I started going back to church on Easter Sunday.

It’s been so long since I’ve voluntarily attended a Catholic mass, I all but forgot the order of events: the rites, the intercessions, and most of the words to the prayers. Admittedly, I’m not sure why I’m sitting down and standing up all the time (though I know there is a very good reason anchored by hundreds of years of tradition.) My latest homework assignment is familiarizing myself with the elements of these traditions, but in the meantime, I’m content with riding the wave from the back of the church.

I don’t ever expect to understand anything right away, and this renewed interest in understanding my faith is no exception. I’ve struggled massively with my faith through the years, up to and including renouncing it my teen years. This refreshed perspective of it, though, has me feeling curious and hopeful that I’ll learn more about myself and the world around me than ever before.

In the meantime, I do my best to pay attention and make sense of it all.

During mass, something the priest said during the Eucharistic Prayer stuck out to me more than anything else:

the mystery of faith.

In reading about the Eucharistic Prayer, it is clear to me that this phrase holds a specific representation. I started to contemplate, though, my own interpretation of what it means to have faith, and its origins. Thinking so deeply about something so personal and sacrosanct has given me great pause.

What is the source of my faith? How is it that I and so many others are willing to lend their beliefs around our existence to something we have not personally witnessed?

Surely, we have not witnessed another resurrection since that of Jesus as told by the Bible; why then, should we believe that the future holds something just as momentous as his sacrifice?

Why, then, should we believe anything?

That is what makes our faith such a mystery to me: humans come equipped with a basic set of emotions and have adapted overtime to experience others. Where does faith fit in with all this, alongside love, repulsion, and satiety?

No matter how deep of a thinker one might be, I don’t think we could ever satisfy ourselves with an answer that suffices the question.

So, then, comes the trust, understanding and acceptance that this world is so much bigger than ourselves. So much so that we can comfortably relegate the idea that we will understand it all in due time, if not in this current lifetime.

In terms of considering my own faith, I decided a long time ago that some things are better not knowing. I suppose that’s why most humans love a good mystery. Sometimes it’s better if the puzzle goes unsolved, lest we lose our curiosity for what happens again in the future.

And so it goes, too, with my faith.