I was reminded recently of something Aslan says in CS Lewis’ The Last Battle, when they all arrive in Heaven and he invites them to go “further up and further in.” Last year before I was baptized and confirmed in the Catholic Church, a woman told me attending daily mass changed her life. I tried it, hauling my five-year-old, my three-year-old and my one-year-old to mass at 9:30am for a week, just to see. And I found I couldn’t do without Him and His presence anymore. Jesus is so absolutely there in the celebration of the mass, in the quiet tabernacle, that flickering candle in the red sheath. I was drawn more and more and it was irresistible.
Love and prayers, Madison. I've seen a lot of friends walk the journey through their conversions and it's really hard. I don't have personal experience with conversion, but my heart goes out to you.
The conversation on your walk seems God-ordained!
I hosted community dinner last night, as we do every week, and I had a childhood friend in town visiting whom I hadn't seen since we were little (she was visiting my mom, who kept in much better touch). I was telling her and her husband about our Catholic community here and our walkable neighborhood project and said how many of my friends were converts. My friend and her husband are Protestant (my Catholic friends usually say "separated brothers and sisters in Christ") and love the Lord. Her husband said he didn't know many adults converts at all. I said, among my friends, it's probably half and half, cradle Catholics and converts to Catholicism. And among new friends or people who come to dinner, we say, "they aren't Catholic... yet."
He was really excited and moved to see iron sharpening iron as he sat at the same table as my priest friend (a convert), our Bible Study Center director (a convert), our new friend who just started a job in prolife work and political activism (a convert), our friends who work with refugees (cradle Catholics), teachers at our independent Catholic schools who teach Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky and Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset and Latin IV to high schoolers (so they can read Isaac Jogues' letter about having his thumb cut off for preaching the Gospel in North America in his own words) (cradle Catholics)... He almost seemed ready to move here! Which, I mean, I'll always encourage people to come live in our neighborhood and be part of our Catholic community! I was just surprised and delighted in how interested and excited he seemed. We bonded over the Lord working in our lives.
There were a few things weighing on me this week, from increasing crime in my area to our dishwasher still not being fixed after three weeks and four visits from the repair man 🫠, but I told someone, good thing I have Adoration each week, to anchor me in time with Jesus. I don't know what I'd do without Jesus' physical presence in my life in the Eucharist.
I'll keep you in my prayers this week at Mass and Adoration.
Thanks for sharing your journey with us. That’s wild in God’s Providence that the young girl you mentor brought up Catholicism and the Eucharist!
There is a tipping point, a clearness of vision, when there is no going back. I hope you get there (I think you are close). What I mean is the discovery that the Catholic Church is the one true religion from Christ.
I keep thinking of the books under your bed. Before I mentioned following Joshua Charles on social media and reading Peter Kreeft’s essay Hauled Aboard the Ark and reading Thomas Howard. May I add reading G.K. Chesterton’s Why I am a Catholic. Or a longer challenging book that is not autobiographical by Fr. Henri de Lubac called The Splendor of the Church.
I think often about St. Cyprian’s “He cannot have God as His Father who does not have the Church as His Mother.” We think today that we can pick and choose what church to join, like picking a paint color for a room. How different an approach to seek the Church Christ founded. And once we enter, we are home. And then the lifetime journey of growing in holiness begins in a doctrinal, sacramental, virtuous and prayerful way!
Be assured of my prayers and my desire for you to be joined to the full Christ. The Church has been described as black, but beautiful. So many bad Catholics, so much lack of reverence, an ignorance of Scripture for many, etc. A Church that large is sure to house immature, sick, scandalous souls. But don’t be blinded to the Truth, Grace, antiquity, authority, unity, the Saints, the liturgies, priesthood, Heavenly Mother, wisdom, etc. that the Catholic Church contains and the Mystical Body of Christ that She is! “The world was created for the sake of the Church.” Feel free to reach out if you ever want to talk about such Catholic matters.
“Unity is our common mission; it is the condition that enables the light of Christ to be spread better in every corner of the world, so that men and women convert and are saved.” -Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, 25 January 2006.
“There are many people who are calling themselves Catholics, self-styled Catholics, cafeteria Catholics who think they can stay in the Church because they agree with so much of what the Church teaches. Do you realize what faith is and what faith is not? Faith does not mean I agree with the Church and its teaching. Faith is that which submits to the mysteries proclaimed by the Spirit through the Church. Faith believes whatever God reveals because God is the One revealing it and God can't deceive and God can't be deceived. We can trust God and we can trust Him to speak through the Church. So faith is an act of submission to whatever God proclaims despite the fact that we can never know these things through reason or through the senses; we believe them by faith. When somebody says, "I agree with practically everything the Church teaches except maybe for contraception." You've got to stop them and say, "Hey, you're completely off. Even if you agree with the Church on contraception, it's not enough for you to agree with the Church. What that amounts to is just a coincidence; I have found these truths to be true in my own experience and it just so happens that the Catholic Church teaches the same thing." That's not faith, that's just a nice convenient coincidence; your beliefs coincide with the Church's teaching. You agree, fine, but you might change your mind. Faith is an act of submission, a loving surrender of self to Christ who is present within the Church. And if we don't renew that self-surrender tonight, tomorrow and everyday of our lives, we are going to become more and more a part of the problem, not the solution.”
-Dr. Scott Hahn, talk: The Splendor of the Church
“Friends, today’s Gospel shows Jesus’ compassion for the multitude in the desert. “When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.”
There is the motif of the people Israel in the desert after their escape from Egypt. Isolated, alone, afraid, without food, they clamored for something from Moses. Here we see people who are dying to be fed, and a prophet who is under threat of death. This crowd around the threatened Jesus is a metaphor for the Church. We have come to him because we are hungry, and we stay even when things look bleak.” -Bishop Barron
“I faced a choice reading the Church Fathers as a protestant: If something like protestantism was the true form of Christianity, I had to believe that the vast majority (often, virtually all) of my eminent Christian ancestors (including many martyrs) were deeply confused about key teachings of the Christian religion. If this was true, there were many reasons to conclude Christianity was no longer a serious religion if so many of its greatest figures could be so consistently wrong about so much for so long (far more compatible with it being man-made, rather than divinely revealed). OR… I had to accept that Christianity was not what I had thought it was, and that following Jesus in TRUTH meant I had to do so by believing and practicing something that at the very least was far closer to the religion I had been taught my whole life to reject, namely the Catholic Faith.” -Joshua Charles
“‘Be joyful in God every land.’ Let no one jubilate in a part. Let every land be joyful, let the Catholic Church jubilate.
The Catholic Church embraces the whole. Whosoever holds a part and from the whole is cut off should howl, not jubilate.” -St. Augustine, “Exposition of Psalm 66” (§2)
Don't give up. The worst mistake I ever made was walking away from the Catholic Church in college after freshman year, and what followed was nearly twenty years of pain and wilderness. If I could tell my 18 year old self one thing, just one thing, it would be "never stop going to Mass."
I was reminded recently of something Aslan says in CS Lewis’ The Last Battle, when they all arrive in Heaven and he invites them to go “further up and further in.” Last year before I was baptized and confirmed in the Catholic Church, a woman told me attending daily mass changed her life. I tried it, hauling my five-year-old, my three-year-old and my one-year-old to mass at 9:30am for a week, just to see. And I found I couldn’t do without Him and His presence anymore. Jesus is so absolutely there in the celebration of the mass, in the quiet tabernacle, that flickering candle in the red sheath. I was drawn more and more and it was irresistible.
Love and prayers, Madison. I've seen a lot of friends walk the journey through their conversions and it's really hard. I don't have personal experience with conversion, but my heart goes out to you.
The conversation on your walk seems God-ordained!
I hosted community dinner last night, as we do every week, and I had a childhood friend in town visiting whom I hadn't seen since we were little (she was visiting my mom, who kept in much better touch). I was telling her and her husband about our Catholic community here and our walkable neighborhood project and said how many of my friends were converts. My friend and her husband are Protestant (my Catholic friends usually say "separated brothers and sisters in Christ") and love the Lord. Her husband said he didn't know many adults converts at all. I said, among my friends, it's probably half and half, cradle Catholics and converts to Catholicism. And among new friends or people who come to dinner, we say, "they aren't Catholic... yet."
He was really excited and moved to see iron sharpening iron as he sat at the same table as my priest friend (a convert), our Bible Study Center director (a convert), our new friend who just started a job in prolife work and political activism (a convert), our friends who work with refugees (cradle Catholics), teachers at our independent Catholic schools who teach Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky and Catherine of Siena by Sigrid Undset and Latin IV to high schoolers (so they can read Isaac Jogues' letter about having his thumb cut off for preaching the Gospel in North America in his own words) (cradle Catholics)... He almost seemed ready to move here! Which, I mean, I'll always encourage people to come live in our neighborhood and be part of our Catholic community! I was just surprised and delighted in how interested and excited he seemed. We bonded over the Lord working in our lives.
There were a few things weighing on me this week, from increasing crime in my area to our dishwasher still not being fixed after three weeks and four visits from the repair man 🫠, but I told someone, good thing I have Adoration each week, to anchor me in time with Jesus. I don't know what I'd do without Jesus' physical presence in my life in the Eucharist.
I'll keep you in my prayers this week at Mass and Adoration.
Thank you so much for the prayers and encouragement Kate (: It's been a challenging few weeks and it is so appreciated!
Thanks for sharing your journey with us. That’s wild in God’s Providence that the young girl you mentor brought up Catholicism and the Eucharist!
There is a tipping point, a clearness of vision, when there is no going back. I hope you get there (I think you are close). What I mean is the discovery that the Catholic Church is the one true religion from Christ.
I keep thinking of the books under your bed. Before I mentioned following Joshua Charles on social media and reading Peter Kreeft’s essay Hauled Aboard the Ark and reading Thomas Howard. May I add reading G.K. Chesterton’s Why I am a Catholic. Or a longer challenging book that is not autobiographical by Fr. Henri de Lubac called The Splendor of the Church.
I think often about St. Cyprian’s “He cannot have God as His Father who does not have the Church as His Mother.” We think today that we can pick and choose what church to join, like picking a paint color for a room. How different an approach to seek the Church Christ founded. And once we enter, we are home. And then the lifetime journey of growing in holiness begins in a doctrinal, sacramental, virtuous and prayerful way!
Be assured of my prayers and my desire for you to be joined to the full Christ. The Church has been described as black, but beautiful. So many bad Catholics, so much lack of reverence, an ignorance of Scripture for many, etc. A Church that large is sure to house immature, sick, scandalous souls. But don’t be blinded to the Truth, Grace, antiquity, authority, unity, the Saints, the liturgies, priesthood, Heavenly Mother, wisdom, etc. that the Catholic Church contains and the Mystical Body of Christ that She is! “The world was created for the sake of the Church.” Feel free to reach out if you ever want to talk about such Catholic matters.
“Unity is our common mission; it is the condition that enables the light of Christ to be spread better in every corner of the world, so that men and women convert and are saved.” -Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, 25 January 2006.
“There are many people who are calling themselves Catholics, self-styled Catholics, cafeteria Catholics who think they can stay in the Church because they agree with so much of what the Church teaches. Do you realize what faith is and what faith is not? Faith does not mean I agree with the Church and its teaching. Faith is that which submits to the mysteries proclaimed by the Spirit through the Church. Faith believes whatever God reveals because God is the One revealing it and God can't deceive and God can't be deceived. We can trust God and we can trust Him to speak through the Church. So faith is an act of submission to whatever God proclaims despite the fact that we can never know these things through reason or through the senses; we believe them by faith. When somebody says, "I agree with practically everything the Church teaches except maybe for contraception." You've got to stop them and say, "Hey, you're completely off. Even if you agree with the Church on contraception, it's not enough for you to agree with the Church. What that amounts to is just a coincidence; I have found these truths to be true in my own experience and it just so happens that the Catholic Church teaches the same thing." That's not faith, that's just a nice convenient coincidence; your beliefs coincide with the Church's teaching. You agree, fine, but you might change your mind. Faith is an act of submission, a loving surrender of self to Christ who is present within the Church. And if we don't renew that self-surrender tonight, tomorrow and everyday of our lives, we are going to become more and more a part of the problem, not the solution.”
-Dr. Scott Hahn, talk: The Splendor of the Church
“Friends, today’s Gospel shows Jesus’ compassion for the multitude in the desert. “When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.”
There is the motif of the people Israel in the desert after their escape from Egypt. Isolated, alone, afraid, without food, they clamored for something from Moses. Here we see people who are dying to be fed, and a prophet who is under threat of death. This crowd around the threatened Jesus is a metaphor for the Church. We have come to him because we are hungry, and we stay even when things look bleak.” -Bishop Barron
“I faced a choice reading the Church Fathers as a protestant: If something like protestantism was the true form of Christianity, I had to believe that the vast majority (often, virtually all) of my eminent Christian ancestors (including many martyrs) were deeply confused about key teachings of the Christian religion. If this was true, there were many reasons to conclude Christianity was no longer a serious religion if so many of its greatest figures could be so consistently wrong about so much for so long (far more compatible with it being man-made, rather than divinely revealed). OR… I had to accept that Christianity was not what I had thought it was, and that following Jesus in TRUTH meant I had to do so by believing and practicing something that at the very least was far closer to the religion I had been taught my whole life to reject, namely the Catholic Faith.” -Joshua Charles
“‘Be joyful in God every land.’ Let no one jubilate in a part. Let every land be joyful, let the Catholic Church jubilate.
The Catholic Church embraces the whole. Whosoever holds a part and from the whole is cut off should howl, not jubilate.” -St. Augustine, “Exposition of Psalm 66” (§2)
Don't give up. The worst mistake I ever made was walking away from the Catholic Church in college after freshman year, and what followed was nearly twenty years of pain and wilderness. If I could tell my 18 year old self one thing, just one thing, it would be "never stop going to Mass."