Well, beyond the words we often write here. This, I think, is a great example of the power of narrative to reveal. It’s from a short story called, "Weightlifting for Catholics" by Mark Jacobs in the most recent issue of The Atlantic.

Eagan had never liked this propserous suburban church, especially now, when the parking lot filled up every Sunday with SUVs and minivans and luxury sedans. He saw something martial in the way so many scrubbed families filed in to mass as if to an outing to the mall. At communion they consumed the body of Christ as if it were on sale and they knew a bargain whe they felt one disintigrate on their tongue. Unfair? Okay, he’d be unfair. He and Cathy and brought the kids to mass here for years. They hadn’t wanted their kids to grow up and become video clods, and the kids hadn’t. But Saint Mary’s had never been Eagan’s curch. His was darker, allowing a person to appreciate such light as made its way in. In Eagan’s church a mass was always going on, the same one and only sacrament perpetually looping, full of grace. The trick was showing up.

The rest of the story really doesn’t live up, as a whole, to this passage. But I still really liked this passage. Because there’s truth in it.