Many people talk about having faith, as if it was something that belonged to them or was a characteristic of their natural being like brown hair or green eyes. Perhaps faith should be looked at as more of a skill, than an attribute.

I’ve challenged myself this year to practice weaving, so that I can both learn and produce more quality products. My goal is to complete at least one project a month and I have a number of kits that will see me through most of the year. As it is already June one would think that measuring out the warp would be something that I would have no trouble with, since I need to do that for every project. I had trouble with my May project, and started making the same mistake again this month. I was happy that I caught it in time, but was really flustered that I almost made the same mistake. However, it does underscore that my goal of practicing to complete a project monthly will be beneficial as I can continue learning, and noticing when I am about to make an error. Similarly when I was finishing a project on a sewing machine, I had to look at the instructions again to remember how to set it all up. It was only the second time I used the machine, but that, too, has a little learning curve to it. Not all my weaving projects will require machine stitching, so I’ll need to do even more projects before I feel sufficient in my machine sewing skills. 

As I was refreshing my memory of how the sewing machine works, it reminded me that it was like practicing patience: you need to have opportunities presented in order to actually practice patience. But it doesn’t just stop with patience, or even the virtues; it’s really faith itself that needs to be practiced so that we can build up our skill set that include the virtues, and the beatitudes, and the sacraments, and whatever other religious practices that we are called to. I don’t think one can ever plumb the depths of the knowledge of the faith. We can spend a whole lifetime and never learn it all, but that doesn’t mean we give up and don’t try. Rather we learn and practice. If we want to develop our skill in scripture, perhaps we read the Sunday readings in advance and ponder them before Mass. Or one could take time to read and reflect on the Mass readings daily. Maybe it’s expanding your reading to other books about the faith like the Catechism or biographies of the saints.

No matter what we choose to practice, we need to make sure we allow ourselves to make mistakes. Continuing with the reading of sacred writings, the error we may encounter may be more of a time issue. We may not achieve the goal we set out, or we may have mistakes or errors in what we do. That’s the whole reason for practice. Even professional athletes practice regularly so that they can perform to the best of their ability during the game, and they don’t always win. Life is much more precious than a game, and while some errors we can just acknowledge and move on from, others may benefit from confessing it in the sacrament of reconciliation. The sacrament isn’t just for mortal sins, but also for the pesky venial sins that continually seem to trip us up.

Being a Catholic Christian doesn’t mean that we are perfect. It means we strive to be as perfect as our heavenly Father, but know that we can return to a relationship with Him when we fall. God has a unique plan for each of us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a plan to deepen our knowledge, and to practice a Christ-centered life.