My journal entry read: “Have fallen hopelessly and helplessly in love with the Roman Catholic Church . . . (scared).”
Over the course of four years I enrolled in RCIA three times only to drop out each time. Oh, how I searched for (and ran from) answers to my heart’s yearnings. No, falling in love has not been easy.
I cursed this love. I threw her aside, ignored her, walked away from her—only to “hear” her gently and relentlessly calling me back. I told her she was breaking my heart. She comforted me with psalms and hymns. I told her she confused me.
She answered firmly, earnestly, in daily readings and age-old prayers. I took her to court in my heart and in my mind but could not condemn. I sat in her pews and in her adoration chapels and demanded I be given direction She answered with deep, penetrating silence.
I thought it absurd—crazy—that God would call me into the Roman Catholic Church and would fall to my knees, begging for forgiveness that I would dare question his authority in my life. I ran from God, from this unwanted and unsolicited invitation that I accused him of imposing on me, and was relentlessly pursued.
I challenged him, telling him I did not want this cup he offered and yet, when he persisted, he did so with alarming gentleness. Ultimately, in the innermost chamber where Christ often whispers and makes himself known, I experienced the very first spark of desire to rest in her embrace.
The possibility of loss
But the journey was far from over. During those four years I sensed the Lord asking some probing questions. Do you love me? Would you follow me even if it meant leaving the church community you love? Would you obey me even if it meant losing friendships or family? Or husband?
I knew I needed to honestly address these questions. And I recognized that, if I became Catholic, there was a real possibility of some of this loss actually occurring—and some did. No doubt about it, this journey was hard.
I had some questions of my own—questions for God. One persistent and haunting doubt was, why would God call me out of a church I loved and that loved me? The hint of an answer came, as it had oftentimes in my walk with Christ, with an invitation that seemed to include renouncing something.
This was familiar to me. When I had given my life to Jesus nine years earlier, the decision required me to walk away from much that was familiar, and this felt a lot like that narrow gate we read about in Scripture (see Matthew 7:13-14). In exchange, however, he gave me himself.
I recalled how God called Abraham out of his country, away from his people, and out of his father’s house (see Genesis 12:1). During this period of discernment, I often reflected that God seems to compel us to make a true renunciation of something very dear and precious to us. But he then gives us an assurance that is often fulfilled in the distant future.
Although I was unable to actually see any clear promise regarding my call into the Catholic Church, I was determined to believe there was one for me somewhere in all of this.
Never regret being Catholic
So I continued to search desperately for justification of my wanderlust. I read all the Catholic writing I could get my hands on: Scott Hahn, Jeff Cavins, and Matthew Kelly. I tuned in to Catholic radio, studied the lives of the saints and the Church Fathers. They ministered the truth persistently, lovingly. I pondered the challenging teachings as I poured over the Catechism. I regarded her teaching on contraception. I asked myself, “Could I be a papist? What about annulments?”
Ah . . . annulments. I dove right in and took steps seeking an annulment of a marriage thirty-six years ago—so certain I would be exasperated with the endless paperwork and ridiculous details, only to find that, although the process of revisiting that period of my life was painful, I emerged with deeper healing, amazed at how wise the Church truly is.
“You have the heart of a Catholic,” an old woman said to me.
Maybe it took my heart being broken to finally surrender. Because when I thought I couldn’t stand it anymore, when I thought I had spilled all the tears I had, when I finally gave all my fears over to the Lord, I knew that no argument, no betrayal of friends, no anti-Catholic stance from family, no seemingly reasonable explanation by peers of why entering the Catholic Church was wrong for me, could keep me from running full force into her open doors, rejoicing that I was finally home, that I would not have to spend my entire life endlessly searching, that when faced with the end of my days and my final breath, I need never regret not being Catholic. I knew that the old woman was right. I had undergone a conversion. My mind and heart were already Catholic.
Nowhere else to go
So I sat in Mass Sunday after Sunday, month after month. Though not yet a Catholic, I came to truly understand that Jesus was there, in the Eucharist, and I was drawn to him beyond anything else.
I remember worrying—my annulment may never go through, my current marriage may never be convalidated, there are just too many obstacles. I simply may never be able to enter the Catholic Church. But then I resolved: if I have to sit in this pew until the end of my days without entering into full communion with the Church, well, that is just the way it would have to be.
Because, honestly, I decided there was just nowhere else to go I accepted that simply sitting in the same room with Christ would be enough. And that is when I understood the power of Christ in the Eucharist. I realized that by saying yes to him, little by little I was being led home to Mother Church.
Who is this God, I wondered, who takes me in—a weak and unworthy servant, all too often won over by my own vulnerability and desires—and does not condemn me for my failures? Who is this God, I thought, who accepts the only thing I have to give—a fragile and often corrupt heart—and calls me an adopted daughter? Who is this God who offers me Life itself—the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist?
Could I at the time see all that he intended for me in the Catholic Church? No. But I did see the doors of the Church flung open, waiting to receive me. I saw beauty and history and truth. I rested in the ancient liturgy. I was drawn to the rosary. I saw the ones with knees worn rough—the faithful, the wise, the holy ones. They were there.
I saw too a church full of some people who need to rediscover why they are Catholic. I sensed some were even ashamed to be Catholic. I saw those confused by the angry shouts of our culture, a culture that often misunderstands and actively persecutes the Catholic Church. I realized that many Catholics cannot respond because they do not know her teachings. Some have lost appreciation for the beautiful gift of being born into a Catholic family, a sacred treasure handed down to them through the generations.
Learn your faith, I urged. Never be ashamed to be Catholic. The people of the world need you to help bring Jesus to them. The world needs you to lead them home to holy Mother Church, for, truly, she is a lamp on a hill. And so I too finally asked, how can I not make the same journey home? How can I not personally take the step others refuse to take?
Does the Catholic Church see me, I wondered? Often I felt invisible and questioned whether I would ever maintain that I really belonged. Yet I came to rest in the assurance that God would not leave me an orphan—that there was, indeed, a family waiting for me.
I believed that his plans for a future that was good and full of hope were true (see Jeremiah 29:11)—that I would prosper as a newly adopted daughter in the Church Jesus founded 2,000 years ago.