Last Christmas Eve I went to Mass and took Holy Communion after a hiatus of 27 years. Ever since I have made it a point to attend Mass every Sunday, and to pray. Not by saying the rosary, or reciting Ave Marias; I see little value in monotonous recitations. I pray conversationally, appealing for wisdom and forbearance, and the gift of forgiving those who trespass against me.

It has been a long circuitous journey, my returning to faith. I was an altar boy in my teens, and then I rejected the Church because I felt it was regimented and suffocated free thought, and because adherence was predicated at least partially on guilt and fear (fear of hell). Now I have returned to the Church with a spirit of openness and flexibility that has none of the regimentation and guilt that appalled me in my adolescence.

In the intervening years I became an atheist by conviction yet I remained a seeker – a seeker of wisdom and deliverance in a wide philosophical sense. I probed the religions of the Far East. I explored Hinduism and Taoism. I researched tribes in remote regions, people whose beliefs are formed by natural phenomena and ancient animism (in which the world is full of spirits that have to be appeased for peaceful co-existence).

I delved most deeply into Buddhism. I travelled extensively in the Buddhist heartland; I sought out monasteries and learned about the Buddhist creed and way of life.

My seeking led me to the realisation that there are greater similarities than differences among the world’s faiths. The rituals and form may be different, the architecture of temples varied, but the core principles of religiosity are the same the world over.

For example, we have the 10 Commandments; Buddhists have the 10 mental impurities that are an obstacle to enlightenment (attachments to earthly possessions, reliance on sensual pleasures for happiness, quest for individualistic gratification, aversion to quietness and still mind, mental and physical stupor, arrogance and brashness, and so on).

Yet Buddhism has attracted western urbane seekers and New Agers for its perceived peaceableness and mindfulness. For unlike the monotheistic religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam), which have championed proselytisation as a duty of the faithful, Buddhism is the only major religion in which proselytisation has always been considered something of a fallacy. In Buddhism, achieving nirvana (the Buddhist equivalent of heaven; nirvana is to be freed from life on earth with its relentless suffering) can take many lifetimes. Buddhists believe that they are reborn (sometimes in forms other than humans) until they achieve nirvana, and in this sense Buddhists have to find their own individual way to enlightenment, no matter how many life cycles it takes. Monotheists on the other hand have to get it right in one life and that gives rise to the urge to get those who have strayed back onto the path.

Sometimes it’s best to stay with the core message – that’s what people seek nowadays, to be inspired by core principles of spiritual living

Along the years I have also been attracted to what’s known in Hinduism as the ‘sannyasa’ – a late stage of life after middle age when the seeker renounces all material possessions and personal attachments and dedicates the rest of his life to living simply in pursuit of spiritual immersion. The closest equivalent in Christianity is monkhood, but sannyasi, unlike monks, go through all the normal stages of life (study, career, family) and then eventually renounces everything and immerses into spirituality in a wide sense. It’s an idea that greatly appeals to me, perhaps because it offers a way out of the misery engendered by attachments and desires, but it takes immense courage and sacrifice to renounce earthly attachments.

I eventually returned to Malta a few years ago after 15 years in Asia, and I took to snooping in the town church, marvelling at the artworks and opulence, stilled by the sense of peace within the church. But I couldn’t bring myself to pray or attend Mass because there was no scope in my intellectualism for believing in the afterlife – something of a fantasy or superstition for the learned mind. Then personal strategy struck, and I could no longer prop myself on my intellectualism – all the knowledge I had accumulated over an adulthood of reading and writing and travelling could offer no respite from my agony. And, as I wallowed in helplessness and bewilderment, I desperately wanted to believe that there was some kind of higher justice or higher purpose.

So I went to Mass and in the weeks that followed I began to find solace during Mass. I find the scripture readings and the homily inspiring (not all homilies are equal: some priests’ delivery is repetitive, dogmatic, doctrinal; other deliveries are relevant and inspiring). I must say that I also find the repetitive recitations and prayers tedious in most part, although I do understand that the repetitiveness is the only way of indoctrinating those who lack the mental earnestness of the intellectual or the seeker.

But therein lies the quandary for the Church: the repetitive adulatory recitations bore those who think vigorously and critically, and it’s those people who are departing the Church in droves. There is the widespread idea that many of the Church’s doctrines are outdated and arcane. This can be seen, for example, from the rapid decline in Church marriages – statistically, more than half of marriages are civil now – suggesting that an increasing number of people perceive marriage as a legal contract that can be undone, not a sacramental bond until death.

Of course, social scientists share the Church’s gloom at the high number of marriage breakdowns, so damaging to children, but the answer no longer lies in beating people with dogma on the inviolability of marriage as a sacrament: the answer is to nurture individuals who are better rooted in wisdom and values.

I am not implying that the Church ought to change its tenets. The core tenets are universal and timeless because the human condition is immutable over the ages. But doctrines are malleable, interpretation of some dogmas (sacraments included) can be loosened (and some dogmas eventually abandoned) and the delivery can be tweaked to fit an evolving audience.

For a sophisticated audience, sometimes it’s best to stay with the core message – that’s what people seek nowadays, to be inspired by core principles of spiritual living. That’s what I learned from Buddhism, and that’s what the droves of Westerners dabbling in Buddhism are seeking and learning. And that’s what I am learning now in the Church, that’s why I now feel less suffocated and more inspired.

I even learned in the last few months that I was wrong to seek in God some kind of higher justice. The idea that believing and praying could bring about justice will never bring us inner peace because it makes us expectant. (It’s an idea that has turned countless people away from the Church, people who fallaciously believe that their faith is some kind of insurance policy against injustice or unluckiness.)

It is not God’s role to right the wrongs. The point of God – the essence of the Christian faith – is to allow ourselves to be imbued with grace which then fosters inner tranquillity in the face of injustice and suffering.

That’s all that matters, suffusion with grace, to remain centred on the path: that’s the most valuable lesson I learned since my return to the Church.