08/13/2026
DO I STILL NEED CHURCH TODAY?
Recently, several people have asked me directly: “Father, what do I really need the Church for today? Isn't it enough just to be a good person?"
This question stayed with me for a long time. Not because I don’t know the answer. Rather, because I understand where it comes from. We live in times when many things can be experienced without reference to God. One can work, start a family, raise children, travel, achieve success, help others—and yet have very little contact with the Church. And then it is easy to conclude that faith is something additional—something nice to have, but something without which one can actually live.
Thinking about this, I was reminded of the story of a young man who was dying after a serious illness.
He was just over twenty years old. An age when a person should be thinking about what they will do in five or ten years, where they will live, with whom they will build a family, what else they will see and experience. Meanwhile, after months of treatment, the doctors told him and his family that medical possibilities had practically been exhausted.
He did not accept it calmly at first. He was angry, resentful, afraid. He asked why it had to be him. He went through all the very human emotions that appear when a person suddenly realizes that they may not be given the time they had taken for granted.
One day his mother was sitting by his bed and crying. He said to her something like this:
“Mom, I’m afraid too. I don’t want to die. But I believe that if Jesus truly rose from the dead, then my life does not end here. It is not as if everything will simply disappear. Something will begin that I do not yet know.”
Then he asked for a priest. He went to confession, received the Anointing of the Sick and Holy Communion.
No physical miracle happened. He did not regain his health. The pain did not disappear. The family continued to suffer. But the way he experienced his last days changed. A certain peace appeared in him. Not a cinematic, exaggerated peace, as if he had stopped being afraid of everything. He simply knew that he was not going into emptiness.
And it is probably in such moments that it is easiest to understand what faith is for.
As long as everything is going well, one may feel that they are able to manage life on their own. Work, health, daily duties, plans, family—all of it somehow goes on. Faith can then move into the background.
But sooner or later, life asks us questions that cannot be answered by a good job, money, or even the presence of loving people.
What do we do with suffering that cannot be removed?
How do we survive the death of someone close?
How do we live with the awareness of our own death?
Is a human being only a collection of memories that will one day simply disappear?
Does love between people really end at the grave?
Does our life have a meaning greater than just what we manage to accomplish in a few dozen years?
And here faith appears.
Christianity does not promise that a believer will not get sick, will not lose someone close, will not have problems or crises. The Church was never meant to create a comfortable life for people.
Faith gives something else.
It gives perspective.
It tells a person that their life is not an accident. That they are not just one of billions who appear for a moment and disappear. That they are wanted by God, known to Him, and loved.
And above all, it says something that the modern world cannot guarantee us: death is not the end.
This is, after all, the very heart of the Gospel.
If Jesus Christ truly rose from the dead, (as He did!) then everything looks different.
Then life has a completely different weight.
Then even our daily choices begin to matter more than just whether something is profitable or enjoyable.
And that is why caring for one’s faith is so important.
Not because God keeps attendance at Sunday Mass.
Not because the Church needs people in the pews.
But because neglected faith slowly fades away.
A person usually does not lose faith in one day.
It happens in a much more ordinary way.
First one Sunday without Mass. Then another. Prayer is postponed because one is tired. There was no time to go to confession. Later comes the thought: I am a good person anyway, I do not harm anyone.
And after a few years, a person discovers that God has practically disappeared from their daily life.
Not because God left.
But because we stopped building a relationship with Him.
Faith also needs to be nurtured.
And that is why the Church is necessary.
Not because the people in the Church are perfect. They are not. They never were.
In the Church there are weak, sinful, sometimes difficult people. There are priests who fail. There are Catholics whose lives do not correspond at all to what they say. The history of the Church also knows very dark chapters.
But Catholic faith has never been about believing in the perfection of Church people.
Its center is Christ.
And the Church is the space in which we encounter Him in a very concrete way: in the Word of God, in the Eucharist, in confession, in the sacraments, in the community of people who together try to walk the same path.
We live in a world that gives us incredible possibilities, and at the same time it is increasingly difficult for people to answer the question of why they actually live.
We can plan retirement thirty years ahead, but often we do not think at all about the fact that our life will one day end.
We take care of the body, of medical check-ups, diet, fitness—and that is good.
But sometimes we almost completely forget about the soul.
And yet, if we truly believe in God, it is precisely the soul that will remain.
That is why being a disciple of Christ cannot be reduced to saying: “I believe that God exists.”
A disciple is someone who tries to live as their Master lived.
Someone who asks: what would Christ do in my place? Can I forgive? Do I find time for God?
Does my faith change anything in the way I live?
We do not always succeed.
But that is precisely why we have the Church, the sacrament of reconciliation, the Eucharist, and the Word of God—to keep starting again.
And perhaps that is why the question “what do I need the Church for today?” is worth turning around.
Maybe we should ask:
Do I really want to live my whole life only with what is here?
Because if everything I have ends at the moment of death, then it is indeed possible to say that faith is just one of many possible additions to life.
But if Christ has risen, then everything looks completely different.
Then the Church is not an addition.
It is a place of preparation for meeting God.
I do not know how much time each of us has left.
None of us knows that.
Maybe several decades. Maybe much less.
But I would like, when my last day comes, to have at least a part of the hope that young man had.
Not to pretend I am not afraid.
Not to convince myself that death is something easy.
But to be able to say:
“Lord Jesus, all my life I tried to know You. Sometimes I was close, sometimes very far. I fell, I returned, I did not understand everything. But I trust You. And now I place myself in Your hands.”
Perhaps that is what faith is for.
So that throughout our lives we learn to trust the One to whom, one day, we will have to entrust ourselves completely.
With prayer,
Fr. Kamil
