On Not Losing Heart

The editor of a Catholic publication anno Domini 2022 often receives insightful messages from readers, friends, even enemies – some inspiriting, some quite dispiriting. There’s much more good going on in the Church and the world than any one person knows. And there’s also much – we tend to hear a lot more about it – so appalling that it leaves you all but speechless.

Lately, there’s been (for this writer) a noticeable and growing trend: generalized fatigue. More and more people write that they simply “have had enough.” Typically, something like, “I can’t take the controversies (in the Vatican, the American Church, American politics, American society) anymore. I just want to live a peaceful life, practicing the faith and caring for the family, free from all that.”

If you don’t recognize this tendency – sometimes a temptation – in yourself, blessèd are you.

St. Paul countered Christian fatigue with appropriate wisdom: “let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we do not lose heart.” (Gal. 6:9) That sounds great, big harvests and all that. Someday. Maybe not too far off.

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