shirk, refuse, and deny. Right now we may be too depressed for the good news of the Kingdom—or too busy, too scared, too needy, too tired, too sick, too outraged, too old, or too young. We may have as many excuses as there are seeds. Meanwhile the seeds rain down on all sides of us, right across our path as we try to make our way, a sleet of seeds behind us, and crunching under our feet with every step we take. And still we refuse this joyous new life, saying: “Not now. Conditions are simply not favorable.” This word is never void Through Isaiah we learn that God does not take no for an answer when it comes to the everlasting Yes of the divine will. God’s word becomes world, becomes saving story, and becomes Christ incarnate with perfect and persistent utterance. God’s eternal Yes continues to be spoken into human history until we return the favor—with a bit more exasperation than Mary did, often enough—and say: Alright already! Let it be done to me. God’s Yes seeks a portal, a vessel, a bit of dirt in which to take root and be manifested. This word is so vital, is vitality itself, that it cannot be discouraged, suppressed, or even slowed. Its delivery is constant, universal, and wasteful—if that’s what you want to call unending love. And even while we’re talking about it, another handful of this seed is scattered over our assembly and upon our own heads. How long will we persist in holding out against its life-giving possibilities? The psalmist is happy to concur with the prophet. Words of abundance are used to describe God’s harvest: filling, drenching, blessing, overflowing, clothing, garmenting, blanketing. When God does a thing, it’s pretty good and done! So it’s no wonder that the parable of the sower shows us a fellow who’s awfully generous with the seed. Stingy is not a word in God’s vocabulary. Nor is cautious, sensible, or enough. Applying the word Glorious freedom We can all come up with a bunch of reasons why we resist the generous seed being sown in our lives—most of them pretty pitiful, when you take them out and examine them. But imagine what happens when we stop resisting and allow the seed to produce its fruit. All of creation rejoices because the labor pains have stopped and another free child of God is born! Our slavery to corruption is the product of a choice. A share in the first fruits of the Spirit is the product of a different choice. Every moment contains another smattering of seed from a lavish, trusting, optimistic sower. What will you do with it? What will you allow it to do with you? Related scripture links Divine repetition: Psalm 19:3 Mary’s answer: Luke 1:38 Catechism links The sower and the seed: CCC 29; 546; 1724 Creation and its problem: CCC 280; 400; 1739-1742; 2630 Yet God remains on message: CCC 1720-1724; 1042-1050

Authors Alice Camille

parable of the sower repetition persistence

Restricted

Take Five for Faith Daily

Wednesday
January 29

Provide a strong foundation

During Catholic Schools Week we remember and are thankful for the fact that the tradition of Catholic schools remains the same: “A Catholic education is an education for life.” A Catholic education, whether on Sundays or five days a week, provides the foundation and the tools young people need to grow into faithful followers of Christ. The patron saint of teachers, John Baptist de la Salle, put it best: “Enter to learn, leave to serve.” Support your local Catholic schools!

© 2025 - TrueQuest Communications, LLC. All rights reserved.

Website by ideaPort, LLC

Wait

Success

Error

We have detected that cookies are turned off in your browser settings. To ensure you have the best experience, we recommend that you change your settings to permit cookies for this website.

Get Help