Roman Reflections, Part IV

I was thinking about why I have been so moved by these posts from Catholic converts, and I think as much as anything, it was their humility. These folks have all been prepared to say, "I was wrong," and to go on to act to put that right, with integrity and conviction, prepared to allow God himself to change their lives, sometimes in radical and uncomfortable ways.

Jennifer F says, showing why it is so necessary to take her writings seriously:

I am asked with increasing frequency why I converted to Catholicism as opposed to one of the other Christian denominations. Though this blog is sort of one long conversion story, I've never put together a post summarizing that part of my journey because that subject matter can be a hot (and divisive) topic.

Also, these types of posts are often interpreted to have an implication that people who have had different experiences and have come to different conclusions about religion and God are wrong and therefore not going to be saved. I want to make it really clear that that is not what I believe (nor what the Church believes - in fact, one of the many things that resonated as true about Catholic teaching is the belief that non-Catholics and non-Christians could also go to heaven).

Anyway, I've decided to go ahead and write about that part of the conversion process, but I want to add a big disclaimer that I'm sharing this in the spirit of telling my story. I am far too concerned about what I see happening in the world today to have any interest in causing division among Christians. We're in this together.

As always, please take this for what it is: the ramblings of some fool with an internet connection. :) Take it (and everything else I write) with a grain of salt.

Will Duquette, a man whose courage, tenderness and honesty are real examples of how practically to live the life of faith when all the certainties have been spilled out of their box, says:

And so we prayed a lot, and I spent a lot of time studying up on the Roman Catholic Church and talking about it with Jane, and I talked it over with a number of friends. Eventually we had a long talk with Fr. Ed Dover, the priest at the local Catholic church (the church, in fact, where I was confirmed). Jane and I were interested in asking the question, more or less, “If we did decide to become Catholic, what would happen?” This was with special reference to community–what opportunities would be available for us to get to know people. At this point Fr. Ed made something perfectly clear: he wasn’t going to talk about “programs” with us. The Faith had to come before utilitarian issues. He was happy to “give us refuge” for as long as we needed it, and to discuss the Faith with us, but unless we came to believe that Catholicism was true the programs at St. James were irrelevant...

I am quite likely going to be thought unfair by my Anglican brethren, for which I beg forgiveness. They are quite likely right. I like to find evidence that bolsters my preconceptions as much as anyone, and my own desires were seriously in conflict during this period of time. I had found the Church of the See of Rome to be a lovely and glorious thing, and I wanted to be united with it; I’m afraid that deep down, though I didn’t want to leave St. Luke’s, I wanted to find reason to. If I had found reason to stay, I’m not sure what I would have done...

The next bit is hard for me to write about. I’m an intellectual, logical sort of person, and my path to this point was an intellectual, logical sort of path. My experience at Holy Redeemer that evening hit me right in the heart, not in the head. I’ll try to describe it, but I doubt I can convey it all that well...

Looking back over this series of posts, it seems to me that there’s a sense of inevitability about the whole thing that might be accurate in one sense but isn’t at all what I felt at the time. Indeed, I can still hardly believe it. There have been any number of moments over the last month or so when I've told myself, "What are you doing? Are you crazy?" And then I've gone back over my reasons, one by one, and answered, "No, I don’t think so. It’s scary, but it makes sense."

I may not agree with some of Will's views on the Anglican Church (but see Titus 3.9 - admonition to myself!) as expressed elsewhere in his seven-part series on his return to the church of his youth, but you have to admire a man who writes like this!

Aimee Milburn, the woman whose path led her from Evangelical mega-church to the Catholic faith, and whose shining intelligence seeps out of every space in her blog, says this:

As I read and studied scripture over time, one passage about Jesus gradually emerged into my consciousness, and one day I stopped and really read it, from the first chapter of Colossians:

He is the image of the invisible God.
In him all things were created, in heaven and on earth.
All things were created through him and for him.
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

All things were created through him. In him all things hold together.

In my mind’s eye, I began to see a different image of Jesus than I had seen before, an image I have pondered since: not just standing before me personally, but standing above, beyond, and around all creation. In my mind’s eye the whole earth, and all creation, took shape within Jesus and emerged into visibility through him; and yet continued to remain fully within Him, being held together in Him. I saw Christ surrounding all creation with His whole person, His whole being, encompassing it, through His inner life and reality giving creation existence and cohesion within Himself...

I went to mass tonight, and at the end, after receiving Holy Communion, was meditating on everything I had written here [in her four-part account of her conversion] earlier. Suddenly, in my mind’s eye, I saw the fullness of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each pouring out to the other in an endless cycle of love. In the heart of the Trinity was creation, emerging in the heart of God as an expression of all the glory and love of God.

At the intersection of the smallest point of the heart of the Trinity was emerging the individual human heart. It was as if every human heart was emerging from the center point of the Trinity.
Emerging in the individual human heart, when it was opened up and given over to God, was the Trinity itself, like a beautiful flower coming forth.

As Jesus said on his last night on earth,"[I] pray . . . that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be in us . . . that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me . . . that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them." (Jn 17:20-26)

We emerge in God, and live and move and have our being in Him. God, when we give ourselves over to Him, in and through Christ, emerges and lives and moves and has His being in us. And the cycle is complete - and will never end.

This is just such beautiful writing - this woman knows God, has encountered him in a way that we should all dream of encountering him, and has written (do read the whole long essay) with such passionate clarity that it brings tears to my eyes just reading her words.

I really don't know just what God is doing when he calls people like this (back) to the Church of Rome, but clearly what has happened has had eternal significance for a number of remarkable human beings, and has given rise to some moving and profoundly honest writings. They all, and no doubt many like them whom I have yet to encounter, deserve to be read.