As an Evangelical Lutheran, I thought I knew Jesus Christ because I was familiar with his word. One of Martin Luther’s rallying cries had been sola scriptura, and Scripture had been the primary focus of the Lutheran churches I had attended as a child and teen. The Liturgy of the Word consisted of Scripture readings and a homily. Three Sundays out of four, that was the service in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America—the church in which I had been baptized and raised.
But it’s what happened every fourth Sunday that eventually led me into the Catholic Church: a Communion service.
Approaching the Lord’s table for the first time as a Lutheran teen, I recall the strange mixture of excitement and nervousness in being able to receive what I felt was Christ’s body and blood.
I approached the communion rail and knelt, waiting for the pastor to approach. First, he broke a piece of wheat bread from a loaf he held in his hands.
“The body of Christ,” he said as he handed me the bread.
“Amen,” I responded as I took the bread in my hands and consumed it.
The young associate pastor followed with a tray of thimble-sized plastic cups filled with wine. With his words “The blood of Christ,” I again said, “Amen,” and I drank from one.
I found the taste of the wine strong. It lingered with me even as I found my place back in the pew. While I was unable to vocalize it, something was different. I felt more spiritually mature—and felt as if I were now a full member of the community that made up St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church.
Communion, as it was termed in the Lutheran church, was a significant part of the Lutheran service for me. I longed to receive communion as often as I could. But because Communion services were held only once a month, if we skipped church on Sunday—something we did with some regularity—it could be months before we would again receive Christ in the form of bread and wine.
It would be fifteen years before I would have a complete understanding of Communion. That came about through my experiences living in a mixed marriage with my Catholic wife.
For the first five years of our marriage, we followed the mixed marriage arrangement, often attending both the Lutheran and Catholic church on Sunday. I was struck, at first, by how similar the two services were. Oftentimes the Scripture readings were exactly the same. As time went on, though, I was struck by the one very big difference.
Whereas the focus in the Lutheran church had been Christ’s word as preached through the Scripture readings and the pastor’s sermon, in the Catholic Church, the Liturgy of the Word was followed by the Liturgy of the Eucharist at each and every Mass. What became clear to me is that there was a different emphasis.
In the early 1990s, when the Lutheran church softened its position on abortion, I knew that I could no longer remain Lutheran. The ELCA had released a draft document on sexuality that described abortion as an “unfortunate, but sometimes necessary circumstance for some women.” I could see nothing necessary in the heinous procedure. Because of some troubling circumstances surrounding my own conception, my mother had faced and resisted considerable outside pressure to abort me.
I suddenly realized that being Lutheran meant far more than just sitting in the pews each Sunday. It meant believing everything that the Lutheran church taught and believed.
That realization began my own spiritual search. I toyed with the idea of becoming Episcopal—a nice halfway point between Lutheran and Catholic—but a thorough study of the issues wouldn’t allow it.
When it came to the Catholic Church, I had difficulties with the usual suspects: confession, papal authority, the role of Mary. Most of my difficulties stemmed from misunderstandings of the Catholic position, which were cleared up through Scripture reading and a course on the fundamentals of Catholicism.
For example, John 20:22–23 (when Christ tells his disciples to forgive others) and James 5:14–15 (when the disciples put that forgiveness into practice) helped clear the way for my understanding of the Church’s sacrament of reconciliation.
Christ’s founding of the Church upon Peter and Peter’s role of primacy throughout Acts helped me to understand the issue of a Church founded upon a fallible man who could teach infallibly.
Mary’s prefigurement in Genesis 3:15, and Scripture’s description of her as “woman” there—as well as at the miracle of Cana, at the foot of the Cross, and again in Revelation—helped me to recognize Mary as the New Eve. This realization made acceptance of the Church’s teachings regarding her Immaculate Conception and Assumption far easier to understand.
A fresh reading of John 6 opened my eyes to what Christ meant when he said, “This is my body. . . . This is my blood.”
My epiphany came, in of all places, before the eucharistic Christ, exposed in a monstrance at perpetual eucharistic adoration.
Out of convenience, I had started attending the Catholic Church with my wife. In September 1994, Bishop Harry Flynn instituted perpetual eucharistic adoration at the parish. A lazy person, not fully realizing what eucharistic adoration is, I signed up for an hour each week. I figured that the practice would give me some discipline in my prayer life.
The first time I went to adoration, I don’t remember genuflecting or even kneeling, but Jesus was working on me slowly. It didn’t take long for me to ask, “Who is this that I’m praying before?” Once I realized the answer to that question, there was nothing that could hold me back from entering the Church.
I liken that experience to the risen Christ’s appearance to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Like the two disciples, I thought I knew Christ because I was familiar with his word. Yet, in the story, when Jesus uses the Old Testament to reveal himself, the disciples still do not recognize him. It is not until they reach Emmaus and he breaks bread with them that he is revealed in his fullness. Once he is revealed, nothing can hold them back. They return to Jerusalem immediately, running to tell the others of their encounter with the risen Lord.
Once Christ was revealed to me—body, blood, soul and divinity—my conversion was imminent. I approached the priest at the Catholic church I had been attending.
“I cannot wait until Easter to come into the Church,” I told him. “I believe everything that the Catholic Church teaches and believes. To wait feels as if I am somehow denying Christ.”
“Then let’s pick a date,” he told me.
On March 19, 1995, the feast of St. Joseph, I was received into the Catholic Church, and for the first time I accompanied my wife to the eucharistic table of our Lord. Even now, ten years later and in this year of the Eucharist, I continue to keep my weekly appointment with Christ through not only the Mass but also the means by which I first came to know him: his veiled presence in perpetual eucharistic adoration, the “breaking of the bread.”