To Remain or to Leave: A Faith That Endures

Seventh Day in the Octave of Christmas

 

There are moments in life when staying feels harder than leaving.

Moments when continuing seems heavier than starting over.
Moments when faith, vocation, the Church, or even an important relationship feels fragile—tired, wounded.

In those moments, many people ask themselves the same question—
even if they are not always brave enough to say it out loud:

Is it worth remaining?

Scripture does not avoid this reality.
It does not idealize faith or community.
On the contrary, it names it with a sobriety that can be almost unsettling.

The first reading today says something strong, but deeply real:
“They went out from us…”

Not as a judgment, but as a fact. From the very beginning of faith, not everyone who is close remains. Some leave. Some grow tired. Some lose their way.

But we must be clear about something: to remain does not mean never doubting.
It does not mean never experiencing questions, disappointments, or wounds.
To remain means something deeper: not breaking communion, not closing the door completely, not abandoning the relationship.

And here we discover an even deeper truth:
faith does not begin with our effort to stay,
it begins with the fact that God remains with us.

From the beginning of Scripture, even after the fall of Adam and Eve, God never stops searching for the human person. The Bible is filled with this movement: God who goes out to meet us, who calls, who waits, who reaches out again and again. Even when humanity hides, God continues to ask: “Where are you?”

And when it seemed that humanity was losing itself in its own paths, God sent His Son. Not as a reproach, but as closeness.
“The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.”
God did not grow tired of searching for us.

That is why faith is the way it is—because it comes from God.
Faith, love, and hope do not arise only from our consistency, but from God’s fidelity. Even today, when we make mistakes, when we drift away, when we lose ourselves in this world, God continues to cast that invisible lifeline that allows us to return.

At this point, I want to pause and speak from something very human.
Sometimes people ask me whether I have ever wanted to leave the ministry.
Whether I have had doubts.
Whether I have grown tired.

And I often respond with another question:
when you began a relationship,
when you got married,
have you never, at some point, wanted to disappear for a while?
Have you never felt exhaustion, discouragement, the desire to run away?

Because the truth is this: the problem is not feeling tired.
That is deeply human.
The real question is this:
what allows us to remain when everything within us wants to leave?

A vocation—any vocation—is a powerful calling,
but God never imposes it.
God gives us something very real: the freedom to leave.

But here is the mystery:
God does not only give us the freedom to leave,
He also gives us the faith to stay.

Not because we are stronger,
not because we never doubt,
but because He remains first.

This also helps us understand the life of the Church. Over two thousand years there have been crises, divisions, scandals, changes. People who leave. People who remain wounded. And yet, the Church remains. Not because of human perfection, but because communion is a gift that comes from God.

To remain is not to close our eyes.
To remain is to keep walking not for people, but for God.

And this is what we celebrate at Christmas:
a God who remains with us,
even when we do not recognize Him,
a God who has made His dwelling among us
so that we are never definitively lost.

Authentic faith is not the faith that never doubts,
but the faith that remains because it has discovered
that God never left.