Abbot Philip Anderson reminds us that to truly live our faith, we must embrace our humanity rather than trying to escape it. “If you want to be an angel,” he says, “you wind up being a devil.” The Christian life is not about pretending to be something we are not, but about becoming fully human — creatures who aspire to heaven while remaining grounded in the realities of life.
This balance is reflected in the simple gestures of worship: kneeling, praying, and persevering amid distractions. Anderson notes that in public prayer, we encounter crying babies and restless movements, yet these too are signs of life. He recalls smilingly that when he hears a baby cry during Mass, he thinks, “I feel just like you, but I can’t cry — I have to be a man.”
Such moments remind us that holiness does not demand an escape from imperfection but rather an embrace of it with patience and love. Even non-Catholics, he observes, can be touched by the Church’s welcome of all — including the smallest and noisiest members — into the sacred celebration. Worship, then, is an act of real, incarnate humanity reaching toward God.
(From the Online Course The Catholic Mass)
