Why did I become a Catholic? The Longer Answer Part 2

We left off in Part 1 where Jesus rescued me by direct intervention as I was being tempted to despair of life due to the crushing fear in my life.  What was the source of the fear?  Fear of failure and that my chosen line of work seemed to always be demanding more of me than I was able to give.  And I didn't have that close walk with Jesus and a life of prayer that I wanted.  So God gave me some hints as I set out on my journey.

God gave me a couple of convictions during that time in the Sierra foothills.  One was that bishops were really needed in the church to help shepherd young pastors and their congregations and that seemed to confirm my observations over the past 15 years.  And the second was that I needed to find a church that worshiped Him physically with my body in the form of a liturgy and not just mentally or intellectually.  How did God reveal these to me?  Kind of like the movie title, "While you were (or in this case while I) was sleeping...".  I woke up with these convictions.  Did I share these with anyone?  I don't think so.  It was a private revelation but I did start heading in those directions.  Plus I didn't really think any of my family or friends would be interested in coming along with me.

I started by browsing in a local used bookstore near my work during my lunch hours.  One of my first acquisitions was a Book of Common Prayer of the Protestant Episcopal Church that was given to someone by a pastor in 1953 according to the inscription on the inside cover.  And it opened a whole new world of prayer possibilities to me, things to talk with God about.  The words of the prayers gave expression to the wordless groanings and longings and aspirations locked up in my heart.

I started to investigate the Anglican (Church of England)/Episcopal in the US tradition.  For a while I was interested in a small evangelical denomination called the Reformed Episcopal Church which is smaller in its entirety than some single mega-churches.  I even wrote to them and got their version of the Book of Common Prayer and their articles and constitution but their churches are few and even more so in the western United States.  There was a small mission meeting in the pastor's home 30 to 40 miles away so I didn't pursue it.

That was as far as I went while in the Sierra foothills and then because I felt the need to change jobs again, we moved to Central Oregon to live near my parents.  I was going to try to switch lines of work at that time but it didn't happen because I didn't know what else to do and I was risk averse.

Howard, you are a nice guy but... or how I became a Christian in the first place.

Howard, you are a nice guy but...  That was how girls usually began informing me that our brief relationship was coming to an end.  But... they never finished the sentence and told me exactly why it was coming to an end.  Where was I deficient?  How could I improve?  I started wondering, is there something wrong with being a nice guy?  Were they looking for bad guys to have relationships with?  But then I actually met a girl that finished the sentence and gave me a specific reason for ending the relationship and I was so amazed at her reason it triggered a "born-again" experience and I asked Jesus, the God-became-man, the Son of the Most High God, one of the 3 persons in the one God, to come into my life at age 20 and He did!  End of story.  Jesus and I have been together ever since.

But wait a minute, Howard, what was the reason?  But more later.  One does have to work for a living.  So stay tuned.

Okay, let me back up.  She was one of my classmates at college in the San Francisco Bay Area and I asked her out for a date and so we had our first date together.  Then I asked her for a second date and I was going to take her up to San Francisco for a nice dinner and she said yes so at the appointed time I swung by her place to take her up there.  But she appeared at the door in a t-shirt, jeans and slippers and told me she was sick so we postponed the dinner until the following week.

The next week she was ready to go when I picked her up but as we were driving up there she was pretty quiet and I thought to myself, "Oh boy, here it comes, "Howard, you are a nice guy but...".  She was quiet during dinner and asked to be taken home shortly afterwards.  All the time I was thinking the same thought, here it comes.

When we got to her parents' house, she asked me to come sit with her on their front porch.  That was a bit of a change.  So the first thing she said was, "Howard, I need to ask for your forgiveness."  I think my eyebrows must have shot upwards.  Then she went on to tell me that she lied to me the previous week when she said she was sick and she wasn't.  She was trying to figure out a way to break off the relationship but that wasn't the right way to handle it.  So I said that I accepted her apology and I forgave her and I thanked her for being honest with me.  I was impressed at her courage and humility.

Then she went on to explain why she couldn't go out with me anymore and it boiled down to the fact that she was a believer and a follower of Jesus Christ and that I wasn't and so she never should have said yes in the first place to going out with me.  But as she was talking it seemed like she was glowing and I could see Jesus in her and I wanted what she had.  So I asked her to tell me about her relationship with Jesus and she did and she glowed even more.  Then I asked her, "My friends say that I need to ask Jesus into my life and all that I have to do is pray."  "How and what do I pray?"  And she gave me a brief outline of what I needed to cover in my conversation with Him.

Then I told her that I understood her reason for breaking up and I thanked her for her courage and honesty.  I took my leave of her and went home and asked Jesus to forgive me for my sins and to please come into my life.  And He did!  But it took me about 3 hours sitting in the dark at home to get the prayer out.

I called and asked if I could meet with her to tell her what had happened and she agreed to and so we met and talked.  I never asked her out again because I wanted to make sure my motives weren't mixed.  It was too important.

And that is how I became a Christian in the first place.  Pretty rad, huh?

God tucks his truth away in a lot of different places for us to discover it or to be reminded of it. Often the people conveying the truth don't even realize its source or the One who planted it there within them.

Joan and I watch movies and we are amazed at how often Gospel truth comes out in the movies in a number of lines. One example is from the movie about the small unlikely racehorse Seabiscuit. Tom Smith, the future trainer of Seabiscuit, is asked by Charles Howard, the future owner of Seabiscuit, why he is working to save a horse that was going to be destroyed because of a leg injury. Tom replies "You know, you don't throw a whole life away just 'cause he's banged up a little." Charles Howard later applies the same truth when Tom wants to fire their jockey for his failure to mention his blindness in one eye that cost them a race. Question to ponder, are there people in our lives today that we need to apply this message to? Perhaps we even need to apply it to ourselves?

God is like Tom Smith the horseman. He fixes us because He can and He often uses us to fix each other. God loves redemption.

Judging

Matthew 7:1 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? NIV
Matthew 5:7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. NIV
Matthew 6:12 And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Book of Common Prayer
Matthew 7:12 “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. This is the law and the prophets." NABRE
...
The words of Jesus coming to mind after watching yet another media tribunal. Oh how we love to judge others and their worth and what should be done with them while we overlook our own often more severe sins of commission and omission.

When I was a kid, "Confucius says..." alleged sayings were popular, most of which I doubt were authentic. But there was one that I liked because it was so true it made me laugh. "He who can smile in the midst of adversity has thought of someone to blame the adversity on."

Sometimes justice is being served but most often we are looking for a human being to heap our rage upon when things go wrong for us. Often our rage is really directed at God but we choose someone seemingly more accessible to be the recipient.

I was reflecting the other day on the 2nd of the 5 Sorrowful Mysteries, the scourging of Jesus at the pillar and indeed of his whole passion. He received the full brunt of our fury at God.

Why did I become a Catholic? The longer answer Part 1

When and why did my journey towards the Catholic Church start?
We were living in the Sierra foothills.  I had been an evangelical Christian for about 15 years and married to my godly wife for about 14 years and we had 4 wonderful children.  I was an adult Bible study leader and teacher at our church.

I was wrestling with my work and feeling a lot of fear and isolation.  Even though I knew the Bible and theology pretty well, I had a hard time praying and spending time with the Lord.  I also had idols (not the figurines from the biblical times, but the lifestyle substitutes for God) in my life that I ran to for comfort to try to make the fear bearable.  I was beginning to despair of life and was sitting on the floor of one of our bathrooms at 2 am one morning thinking that no one understood the fear I was feeling which was crushing the life out of me.  It was then that Jesus spoke to me.  He said, "I know how you feel."  I responded with an incredulous "You do?"  And He said, "Yes, remember the Garden of Gethsemane where I was in anguish and sweat great drops like blood?  I know how you feel."  I said, "Oh yeah, I guess you do."  That was the end of the conversation and I felt hope start coming back into my heart.  Jesus really did know how I felt and so I was not alone.

All for now.  I am tired.

I sing for I cannot be silent, His love is the theme of my song

Fanny Crosby, the hymnwriter and author of the hymn Redeemed from whence the title of this post comes,  and I are kindred spirits.  We have never met in person since she died about half a century before I was born.

Do you ever get excited about God and at the same time are filled with intense longing for Him?  Or am I crazy?  When I get this way, I just feel like I have to express it or I'll bust.  I can't concentrate on anything else until I express it or it will take a long time to seep out.

Kind of like that Don Francisco song, "Got to tell somebody...".

Anyway, thanks, Fanny, for writing words that unlock my joy and give it expression.  I'm looking forward to meeting you.  Here's the link but watch out, it might get stuck in your head and start coming out and then you will get strange looks from folks.  :)

http://cyberhymnal.org/htm/r/e/redeemed.htm

The unknown goal of our restless hearts

In Book 1, Chapter 1 of The Confessions, St. Augustine writes his famous phrase, "...for Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee." However, it often takes us a long time to identify the cause of our restlessness and who it is we are longing for. And even when we have discovered that it is God, our fickle hearts have a hard time believing that it is true and so we go off vainly seeking to fill that longing with the goods of this world which can never satisfy and fill "the deep caverns of feeling" that St. John of the Cross writes about in Stanza 3 of his poem, The Living Flame of Love, and his explanations thereof. We also try to cover over those caverns and live superficially.

These are thoughts of St. Augustine and St. John of the Cross of which I am merely a grateful recipient and which I combine and share with you as one who is connecting the dots as I sojourn through life with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My will or His?

Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven,
give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Amen

Catholics usually stop the "Our Father" (as they usually call it) here, whereas Protestants usually add this phrase which some later manuscripts add to the "Lord's Prayer" (as they usually call it), "For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen." Catholics do add this additional phrase during the Mass after a few intervening prayers.

The part I have been thinking about is the phrase, "...thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." What we are really asking for is for God's will to be done on earth and in our lives. We are aligning ourselves with God's will here and not ours. We are praying the same prayer that Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane as He sweat great drops like blood in anguish as He faced his time which had come. The time to lay down His life for us. After asking for the cup to pass from Him, He finishes his prayers to His Father with, "And yet not My will but Yours be done." A question to ask ourselves is whether we really want His will? Often what we really want, if we are honest, is for our will to be done in heaven as we seek to have it done on earth. Jesus identified with us in the Garden wanting the cup to pass but then he chose to entrust Himself to the Father and offered up His life.

Why did I become a Catholic? The short answer.

I am often asked, "Why did you become a Catholic?". Now I have learned that is often a rhetorical question not requiring an answer. What they really mean is, "Have you lost your mind?!" And I can really understand their sentiment having once been skeptical of the Catholic Church, just like them. Even if they sort of want to know, they usually ask me in a context where I have about 30 seconds t...o answer and a thousand reasons are coming to my mind all vying for expression and so I was giving rather vague answers. So I finally have come up with the answer that sums those reasons up. "It helps me to walk with Jesus and hang onto Him." That's the short answer. Now if people want to know how it helps me to do so, then that will require sitting down over cups of coffee and talking about it.

But having become a Catholic doesn't mean that I don't value having been an evangelical Protestant. I was introduced to Jesus and I was given the Biblical background and ministry training that enhances my experience, understanding and service as a Catholic. I go to 2 churches every weekend and I love my brothers and sisters in both. My Catholic parish and the evangelical Protestant church Joan belongs to. I am blessed by both. A double blessing.

What's in a name?

Well, I have been a bit of an ecclesiastical butterfly and I had to come up with a Title for my new blog that was available so voila!  The roost piece refers to the fact that I swam the Tiber as they say in 2010 and became a Roman Catholic.  I started out life being baptized as an infant in the mainline Presbyterian Church which I left at age 14, living as a pagan for 6 years before having a conversion experience at age 20 and becoming an evangelical non-denominational Christian.  For the next 36 years, I learned how to study the Bible, teach and preach but I was looking for a fuller, more consistent walk with Jesus which led me to the Catholic Church looking for help.  I will be posting some of the things I have learned or currently am thinking about in and on my journey.