Source and Summit

 

 

 

(Source) the place where something begins

(Summit)  the highest point, level or degree

 

 

     I’ve scaled some very small mountains, and hiked some higher cliffs without actually reaching the summit but even those climbs were grueling for an untrained out of shape mother type.

 

 

   Many years ago, I ‘found’ Jesus, little understanding at the time, that it was not really me who did the finding at all. It was more of a returning home really after a lengthy vacation abroad.  After I ‘found’ Jesus anew and was enlightened to His reality, I really thought my enlightenment was complete and my Christian growth was only a matter of filling in the few blanks remaining of what I didn’t know.  I realized how little I did know, and so began my quest to learn everything I could of exactly what I didn’t know! 

     After my conversion and return to Jesus I found myself firmly in the camp of Protestantism.  I had much to protest!  Mainly I simply could not understand how I could have missed this new found friend of mine named Jesus, in all of the years I had attended Catholic school and Mass.  How was it possible to miss the point so drastically as to miss the point??    I   almost immediately realized that my former ‘lost ness’ was clearly the fault of the cold, distant, authoritarian and misleading Catholic Church.   This conviction grew at the same rate as the fervor for my newfound love of God grew.  It grew as a rival plant in my carefully tended heart, supporting the great conviction of Solo Jesus, me Jesus and the Bible against the world.   I watered this plant into a growing suspicion of anything and even anyone ‘Catholic’. I was convinced that the Church was apostate and was leading many astray.  I’m sure my mother and father could attest to my strong convictions at that time, and of my insistence of their need to leave the apostate church.  It wasn’t long before I developed a firm resentment for things Catholic, distrusting the relationships Catholics had with their Savior.  I was certain that they, like myself, had been naively deceived and were living a distant fear-based religion that could not save them, as only  “Jesus Saves”.  It seems strange to me now that my great love affair with God engendered fear of and almost a hate for the Catholic Church. 

     To be fair, I was listening then, in my newfound fervor, to many a preacher promoting that very view.  My attitude was, I think, more reflective of Peter than Paul.  The Apostle Paul gave passive assent, by holding the cloaks of the men stoning Stephen, while Peter, leaping into action, thrust aggressively at the enemy of Christ slicing off the offending ear!  Both disciples had fervency, surety, and a strong desire to defend God, but perhaps I was more like Peter in his active pursuit of ‘helping’ God.  It is an odd kind of ‘help’ that seeks the destruction of the objects of God’s love. I think it is fairly indicative of the fundamental sin that has plagued our race from Adam’s time. Pride.  God must need ME to defend Him, at least that much was clear to me. 

 

     How, when and why my heart changed is still a mystery to me.  Grace was involved I know, but by whose love and prayers I won’t fully realize this side of the veil. I have come to appreciate the good humor of the original comedian, so to speak.   I’ve found that God rather delights in demonstrating to me my innate foolishness, all in good measure, of course. The fervent anti-Catholic fundamentalist Sola Scriptura evangelical has permanently altered into a fundamentally orthodox, traditional old-school Catholic firmly committed and rooted in …… obeying, the Magesterium in all things.

 

Man that’s weird!

 

   It seems today only the slimmest minority of Catholics actually believe that the “Magisterium in union with the Pope’s” teachings is the authentic voice of Christ, speaking on faith and morals in the world, even though this understanding is the actual “Catholic” teaching. It seems that Catholics willing to follow these teachings are even a smaller slice of the pie.  As a protestant I was very comfortable believing what I believed based on what I believed. As a Catholic I have struggled with conscience and reason and understanding on many moral issues, but when all is said and done I have yet to disagree with any official Catholic teaching in the realm of morals or faith whether it be abortion contraception or divorce.  This is also the product of a will that has already assented to the claims of Catholicism. The more I’ve investigated when conflict has arisen in my mind, the more I have come to accept and believe. The Church’s positions when clearly understood seem eminently reasonable to me.   Now, that is amazing, for someone who is a spiritual knowledge junkie needing the intellectual assent to faith.

 

 

     I remember a woman I met while I was still a Protestant believer. She and I had just left a bible study at the little congregational church I attended at the time, and as we conversed, she revealed to me that she attended both the Catholic Church and the protestant church. This oddity perked my interest of course and I probed her strange behavior.  She responded, “It’s just that the Catholic writings are so much deeper than the protestant offerings.”    I wasn’t sure what she meant. I did know that most contemporary Christian books were of the self-help spiritual variety and did leave me also wanting something deeper. I asked her to explain and she shared with me some of her journey. It was a little thing, but being a “thinker type” at least according to a personality test I once took, it explains the staying power of her little comment about the spiritual depth she found in Catholic writings.   Around that time a friend introduced me to Thomas Merton, who was a deceased, artistic atheist become Catholic convert, monk and writer.  His words opened a world of spiritual thought, depth and pondering to me. No Man Is an Island, Thoughts in Solitude are some of the writings that stimulated within me a growing hunger for even greater depth and richness. I simply consumed his thoughts and although I couldn’t always grasp his exact meanings, I got the gist of his expression and a greater yearning stirred within me. I developed a voracious appetite for reading other Catholic writings, such as the History of the Church by Esubieus written sometime in the early 300’s AD and various other extra-biblical works by the early Church Fathers. It was a journey once begun that led almost directly across the street.  

 

    Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church, Village St Medway Ma. situated diagonally across and only a stones throw away from my church, the Medway Village Congregational Church hosted a pro-life meeting one evening.  I attended.  It is difficult to give credit where credit is due in this case, but it is an undeniable truth that National Public Radio aided my reversion back to the Catholic faith. NPR was and had been for several years the source of my nightly fare of information, and as information is what I constantly crave, I listened every night.  The subject at hand involved abortion, although that term wasn’t exactly used. It rarely is in polite discussion of the topic. The pro-life movement in today’s vernacular is always coined as either anti-choice (a self-proclaiming bad thing since anyone against choice must be bad) or anti-abortion (two negatives) verses the obviously enlightened position of pro-choice (two positives) the choice being to abort an unborn human, that is. Sometimes the obvious bias in expression is so mainstream in acceptance that even I, a thinker type, am slightly confused about who is who and what is what and who am I.  In any case, that particular evening the bias in favor of abortion expressed by the host was so verbally deceptive that my gut and mind revolted suddenly, violently and completely against receiving any more sustenance from such a morally poisoned silo. I have never by ‘choice’ listened again to NPR despite the fact that my husband loves All Things Considered!

 

      I did however begin to seek out avenues supporting the pro-life cause and so a short time later, I became involved with Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church, as it alone, of the four churches in Medway, took a stand against abortion and was actually attempting to do something to oppose it.  I found there, a few people of moral courage coupled with what I thought was extraordinary kindness and so began a convergence of thought, experience and desire that led in the end to our family’s final walk across the street. 

 

    

    It was five minutes to ten on a Sunday morning.  Our two daughters separated John and me in the seat; Sarah age six and Abby age two.  Our ‘Church Family’ was just beginning to finally quiet down after a loud and friendly time of warm fellowship when the worship music finally began. John and I glanced at each other as married couples sometimes do, and our eyes locked, communicating an abrupt convergence of thought.  He whispered to me “We don’t belong here anymore”. “I Know” I replied in a whisper of my own.  What are we going to do?”  “I don’t know” Why don’t you take Abby out that door and I’ll take Sarah out the other door and we’ll meet out front.”  “OK” was all I could manage, so as inconspicuously as possible I slid out of the row in one direction and made for the basement exit while John headed for the side door.   We had been discussing changing churches for a while and had even visited a few.  We were considering the Episcopal Church, but john’s feeling was that if we were moving in ‘that’ direction, why not go all the way!  I was not yet convinced of the Catholic Church’s validity, the validity of its claims that is. John never cared a jot nor even understood its claims of teaching infallibility. It wasn’t even a consideration to him. I must say that it did become so later on in the living out of those claims!  At the time, however and still today, he will declare the same basis for leading us across Village St.  and into the ancient Church of Rome. He converted to Catholicism because he wanted to kneel.  His grandmother Isabel had arthritic knees and would kneel despite her pain. She was Church of England.   John out of deference to his Grandmother’s painful stiff knees simply liked the way Catholics are forever kneeling and how it sometimes hurts.

 

     So, we met in front of Medway Village Church, held the hands of our two young children, and crossed Village St. just in time for the 10:00 am Mass.  I closed my eyes, head down and prayed a prayer as we walked across the street.  I said, ”Lord I’ll do this but only if what the Catholic Church claims is actually true, otherwise I just can’t and P.S. you’ll have to prove it to me.”  I knew that I simply wouldn’t join the Catholic Church if I didn’t believe its claims of authority.  I also knew that what the Church claimed required more faith than I actually had.  Besides, I really liked the protestant church and I didn’t want to leave it! The people at MWV church had been good to us and I was afraid to leave the ready-made support system we had there.   Never the less

Within a month we were on the fast track to officially joining the Mother Church.  John was enrolled in the RCIA program for adult converts and I had once again received the sacrament of confession and communion.  Father McKenzie was more than a little pleased with our presence in the Church, as there had been a steady flow of parishioners leaving and crossing the road in the other direction.  We it seems were rather unique.

 

     One by one my doctrinal doubts came into focus and one by one I became convinced of the “Fullness of Truth” preserved in official Catholic Teaching.  As a child the nuns would always say that phrase, in referring to the Catholic Church, and its unique place in Christendom but I never had understood before exactly they meant.  My heart was wide open and I wanted only the truth.  There was one very important doctrine left that I needed clarified in order for me to fully accept my destiny as a devout Catholic. All of the others made sense to me but for almost seven years I had attended churches in which communion was proclaimed as a symbolic act only.  It was indeed, as claimed, in the Protestant churches only bread and Welch’s grape juice, yet now, I was expected to believe that Jesus himself, present in the form of bread and wine, was to be my food.  I was receiving, yet I simply didn’t know if it was bread or the flesh of God.  It is rather an important distinction. How is one to know for certain such a thing!  We were attending Mass for perhaps two months when I began to wonder and question and then to even to worry about it. Before that time I really hadn’t given it much thought.  In the bread of life discourse in the Gospel of John 6, Jesus himself declares:  

 

     “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. And I will raise him up on the last day.  For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.”  After Jesus declared this seeming absurdity the scripture declares plainly that hundreds of his followers simply abandoned him. They apparently thought He was a madman after all. They understood him to mean a literal eating of his flesh and He did not correct their thinking, He did not assure them that he only meant a symbolic eating…. He allowed them to leave. He let them go. Only the twelve remained and Christ turned to them with the question, “Will you also leave me”?  Jesus was neither softening his teaching nor changing it in any way.  I instinctively understood when facing my own doubts that The Eucharist is the dividing line, just as those early followers had realized.  They said,  “This is a hard teaching, who can accept it?’

 

I too knew that if I could not accept it then I could not remain Catholic no matter how many other doctrines I was coming to appreciate and even to love.

 

 

    Now to my mini miracle.

 

     I began to dwell on my doubts more and more, especially at Mass.  The moment of worship when the priest raises the host above all and holds it suspended above the congregation for a second or two longer than is absolutely necessary. That moment demonstrates the historical faith in the sacrament, and I challenged it by my doubts each time I attended Mass.    How was I to know?  I finally decided that maybe I should be simple about my dilemma and just ask.  So that’s what I did. “Lord are you really present or not? I really have to know.”

      As a young Child I simply accepted what I was taught about my faith, but my spiritual journey had changed all that. Now I wanted to know. I needed to know.   There is another scripture that comes to mind, ‘Seek Me with your whole heart and you will find Me.’ Lord knows I did that. God is interested in the heart. It’s the heart that has the power to love God and accept Him as well as the power to hate Him, reject Him or even simply disregard Him.

 

 

     It was probably a week or so later when God answered me.  It was a bright sunny autumn day and I was chosen to be a chaperone for Abby’s fall field trip to the Big Apple, an orchard located only a few miles away in Mendon.  As we waited in the bus for the nursery schoolers to board, my mind was mulling over the day’s expectations.  Abby settled down next to me and I put my arm around her.  Soon we would be eating apple dumplings or maybe even a candied apple.  There was a small turn around in front of our former church, which was the home of “The Good Shepherd Nursery School.”   John had carved the school’s sign a few years earlier when the church had begun the ministry and I had done the design.  My thoughts were set on the beauty of the day and the happy time I hoped for.  As the bus driver made the turn around I was thinking autumn colors and of the apple pie I would bake for dinner. I glanced out the window to my left as we passed Medway Village Church, still daydreaming of fall delights.  Then we began to pass Saint Joe’s on my right and I gazed in that direction.  We hadn’t quite passed when a very odd thing happened to me.  The best way to describe it is by directing you to the image of the Sacred Heart.  Jesus, His heart exposed, thorns atop, heart on fire.   My heart began to burn.  That’s the best way to describe it.  It wasn’t a painful burn but it was an intense sensation that was physical, right in my heart.  It felt like Love made tangible, physical, as if you could hold it in your hand.  The memory of that feeling still resonates in my being although I’ve never felt it again.  Remember I spoke earlier of a glance married couples share in a moment of understanding?  At the exact moment when I fixed my eyes on St.Joe’s, I felt the burn and I knew beyond doubt that our hearts had joined and that Jesus was telling me of his real Presence in the tabernacle.  He said to my heart, it is because “I Am here”.  I have never doubted the truth of His Real presence since. It is indeed the source and summit of my faith just as the Church teaches.  It is the single reason that I will never leave the safety of the Ark again. How could I?   To quote Peter (John 6:67,68) When Jesus asked him, “Will you also leave me?”  “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You alone have the words of life.”  Only the twelve remained, all other’s had left Jesus over the “hard” saying regarding eating his flesh and drinking his blood.

     Now when I genuflect, upon entering the pew, for the celebration of Mass, I have one consistent prayer on my lips and in my heart.  I say,  “Thank you Lord for letting me be here. And please don’t ever allow me leave.”