How to get more comfortable with being less comfortable

Picture your favorite place to sit. A cozy recliner near the TV, a reading spot on your couch or your usual chair at the kitchen table. Remember how your body sinks into that space without a second thought. After a long day, there’s nothing better than settling in where we feel most at home.

Now picture the place where you usually sit at Mass. You might have a regular pew, a certain side of the church you love or the same exact seat every Sunday. Why do you pick this spot?

Maybe that’s where your family or friends have always sat. Maybe you like the view or the acoustics: You can see and hear well here. Or maybe you’re simply a creature of habit!

There’s nothing wrong with having a favorite place. In a chaotic, ever-changing world, our nervous systems sigh with relief at routines. We need the expected. Even Jesus liked to recline at table with his friends.

But in this in-between stretch of Ordinary Time, between the high feast of Christmas and the solemn preparation of Lent, we find ourselves in a new place as we settle into the New Year. What will 2026 hold, the good and the bad? Who might we become by year’s end?

At home, at church, in our communities and in the wider world, we can find ourselves seeking what is comfortable. We like this kind of food, that style of worship, this grocery store or that politician. We feel at home in our particular camp.

Yet Christ came both to comfort (with God’s mercy) and challenge (with God’s justice). His call to discipleship is always prophetic, asking each of us to leave behind the nets of our comfort zones and venture into the deep.

As a parent of children ranging from kindergarten to high school, I find myself thinking often about the home as a place of comfort — but also challenge. I want our family home to be a space of safety, solace and love for our kids, but I also know it must be a source of difficult lessons: how to forgive, how to change and how to do the right thing even when it’s hard.

In 1902, humor columnist Finley Dunne coined a famous phrase about the duty of journalism, writing that the role of the newspaper is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Catholics sometimes say the same about the mission of the Church, too. We need only look to the Gospels to see how Jesus comforted the suffering and spoke out strongly against the wealthy and powerful who did not care for the poor and vulnerable.

Where we stand (or sit) determines our view — of our home, church and society. If we stand with the least among us as Christ did, we will see things very differently than if we side with the powerful, the popular or the strong.

What if we took one step out of our comfort zone in 2026?

It might be a small change, like sitting in a different pew, to meet new parishioners in our community and see our physical church home from a new perspective. It might be a big change, like deciding to volunteer as a family with a local food shelf, to get to know our neighbors in need and serve them with our time and energy. Or we might devote this short season of Ordinary Time to deeper prayer, asking God to lead us further in faith even when it gets uncomfortable.

When we know we have safe spaces where we can return — like our family home, our favorite chair or our regular parish pew — we can strike out in good faith and courage to do whatever challenging work that God calls us to do.

I pray this for my children when they leave the house each day, that God might go with them and lead them home safely. I pray the same for each of us: that we will always remember there is nowhere we can go, even the farthest leap from our comfort zone, where God has not already gone before us.

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