Things You Should Know Before You Return to the Catholic Church

Brief Overview

• Returning to the Catholic Church after time away is genuinely possible for anyone, regardless of how long you have been gone or what you did during your absence, because the Church’s teaching on mercy is not a slogan but a theological reality.
• Confession is almost always your first practical step back, and you need to know that a good confession covers everything honestly brought before the priest, no matter how many years of sin it involves.
• If you married civilly after a Catholic marriage, or married without the Church’s blessing, your marital situation will need to be examined and likely regularized before you can receive the Eucharist again, and that process takes time and honesty.
• The Church you return to may feel different from the one you left, and the parish culture, the liturgy, and even some pastoral approaches may have shifted in ways that require patience and adjustment.
• Your reasons for leaving still matter, because unresolved wounds, unanswered questions, and genuine anger at the Church or its members will resurface if you do not address them honestly as part of your return.
• Coming back is not simply reclaiming a cultural identity; it means recommitting to the full practice of the Catholic faith, including regular Mass attendance, the sacraments, and genuine engagement with the Church’s moral teaching.

Coming Back Is Possible, But It Is Not Just Showing Up Again

One of the most important things to settle in your mind before you walk back through a church door is that returning to the Catholic Church is not merely a social or cultural act. You are not rejoining a club, re-subscribing to a tradition, or picking up a cultural identity you set aside for a while. The Church teaches that the call to conversion is addressed first to those who do not yet know Christ, but it continues to resound in the lives of Christians throughout their entire lives (CCC 1427). That means coming back is, at its core, an act of renewed conversion, and conversion requires more than physical presence at Sunday Mass. It requires honesty about why you left, what you believed or stopped believing during your absence, and what you are genuinely committing to when you return. Many people who return to the Church after years away do so initially for external reasons, a family event like a baptism or funeral, the pull of cultural identity, a spouse’s faith, or a general sense of unease at living without religious practice. None of those reasons are bad starting points, but if they remain the only reasons, the return tends to be shallow and short-lived. The Church’s invitation is to something deeper than nostalgia or social belonging. What the Church offers, and what it asks for in return, is a genuine relationship with God through the sacramental life of the Church, and that relationship requires real investment, real honesty, and real willingness to address whatever separated you from it in the first place. Give yourself the respect of taking this seriously from the start rather than treating it as a casual re-enrollment.

You Are Still Catholic, But That Does Not Mean Nothing Needs to Change

There is a theological point that many returning Catholics find either deeply consoling or deeply confusing, depending on how it is explained to them. If you were baptized Catholic, the Church considers you Catholic still, regardless of how long you have been away, regardless of what you have done in the interval, and regardless of whether you formally declared yourself no longer Catholic at some point. Baptism leaves a permanent spiritual mark that cannot be undone (CCC 1272). This means the Church regards you not as a stranger seeking entry but as a member who has been away, and that distinction genuinely matters in how your return is understood. The theological term sometimes used is that you were never truly outside the Church in the deepest sacramental sense, even while you were outside its active practice. However, and this matters enormously, the fact that you remain technically Catholic does not mean everything is fine as it stands or that no action is required. If you have been away for years and have not received the sacraments in that time, you are not in a state of active sacramental communion with the Church, and the sacraments, particularly confession and the Eucharist, are the primary means through which that active communion is restored and sustained. The Church does not ask you to feel guilty about the time away or to treat your absence as a permanent mark against you. What it does ask is that you address it honestly, through confession, through renewed commitment to practice, and through whatever practical steps your specific situation requires. Being told “you are still Catholic” can sometimes function as an excuse to return without actually changing anything. That is not what the Church means when it says it.

Confession Is Where the Return Actually Begins, Not Where It Ends

Almost every returning Catholic, when they ask a priest or catechist what they need to do to come back, receives the same answer. Go to confession. This answer is correct, but it is often given without enough explanation of what that actually means after years away, and the lack of explanation leaves people unprepared for what the experience actually involves. A genuine confession after years of absence requires you to examine your conscience honestly across the entire period of your absence and bring mortal sins to the sacrament by kind and number, meaning you name what you did and roughly how many times (CCC 1456). This is not meant to be humiliating. It is meant to be honest, because honesty is what allows absolution to be real rather than generic. For someone who has been away for ten, twenty, or thirty years, this examination can involve serious matters, including sexual conduct outside of marriage, contraception, abortion, significant failures of justice, serious dishonesty, or sustained disregard for God and the obligations of the faith. You do not need to remember every sin in perfect detail, and honest forgetting is not the same as deliberate concealment. But you do need to make a genuine effort to examine your conscience and confess what you are aware of. Many priests who work with returning Catholics are experienced at helping people through exactly this kind of confession, and they are not there to judge you. The sacrament of penance and reconciliation is one of the most direct expressions of God’s mercy in Catholic life, and the Church’s theology of it is clear that no sin is too great or too old to be forgiven through a genuine confession (CCC 1446). Go to a priest, tell him you have been away for some time and want to make a full confession, and let the process work as it is designed to.

Years of Unconfessed Sin Will Need to Be Addressed Honestly and Completely

This section needs to be direct, because many returning Catholics are not told clearly enough what a general confession after years away actually requires of them. The obligation to confess mortal sins is serious, and the Church teaches that anyone who receives communion while aware of unconfessed mortal sin commits a further grave offense (CCC 1457). If you have been away from confession for years and have continued to receive communion during that time, without first making a proper confession after your most recent mortal sin, you will need to address that honestly in your return confession as well. This is not a reason to stay away longer out of fear. It is a reason to go to confession promptly and thoroughly. The categories of mortal sin that are most common among returning Catholics include deliberately missing Sunday Mass without a serious reason, which the Church considers a grave matter (CCC 2181), sexual activity outside of marriage, use of artificial contraception, significant failures in justice such as theft or serious dishonesty in business dealings, and in some cases involvement in practices the Church considers incompatible with the faith, such as formal participation in non-Christian religious practices with a sincere intent to worship outside of Christ. You do not need to prepare a perfect and exhaustive list. What you need is genuine contrition, honest effort to remember and name serious sins, and the firm purpose of amendment, meaning a sincere intention to change your behavior going forward (CCC 1451). A good confessor will guide you through the process if you are uncertain how to structure it. The point is not to make the experience as uncomfortable as possible but to ensure that what you bring to the sacrament is real, because the absolution you receive will be correspondingly real.

Your Marital Situation May Be the Most Complicated Part of Your Return

For a significant number of returning Catholics, the single greatest practical obstacle to full return is the situation of their marriage. Catholic marriage law is specific, and the Church takes it seriously. If you were married in the Catholic Church and then divorced, and you have since entered a civil marriage or a long-term relationship without addressing the first marriage through the Church’s annulment process, the Church currently regards you as living in an irregular situation (CCC 1650). In this situation, you may not receive the Eucharist unless certain very specific conditions are met, including the condition described in the Church’s pastoral tradition as living as brother and sister, meaning abstaining from sexual relations while continuing to live together for serious reasons such as the welfare of children. This is a teaching that many returning Catholics find shocking or deeply unfair when they encounter it, particularly after years of civil marriage that they regard as genuine and good. The Church does not ask you to regard your civil partner as a bad person or your relationship as worthless. What the Church does insist on is that the sacramental reality of the first marriage requires formal examination before a new sacramental union can be recognized. The annulment process, properly called a declaration of nullity, investigates whether the conditions for a valid sacramental marriage were actually present at the time of the first ceremony. Many people who go through the process are surprised to find that a declaration of nullity is granted in a majority of cases examined by Church tribunals, particularly when marriages involved defects of intention or freedom at the time of consent. The process takes time and requires documentation and personal testimony, but it is the legitimate path forward for Catholics in irregular marriages who want to return to full sacramental life.

The Reasons You Left Are Still There, and You Have to Address Them

This is the point that programs designed to welcome back returning Catholics most frequently underemphasize, and it is the point that most often explains why people return briefly and then drift away again. Whatever caused you to leave the Church in the first place, whether it was hurt by a priest or a member of the parish community, anger over the abuse crisis, intellectual disagreement with a specific teaching, a sense that the Church was hypocritical or irrelevant, a lifestyle that put you in direct conflict with Church moral teaching, or simply a gradual drift into indifference, those reasons did not disappear because you decided to come back. They are still there, and if you do not address them honestly, they will pull at you constantly and eventually erode whatever renewed commitment you brought to your return. The Church has genuine and substantive responses to most of the reasons people leave. If you left because of the abuse crisis, the Church’s institutional failures in that area are real, they are documented, and they are a legitimate reason for anger; but the Church also has a clear teaching that it is both holy in its divine foundation and wounded by the sin of its human members (CCC 827), and the sins of clergy do not undo the sacramental reality of the Church itself. If you left because of intellectual doubts about specific teachings, those doubts deserve honest engagement through reading, through conversation with a knowledgeable priest or catechist, and through genuine prayer, not avoidance. If you left because of a moral conflict, the teaching that created the conflict is still there, and returning without honestly reckoning with it places you in a position of either ongoing violation or ongoing internal tension. A spiritual director who can help you work through the specific reasons for your departure is one of the most valuable resources a returning Catholic can have, and finding one early in your return process is strongly advisable.

The Abuse Crisis Is a Real Wound and You Are Allowed to Be Honest About It

Among the reasons former Catholics cite most often for leaving the Church, the clerical sexual abuse crisis ranks consistently at or near the top of the list. Research from Pew in late 2025 found that thirty-nine percent of former Catholics cited clergy and religious leader scandals as an extremely or very important reason they left. If this is part of your story, you deserve a direct and honest response rather than a reassuring brush-off. The abuse crisis was real, it was extensive, it involved criminal behavior by priests and systematic failures by bishops who protected abusers rather than victims, and the damage it caused to real human beings, particularly to children and young people, is serious and lasting. The Church acknowledges this, has apologized for it officially at the highest levels, and has implemented structural reforms in most dioceses and religious communities, including mandatory reporting protocols and lay oversight boards. None of that undoes the harm done, and none of it should be used to pressure abuse survivors or those who left because of the crisis into returning on a timeline that does not honor the gravity of what happened. What the Church does ask, and what is consistent with honest Catholic theology, is that the sins of individuals and institutions, however serious, not be treated as evidence that the sacramental reality of the Church itself is false. Christ promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church, as recorded in Matthew 16:18, and the Church has always understood that promise to be compatible with serious and even scandalous failures by its human members. Returning despite the crisis is not a denial of what happened. It is a decision, made with full awareness, that the faith itself is worth reclaiming even while holding the institution accountable for its failures.

The Church Has Changed in Some Ways, and in Others It Has Not Changed at All

If you left the Catholic Church in the 1970s or 1980s, or even more recently, the Church you return to will feel different in some respects and exactly the same in others, and knowing which is which will save you significant confusion. The Mass itself, the basic structure of the liturgy, follows the same essential form it has followed since the early centuries, but the specific translation and certain liturgical practices have changed. The English translation of the Roman Missal was revised in 2011 to more accurately reflect the Latin original, which means some of the familiar responses from childhood, including phrases like “and also with you,” have changed to formulations like “and with your spirit.” The Order of Christian Initiation of Adults, formerly called RCIA, was updated in its official name and some procedural elements in recent years. The Church’s doctrine and moral teaching, by contrast, have not changed, and the Church teaches that they cannot change in their essential content because they are part of the deposit of faith entrusted to the Church by Christ (CCC 84). This means that the Church’s positions on the sanctity of marriage, the intrinsic wrongness of abortion, the requirements of sexual ethics, and the authority of the Magisterium are exactly what they were when you left. If you left partly because you disagreed with those teachings and are considering returning with the hope that the Church has softened or modified them, that hope will not be confirmed by the facts. What the Church’s ongoing development of doctrine means is a deeper and more nuanced understanding of truths already held, not a revision or softening of defined positions. Come back with an accurate picture of what you are returning to rather than a wished-for version of a more accommodating Church.

You Will Need to Rebuild Your Prayer Life From Scratch or Close to It

One of the practical realities of returning after years away is that the habits of prayer, the interior dispositions of attention to God, and the basic comfort with Catholic devotional practice that were formed in childhood or in an earlier period of active faith, do not simply resume where they were left off. Prayer is a habit, and habits atrophy with disuse. If you have not prayed consistently for years, sitting down to pray will feel unfamiliar and possibly awkward, and that is normal. The Church has a rich and structured tradition of prayer that provides scaffolding for people in exactly this situation. The Our Father, which Christ himself taught as the model of Christian prayer (CCC 2759), is the natural starting point for anyone rebuilding a prayer life. The daily Mass readings, available freely through the USCCB website and numerous Catholic apps, give your daily prayer a connection to the Scripture the Church is reading throughout the liturgical year. The rosary, which many returning Catholics associate with childhood and dismiss as childish, is actually one of the most substantive and Scripture-rooted forms of meditative prayer in the Catholic tradition, and many adults who return to it find it more useful and meaningful than they expected. The Liturgy of the Hours, the Church’s official daily prayer in morning, evening, and night forms, is accessible to laypeople and provides a framework that structures prayer throughout the day. Whatever form you begin with, the most important thing is consistency rather than intensity. A short prayer said every day is worth more to the rebuilding of a prayer life than an occasional extended prayer session followed by days of silence. Start small, be consistent, and let the practice grow.

Sunday Mass Is Not Optional and You Have Probably Forgotten That

This point needs to be stated plainly, because it is one of the most common misunderstandings among returning Catholics who have spent years in a culture where religious practice is entirely voluntary. The Church teaches that attending Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation is a serious moral obligation for Catholics, and that deliberately missing Mass without a serious reason constitutes a grave matter (CCC 2181). This is one of the precepts of the Church, the minimum requirements of Catholic practice, and it has not been modified or softened by any recent development in Church teaching. The reason the Church attaches such weight to Sunday Mass is not bureaucratic or punitive. It is because the Mass is the re-presentation of Christ’s sacrifice and the primary means by which Catholics participate in the sacramental life of the Church. The Catechism describes the Eucharist as the source and summit of the Christian life (CCC 1324), and Sunday Mass is the regular and central occasion on which Catholics receive the Eucharist and fulfill their obligation to worship as a community. For many returning Catholics who have lived for years treating Sunday Mass as optional or as something done only on Christmas and Easter, adjusting to the expectation of weekly attendance is a real and sometimes difficult change. The temptation to treat returning as a process of gradual re-engagement that will eventually get around to regular Mass attendance is understandable, but it misses the point. Regular Mass attendance is not the final stage of returning to Catholic practice. It is the basic minimum from which everything else grows. Settle that commitment clearly and early rather than leaving it as something to work up to gradually.

Intellectual Honesty About What the Church Teaches Is Essential Before You Return

Many people return to the Catholic Church with a mental reservation about certain teachings, quietly deciding they will be Catholic except on the specific issues where they disagree with the Church. This approach is understandable, especially in a culture that treats personal autonomy as the highest value, but it is not intellectually honest and it does not produce stable or authentic Catholic practice. The Church teaches that the faith must be received whole, that it is not a menu from which individuals select the items they find acceptable (CCC 182). This does not mean you will have no questions, no struggles, and no areas where understanding is still developing. Most Catholics, including lifelong ones, wrestle with some aspect of Church teaching at some point in their lives. What it does mean is that there is a difference between honest struggle toward understanding and settled disagreement that you have chosen not to examine further. If you disagree with the Church’s teaching on contraception, for example, the honest response is to read the Church’s arguments, engage with the theology of the body as developed by John Paul II, speak with a knowledgeable priest, and genuinely try to understand why the Church holds the position it does before concluding that it is wrong. The same applies to the Church’s teaching on homosexual acts, divorce, the all-male priesthood, and any other area where your current convictions conflict with defined Catholic doctrine. You may still have questions after that honest engagement. But the process of genuinely trying to understand is categorically different from the common approach of returning while privately deciding that certain teachings do not apply to you personally. The Church you are returning to is the same Church that will ask you, in confession, in the sacraments, and in the living of your daily life, to take every part of it seriously.

The Parish You Return to May Disappoint You, and That Is Part of the Deal

Many returning Catholics carry an idealized memory of parish life from childhood, a warm community, a parish priest who knew everyone by name, a school that formed children in the faith, a Sunday culture centered on Mass and family. The reality of most parishes today, shaped by decades of demographic change, priest shortages, and cultural shifts in Catholic identity, is considerably more varied and often less immediately welcoming than that memory. Large parishes with multiple Sunday Masses can feel anonymous. The quality of homilies varies enormously from priest to priest. Parish programs for adults may be minimal. The music may be a source of frustration rather than consolation. Fellow parishioners may seem disengaged or unfamiliar with the basics of the faith. None of this should be a reason to stay away. The Church is the Church not because of the warmth of its communities or the quality of its homilies but because of the sacramental reality of what happens at the altar during Mass and what the Church is in its deepest nature (CCC 752-757). What it does mean is that you should come back with realistic expectations and a willingness to invest in making the parish community what it ought to be rather than waiting for it to be that way automatically. Get involved in a ministry, introduce yourself to people after Mass, find a small group or Bible study within the parish, and give it time before concluding that the community is simply not there. Many returning Catholics find that the community they were looking for was already present but simply not visible to someone who only attended Mass and left quickly. Being honest about the gap between what parishes should be and what many currently are is important; so is the decision to invest in closing that gap rather than using it as a reason to disengage again.

Your Family’s Reaction to Your Return Will Vary and Some Will Be Complicated

Just as leaving the Church often produced reactions from Catholic family members, returning to it can produce reactions from family members who have since left themselves or who have built their lives on assumptions shaped by your absence from the faith. A spouse who is not Catholic and who has been comfortable in a household without active religious practice may feel threatened or confused by your decision to return. Adult children who were not raised in the faith may react with skepticism or resistance. Siblings or parents who left the Church themselves may feel judged by your return, even if you express nothing of the kind. Friends who share your secular worldview may regard your return as a step backward rather than a step forward. These reactions are real and they deserve pastoral attention rather than dismissal. The Church’s teaching on the domestic church, the family as the primary context of Christian formation, is clear (CCC 2204-2206), and the practical reality is that living out a renewed Catholic faith in a household where others do not share it requires genuine charity, patience, and consistency. You cannot force your return on other people, and attempting to do so usually produces resistance rather than interest. What you can do is live your faith authentically, practice it with conviction and without drama, make it clear that it is a serious commitment and not a phase, and trust that the example of a genuine faith lived well is more persuasive over time than any argument. If you have children who were not raised in the faith, your return also raises the serious question of their formation, and that question is worth addressing thoughtfully with a priest rather than letting it resolve itself by default.

Receiving the Eucharist Again Will Require Proper Preparation, Not Just Presence

One of the most common errors among returning Catholics is the assumption that showing up at Mass and going to communion is all that returning to the Church requires. The Church’s teaching on worthy reception of the Eucharist is specific and serious. To receive communion worthily, a Catholic must be in a state of grace, meaning free from mortal sin, must have fasted for at least one hour before reception, and must not be in a canonical situation that prohibits reception, such as the irregular marriage situation described earlier in this article (CCC 1385-1387). If you have been away for years and have not made a general confession covering the period of your absence, you are not properly prepared to receive communion, regardless of how spiritually ready you feel or how deeply you desire the Eucharist. The proper sequence is confession first, then communion. This is not a bureaucratic hurdle. It is an expression of the Church’s conviction that the Eucharist is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ (CCC 1374), and that receiving it unworthily is a serious matter (see 1 Corinthians 11:27-29, where Paul warns that receiving the Eucharist unworthily brings judgment on oneself). Many returning Catholics feel a strong pull toward the Eucharist as part of what draws them back to the Church, and that pull is itself a good sign. But letting that pull lead you to the communion line before you have made a proper confession shortchanges both the sacrament of reconciliation and the Eucharist itself. Go to confession, receive absolution, and then receive the Eucharist in a state of genuine readiness. The sequence matters and the Church’s insistence on it reflects the seriousness of what the Eucharist actually is.

Spiritual Direction Is Not Just for Priests and Nuns, and You Probably Need It

One resource that many returning Catholics either do not know exists for laypeople or dismiss as something reserved for seminarians and religious sisters is spiritual direction. A spiritual director is a trained guide, typically an experienced priest, deacon, or qualified lay person, who accompanies another person in their spiritual life through regular conversation, prayer, and honest accountability. For a returning Catholic who is working through the reasons they left, rebuilding a prayer life, addressing difficult moral or sacramental situations, and trying to establish sustainable Catholic practice after years away, a good spiritual director is not a luxury. It is one of the most practically useful supports available. The tradition of spiritual direction in the Catholic Church is ancient and well-developed, rooted in the Desert Fathers of the early centuries, formalized in the writings of Ignatius of Loyola, John of the Cross, Francis de Sales, and many others, and continued in trained directors active in parishes, retreat centers, and religious communities today. Finding a spiritual director takes some effort, because demand often exceeds availability, and not every priest or deacon is trained in the discipline. Your diocese’s office of formation or a local retreat center can usually help you find someone appropriate. The relationship works best when it is regular, at least monthly, when it is honest, meaning you bring your real struggles rather than presenting a polished version of your spiritual life, and when you are genuinely open to being challenged and guided rather than simply seeking validation. If you are serious about returning to the Church and making that return last, a spiritual director is one of the best investments you can make in your own formation.

The Mercy of God Is Real, But It Is Not a Substitute for Genuine Change

This is the point that requires the most care to state correctly, because it involves two truths that must be held together rather than traded against each other. The first truth is that God’s mercy is genuinely and completely available to every returning Catholic, regardless of what they did during their absence, regardless of how long they were away, and regardless of how many times they have returned and drifted away before. The Catechism’s account of the sacrament of penance draws explicitly on the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32, and the image of the father running to meet the returning son from a long way off is the Church’s own image of how God receives those who come back (CCC 1439). This mercy is not conditional on your having been a perfect Catholic before you left or on your being certain you will never struggle again after you return. The second truth is that mercy is not a free pass. The Church’s teaching on conversion is that it involves genuine contrition, genuine purpose of amendment, and genuine effort to change the patterns of life that led to the separation from God and the Church in the first place (CCC 1451). Returning to the Church while planning to keep living exactly as you did before, simply with the addition of weekly Mass and occasional confession, misunderstands what both confession and conversion actually are. The mercy of God is real and total. It is also oriented toward a genuine transformation of how you live, think, and relate to God and others. Receive the mercy fully and honestly, and take the transformation it calls for just as seriously.

Rebuilding Catholic Identity Takes Years, Not Weeks, and That Is Normal

Many returning Catholics, especially those who return with strong enthusiasm and genuine conviction, expect their faith to be quickly established and stable after their initial re-engagement. The reality is that rebuilding a mature and integrated Catholic identity, one that informs how you think, how you make decisions, how you handle conflict, how you pray, and how you understand suffering and joy, takes considerable time. The Church teaches that ongoing conversion is the normal state of the Christian life rather than something you achieve and then possess permanently (CCC 1428). This means that even fully committed, lifelong Catholics are in a constant process of formation and growth. For a returning Catholic who is essentially starting over in many respects, that process will involve cycles of clarity and confusion, periods of spiritual consolation and periods of dryness, moments of genuine growth and moments of falling back into old habits. The important thing is not to treat any single setback as evidence that the return was a mistake or that the faith is not working. The important thing is to keep going, to keep using the sacraments, to keep showing up for Mass, to keep praying even when it feels empty, and to keep seeking formation through reading, through community, and through spiritual direction. The converts and reverts who succeed in building stable, lasting Catholic lives are rarely those who had the smoothest early experience. They are almost always those who were honest about the difficulties, patient with the process, and persistent in the practice even when it was not producing the results they hoped for on their preferred timeline. Come back with that kind of patience already in place, and you will be far better equipped for the long road of Catholic life than those who return expecting a straight and easy path.

The Commitment You Make When You Return Is a Serious One and Should Be Made Seriously

This final point is not meant to discourage you from returning. It is meant to ensure that when you do return, you do so with a clear and honest understanding of what you are committing to. Returning to active Catholic practice means agreeing to attend Mass every Sunday and on holy days of obligation, to receive the sacraments regularly, to live according to the Church’s moral teaching, to support the Church’s mission with your time and financial resources, to form any children in your household in the Catholic faith, and to bring the values of the faith into your daily life and relationships. These commitments are serious and they are comprehensive. The Church does not offer a minimal version of membership that requires only Sunday attendance while leaving everything else unchanged. What the Church offers is a fully integrated way of life that touches every dimension of your existence, from how you use your money to how you conduct your sexual life to how you treat the poor and vulnerable. Many returning Catholics find, sometimes quickly and sometimes only after years, that this comprehensive character of the faith is precisely what they had been missing during their time away. The secular culture offers freedom from obligation, but it offers very little in terms of a coherent account of what that freedom is for. The Church offers an account of the human person and the purpose of human life that is both demanding and genuinely satisfying in a way that no purely secular framework can replicate. Come back with all of that in view, not just the parts that feel immediately comfortable, and the return you make will be one built on something solid enough to hold you for the rest of your life.