I came across a quote by Megan McCafferty that made me stop and think: “The minute our correspondence becomes obligatory, there’s no point in keeping touch at all.” At first glance, I can understand the sentiment. Nobody wants a relationship where every conversation feels forced, where affection has been replaced by expectation, or where the only reason someone reaches out is because they feel they have to. We want to be loved freely. We want to know that someone chooses to spend time with us because they genuinely desire our company, not because they feel indebted to us. There is something very human about that desire, and I don’t think the author is necessarily wrong when speaking about ordinary friendships. But the more I considered the statement, the more I began to wonder whether our modern understanding of relationships has confused freedom with the absence of obligation. Have we become so accustomed to measuring the value of our relationships by how they make us feel that we have forgotten what it means to remain faithful when those feelings are absent? And perhaps more importantly, what happens when we take this same understanding of love and apply it to our relationship with God?
As Catholics, we are no strangers to the word obligation. We have Sunday obligations, holy days of obligation, obligations to confess our sins, obligations to fast and abstain, and moral obligations that govern how we conduct ourselves. In fact, I would argue that one of the more common criticisms of Catholicism, both from outside the Church and sometimes from within, is that we have too many rules. Why do Catholics have to attend Mass every Sunday? Why does the Church tell us when to fast? Why do we have to confess our sins to a priest? Why should a person have to follow teachings they find difficult or disagree with? Shouldn’t our relationship with God be based on love rather than obligation? I have heard variations of these questions for years, and while I understand where they come from, I think they reveal a misunderstanding of what love actually requires. We have somehow convinced ourselves that the moment something becomes an obligation, it ceases to be an authentic expression of love. But is that really true? Or have we simply created a definition of love that conveniently excuses us from having to do anything we don’t particularly feel like doing?
Consider marriage for a moment. When a man and woman stand before God and exchange their vows, they are not simply announcing how much they enjoy spending time together. They are making promises. Serious promises. They are freely binding themselves to one another in a covenant that will require things of them long after the excitement of their wedding day has passed. They promise fidelity when temptation comes, patience when frustration arises, and commitment when circumstances make walking away seem easier. As a husband, I cannot imagine telling my wife that the moment spending time with her becomes an obligation, there is no longer any point in maintaining our relationship. What kind of marriage would that be? Or consider parenthood. I love my son dearly, but being his father carries obligations that do not disappear when I am tired, frustrated, distracted, or would rather be doing something else. There are mornings when getting out of bed is not particularly appealing. There are responsibilities I must fulfill whether I feel motivated or not. Does fulfilling those responsibilities somehow diminish the sincerity of my love? Of course not. In many ways, those are precisely the moments when love becomes more than a feeling. Love is demonstrated through fidelity, sacrifice, and the willingness to place someone else’s good ahead of our immediate desires. We understand this in marriage. We understand it in parenthood. Why, then, do we suddenly become offended by the idea that our relationship with God might demand the same kind of faithfulness?
Jesus Himself never presented discipleship as a relationship without obligations. Quite the opposite. In John 14:15, He tells His disciples, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Notice what He doesn’t say. He doesn’t say that if we love Him, we should simply acknowledge His existence, occasionally think about Him, or spend time with Him whenever we feel spiritually inspired. He connects love directly to obedience. A few verses later, He makes the relationship even clearer by saying that whoever loves Him will keep His word (John 14:23). St. John continues this teaching in his first epistle: “For the love of God is this, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3). This is not some medieval Catholic invention designed to control the faithful. This is the language of Sacred Scripture. Christ does not separate love from obligation because authentic love necessarily involves a willingness to respond to the one we love. The commandments do not purchase God’s love, nor does our obedience somehow place God in our debt. His grace comes first. Our obedience is our response to that grace. And this distinction matters because Christianity is not merely a declaration that God loves us. It is an invitation to allow that love to change the way we live.
This brings me to something I find particularly interesting about the Catholic Church’s precepts. The Catechism explains in paragraph 2041 that these obligations exist to guarantee what it calls the “indispensable minimum” for growing in love of God and neighbor. Think about that for a moment. The Church is not presenting these obligations as the pinnacle of Christian holiness. She is establishing a minimum. Attend Mass on Sundays and holy days. Confess your sins at least once a year. Receive the Eucharist at least during the Easter season. Observe the prescribed days of fasting and abstinence. Support the material needs of the Church according to your ability. These are not extraordinary acts of devotion reserved for monks, priests, or particularly holy people. They are the basic expectations of someone who professes to be in communion with Christ and His Church. Yet how often do we approach even these minimum requirements as though they are unreasonable demands upon our freedom? Imagine telling your spouse that spending one hour together each week is an unreasonable expectation. Imagine claiming to love someone deeply while becoming irritated that they expect you to communicate, remain faithful, and make sacrifices for the relationship. At some point, we have to ask ourselves whether the problem is the obligation or our unwillingness to accept that love makes demands upon us.
I think Sunday Mass illustrates this misunderstanding better than almost anything else. How many times have we heard someone say, “I don’t go to church because I don’t get anything out of it”? I understand the frustration, especially when someone has experienced poor preaching, irreverent liturgies, or a parish community that has failed to help nourish their faith. Those concerns deserve to be taken seriously. But even then, I think we need to examine the question itself. What exactly are we expecting to get out of Mass? Have we forgotten what the Mass actually is? Catholics do not attend Mass primarily to hear an inspiring sermon, enjoy music, or spend an hour feeling spiritually refreshed. We attend because the Mass is the sacramental participation in the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ, made present upon the altar. We gather to offer worship to Almighty God and to receive the very Body and Blood of our Lord. The Eucharist is not a religious accessory designed to improve our weekend. It is the source and summit of the Christian life. And yet we sometimes treat the obligation to attend Mass as though God were asking us to sit through an inconvenient appointment rather than inviting us into the most intimate communion available to us on this side of heaven. Perhaps the real question should not be why the Church requires us to attend Mass, but why we would ever consider our presence before God an unreasonable obligation.
Of course, none of this means that going through religious motions automatically produces holiness. A person can attend Mass every Sunday and still have a heart that is far from God. Someone can recite prayers, receive the sacraments, and observe every prescribed fast while remaining prideful, uncharitable, and unwilling to repent. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for precisely this kind of religious hypocrisy. But the existence of hypocrisy does not invalidate obedience any more than an unfaithful husband invalidates the institution of marriage. It simply reminds us that outward actions and inward conversion are meant to belong together. We should never be content with merely fulfilling our religious obligations, but neither should we dismiss them because our hearts have not yet reached the level of devotion we desire. Sometimes we go to Mass because we are overflowing with gratitude and cannot imagine being anywhere else. Other times we go because we are tired, distracted, spiritually dry, or struggling with our faith. On those days, the obligation can become a gift. It keeps us connected to the source of grace when our emotions might otherwise convince us to stay away. The Church, like a loving mother, does not abandon her children to the unpredictability of their feelings. She reminds us that there are things we need even when we do not particularly desire them.
And this is where I think the original quote becomes especially revealing. We live in a culture that places tremendous value on personal autonomy. We want relationships on our terms, commitments that accommodate our preferences, and the freedom to walk away when something no longer serves us. We often speak about protecting our peace, setting boundaries, and refusing obligations that do not contribute to our happiness. There are legitimate reasons for boundaries, of course, and not every human relationship is healthy or deserves to continue. But when we carry this mentality into our spiritual lives without examining it, we risk reducing God to someone whose place in our lives depends entirely upon our willingness to make room for Him. We want His mercy without necessarily wanting His commandments. We want His blessings without having to surrender our preferences. We want the comfort of knowing that He loves us while resisting the uncomfortable reality that He has authority over us. We want a relationship with God, but preferably one in which we retain the final say over what that relationship requires. And if His Church tells us that something is obligatory, we begin questioning whether the obligation itself has somehow contaminated the authenticity of our faith.
I cannot help but think of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. Here is the Son of God, fully divine and fully human, confronting the suffering that awaits Him. He prays that the cup might pass from Him, yet submits Himself to the will of the Father: “Still, not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). There is something profoundly important in that moment. Christ’s obedience was not dependent upon the absence of suffering or the presence of comforting feelings. His love was expressed through the complete surrender of His human will to the Father. St. Paul tells us that Christ “humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). Obedience and love were not competing realities. His obedience was an expression of His love. And if we profess to follow Christ, why would we expect our own discipleship to require anything less than a willingness to surrender our will? Jesus was remarkably clear about the cost of following Him. “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). There is nothing in that invitation suggesting that discipleship should continue only as long as it remains convenient.
One of the things I have come to appreciate about Catholicism since entering the Church in 2011 is that the faith does not depend upon my ability to remain perpetually enthusiastic about it. I have experienced seasons of tremendous spiritual consolation and others when prayer seemed difficult, when questions weighed heavily upon me, and when I found myself struggling to live the very teachings I professed to believe. I suspect most faithful Catholics have experienced something similar. But that is precisely why I am grateful for a Church that asks something of me. My faith is not supposed to be governed by whatever spiritual mood I happen to be experiencing. There is an authority outside myself, a deposit of faith entrusted to the Church, and a sacramental life that continues to nourish me regardless of whether I have the emotional disposition to appreciate it at every moment. Before becoming Catholic, I was far more comfortable with the idea that my relationship with God was something I could define largely on my own terms. But the more I studied Scripture, Church history, and the teachings handed down from the apostles, the more I realized that Christianity was never intended to be a religion in which each individual determines what obedience should look like. Christ established a Church, gave authority to His apostles, and commanded them to teach the nations to observe all that He had commanded (Matthew 28:20). That authority is not an obstacle to my relationship with God. Properly understood, it is one of the ways Christ continues to guide me toward Him.
Perhaps the greatest misunderstanding is the assumption that obligation and freedom are somehow incompatible. We tend to think freedom means being able to do whatever we want, whenever we want, without anyone having a legitimate claim upon our time, decisions, or desires. But the Christian understanding of freedom is much richer than that. True freedom is not simply the ability to choose. It is the ability to choose what is good. A man who cannot remain faithful to his wife because he is enslaved to his desires is not more free than the man who keeps his vows. A person who cannot control his appetites is not more free than someone who practices fasting and self-denial. And a Christian who refuses to submit to God’s commandments because he wants to preserve his independence has not necessarily discovered a deeper relationship with God. He may have simply mistaken his own preferences for spiritual freedom. The disciplines of the Church are not meant to imprison us. They are intended to form us into the kind of people who can love God and neighbor more faithfully. We fast because our desires should not govern us. We confess because our sins need forgiveness and our pride needs correction. We attend Mass because God deserves worship, not merely when we feel inspired, but because He is God.
So when I return to Megan McCafferty’s quote, I find myself agreeing with part of the sentiment while rejecting the assumption that obligation necessarily diminishes the value of a relationship. I agree that love should never be reduced to a series of reluctant transactions. I agree that affection cannot be manufactured simply by demanding someone’s attention. And I agree that a relationship in which people do nothing but fulfill requirements has lost something important. But I cannot accept the idea that obligation itself is evidence that a relationship is no longer worth maintaining. If anything, the willingness to remain faithful when we are obligated to do something difficult may reveal a depth of love that voluntary affection alone cannot demonstrate. It is easy to love when love costs us nothing. It is easy to pray when we feel close to God. It is easy to attend Mass when our schedule is open, our children are cooperating, and we wake up feeling spiritually motivated. But what happens when those circumstances change? Does our commitment disappear with them? If our relationship with God only survives when we feel like participating in it, what exactly have we committed ourselves to?
I think we Catholics need to stop apologizing for the fact that our faith makes demands upon us. Not because we should take pride in having more rules than someone else, or because fulfilling obligations somehow makes us better Christians than our Protestant brothers and sisters, but because we should recognize the extraordinary dignity of what we have been called into. We have been invited into a covenant with the living God. A covenant is not a casual arrangement that exists only when both parties find it convenient. God has already demonstrated the seriousness of His love for us through the Incarnation, Passion, Death, and Resurrection of His Son. He has given us everything. And while nothing we do could ever repay that gift, surely it is not unreasonable that He should ask something of us in return. Our obligations do not earn His love. They teach us how to respond to it, and His grace makes that response possible.
Maybe the question we should be asking is not whether we feel obligated to maintain our relationship with God, but whether we have begun to resent the very obligations that help preserve it. Because if the minute our relationship with God requires something of us we decide there is no longer any point in maintaining it, then perhaps what we wanted was never a covenant in the first place. Perhaps we wanted companionship without commitment, mercy without repentance, and love without sacrifice.
Christ never promised us that loving Him would be convenient. He promised us something far greater.
And if we truly believe that the Eucharist is His Body and Blood, that the Church is His Bride, and that He has called us to eternal communion with Him, then spending an hour at Mass on Sunday should not be the most we are willing to offer Him.
It should be the very least.
