Church Attendance is Only the Beginning

Going to church can be a good thing and still be misunderstood.

It’s easy to assume that regular church attendance places us on higher moral ground than those who don’t show up. We may never articulate it, but it lingers in our unconscious, reinforced by habit and familiarity. Jesuit spirituality has always pushed back against this instinct, not by dismissing religious practice, but by asking what it actually does to us. In essence: if churchgoing doesn’t make us more honest, more tolerant, and more aware of our own limits, then it hasn’t done its work.

Ignatius Cared About Movement, Not Marks

Ignatius of Loyola was far less concerned with outward conformity than with interior movement. The point was never to perform faith correctly, but to be changed by it. The Spiritual Exercises don’t reward us with certainty; they leave us aware of how often we mistake comfort for grace and routine for conversion. That awareness makes it difficult to look down on anyone else without first confronting our own unfinished business.

Jesuit formation insists on reflection, especially the kind that refuses to sort people into spiritual categories. The daily Examen doesn’t ask who is doing faith better. It asks where love broke down, where ego took over, and where God was present despite our efforts to manage the story. Practiced honestly, it dismantles the illusion that proximity to religious structures equals holiness.

God Isn’t Confined to Our Spaces

Finding God in all things means accepting that God is already active beyond our chosen environments. People who never enter a church can still live lives marked by generosity, courage, fidelity, and self-giving love. If we believe God is truly at work there too, then church cannot function as a measure of superiority. At best, it is a place where we learn how to notice grace more clearly—including grace that unsettles us, challenges us, and stretches us beyond our comfort zones.

The Magis Isn’t a Competition

Jesuits have long warned that religion can either widen our capacity for love or shrink it into self-justification. The magis was never about doing more than others or proving something through visible effort. It was about loving more deeply and freely. If church attendance leads to judgment rather than humility, then it hasn’t formed us—it has insulated us.

Church Should Lower Us, Not Elevate Us

According to Jesuit tradition, church should leave us less certain of our own righteousness and more committed to the difficult work of mercy. If attending church doesn’t make us slower to judge and quicker to listen, something has gone wrong. Faith that inflates the ego isn’t faith formed by reflection. Jesuits have been pointing this out for centuries: religion can either open us to grace or protect us from it. 

Showing up matters. But what matters more is whether it changes how we see ourselves, and how we treat everyone else outside the building.

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