Before I became a Christian and decided to become Catholic, my faith was simple.
In the morning, I meditated, studied, and prayed. Throughout the day, I followed the example of Thích Nhất Hạnh by turning ordinary chores into opportunities for meditation. At the end of the day, like many people, I reflected on how I’d spent my time. Sometimes, I ended the day in meditation, too. It was simple, almost childlike, but it worked for me.
I’ve always been interested in Christianity, so I decided to explore it. Judging by the bookshelves in my living room, I really went for it. I study voraciously sometimes. That’s just my nature.
One of the books I studied was Acts, the story of the early Christian community and the beginnings of the Church. As I read, I came to the conclusion that the early Christians were a bunch of hippies.
They gathered in homes and public places. They brought their faith, their love, and, apparently, plenty of food. They broke bread, prayed, worshipped, shared what they had, and cared for one another. I imagine there were stories exchanged around those tables, along with laughter and the occasional disagreement. They came together to worship, eat, and help one another. They were building a community around a shared faith, and it sounds to me like they understood something about fellowship that we sometimes lose sight of.
Of course, they didn’t have the Roman Catholic Church, Protestantism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Pentecostalism, Baptist churches, Methodist churches, Lutheran churches, Anglican churches, or the many other traditions we recognize today. Those distinctions came later. The early Christian communities were still finding their way, developing their practices, and working out how to live together in this new faith.
Then the Church grew, leadership developed, and things became more organized.
Well.
One of the things that drew me toward Catholicism was something I recognized in my own spiritual life. Before I knew much about Christian monasticism, I had already developed rituals of prayer, meditation, reflection, and attention to the ordinary things of life. When I began reading about the Desert Fathers and Mothers, I found familiar ground. My practices weren’t identical to theirs, of course, but there were enough similarities to make me stop and pay attention.
The Desert Mothers, known as Ammas, were women who sought God through prayer, solitude, discipline, and the daily work of learning to live faithfully. One of the best-known was Amma Syncletica, whose teachings survive in collections of early monastic sayings. Her wisdom, like that of the other Desert Mothers, wasn’t about acquiring status or appearing holy. It was about the difficult, ordinary work of becoming a person whose life reflected her faith.
They understood that religious practices could become empty if they weren’t accompanied by a change of heart. Fasting could feed pride instead of humility. Solitude could make a person self-absorbed rather than compassionate. Prayer meant little if it didn’t influence how you treated other people. Hospitality, forgiveness, patience, and the refusal to judge another person were part of the spiritual life, too.
What struck me was that worship wasn’t confined to a particular place or a prescribed moment. It involved the whole of one’s life. The way you treated a stranger mattered. The way you responded to someone who hurt you mattered. What happened in the quiet hours, when nobody was watching, mattered.
I don’t think the Desert Mothers were unconcerned with experiencing God’s presence. Rather, their teachings remind me that faith can’t depend entirely on what we feel. There will be days when prayer comes easily and days when it feels like we’re talking into an empty room. The practice is to keep returning, to keep showing up, and to keep an honest heart before God.
And somewhere in all that reading, I began to recognize something I’d been searching for without quite knowing how to name it. The spiritual life I’d once practiced so simply wasn’t something I needed to discard. I was discovering another way to understand it, one rooted in the Christian tradition.
Perhaps that was part of what drew me toward the Church in the first place. I was looking for a way to live my faith, not simply a place to belong.
I’m still figuring out what that looks like.
Acts 2:42-47
Romans 12:1-2
Micah 6:8
