Showing Up

Recently I was at a graduation party for a young woman who had just completed high school. An estimated 60 or 70 people, young and old, showed up for the party.

The party was open-invitation—no reservation required. All you had to do was show up and stay as long as you wanted. You could eat but you didn’t have to.

That event was giving glory to the young woman being honored.

Glory is when people show up to let you know that you mean something to them.

Showing up at worship services gives glory to God.

Church attendance in almost all denominations is way down. In the Springfield, Illinois Catholic diocese, a tabulation made each October of Mass attendance in all diocesan parishes combined shows that in 2023 attendance was half of what it was in 2000.

Why that is happening is surely a complex question, but maybe one of the reasons why people are not showing up for church services is that they have forgotten that the most important thing about church services is to give glory to God.

We live in a consumer culture. We approach things with the attitude, “what am I getting out of this?” Maybe we approach church with the same attitude: what am I getting out of attending a church service?

Clergy, we who have accepted the role of leading worship services, can be rightly focused on providing people with something that is at least minimally rewarding. We can forget that all of us, clergy and laity, are in church because we want to give glory to God. We show up because showing up is meaningful even when a particular service is not especially rewarding. We attend the party because we want to honor someone. Some of our parties are more successful than other ones, because some of us are better at putting on parties than others. But we show up for the guest of honor, not because the food is good.

 Showing up puts us into physical contact with other people. We humans need that, just as much as we need oxygen. No wonder so many people these days are tempted to give up on life. We have been taught that we don’t need other people—we center our lives on consuming. We go it alone, all by ourselves. Trying to live that way can be deadly. 

I live with several other men in what we call a “Franciscan friary.” We show up for each other each day, both in prayer and at meals.

Believe me, at my age this kind of showing up really keeps me alive.

 

Brother Joe Zimmerman, OFM

[published in Muddy River News, June 9, 2025]