from lukefour18.wordpress.com by Friar Puck
I have been debating…and procrastinating…and fumbling…and avoiding writing about one specific topic. And oddly enough this topic is one of, if not, THE most important ‘thing’ happening in my life.
I am “wading across the Tiber.” I am Coming Home to Rome.
Ok. I’ll just say it. I am finally answering the echoing call that has been in and out of my life for over 20 years: I am becoming Catholic.
I am journeying deeper with Jesus and following his leading into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. I am actually writing about this now even before I have had the cojones to actually tell most folks. But seeing as I live in West Virginia right now, it is impossible for me to go tell everyone face to face. And since no one ever reads my blog
I’m just writing this out for me.
At this juncture I am not going to write about all the study, prayer, study, prayer, anguishing, struggling, etc., that has gone into this decision. Suffice it to say that when I finally said my “fiat” to God that I would obey what I was being led to do, I felt as much peace if not more then when I had my first ‘conversion’ to Christ back in 1985.
And this has not been an easy decision, for if any of you know anything about Evangelical Protestants, it is that they think they are the ‘true church’ and find Catholics to be at best lost and wayward and at worst idolatrous heretics. But I am following the gentle and not so gentle leadings of the Spirit as he guides and provides for me the grace to do this.
Some will question my ‘salvation’ to which I will reply, I love and hunger for Jesus more today than I ever have in 25 years. Some will question my sanity to which I will reply, I lost that a long time ago, so this decision has nothing to do with it. Some will wonder “why now?” to which I will reply that the grace and movement of God regarding my becoming Catholic has been so strong, so pervasive, and so persuasive that I am no longer able to deny the truth: I believe what the Church teaches as both historically sound and biblically rich, and I believe her to be the Church that Christ established on earth (Matt. 16:15-19).
And there are many, many, many other pronouncements that the Church makes that make not only empirical sense but hold sway within Tradition, and lastly within my heart as I seek and ask God to lead me into all the truth (not just the truth with which I feel comfortable), and that truth is the Catholic Church. If you click on the “Bio of Friar Puck” to the right you will see that most of those who have fed me spiritually (Jesus aside) are Catholic.
And let me also state unequivocally that I am grateful for all that God has done in and through my Evangelical brothers and sisters; I am grateful for their passion for a ‘personal’ intimacy with Jesus and their love for Sacred Scripture; I am grateful for the grace of God I experienced there.
When I try and describe this conversion deeper into God and led by the urging and promptings of the Spirit, I find the truest answer to be (and I am quoting the Coming Home Network), that the Catholic Church is “deep in history, deep in Tradition, and deep in Christ.”
I am receiving personal catechesis from Fr. Krempa, parish priest at Sacred Heart Church in Winchester, VA…a beautiful Church filled with the Spirit and filled with the faithful. As it stands now, if things go along schedule, I will be received into the Catholic Church on Pentecost Sunday (June 12, 2011) but all of this is up in the air and in God’s time – for this is truly a Kairos Moment, a time of God’s visitation into my life and world. But in my heart of hearts I am already a Catholic Christian.
I will write on this more…for I know this decision will alienate some and endear me to others; it will cause some to stop being my friend, or think I’m backsliding and in dire error, and it will make some stop reading me, and others possibly start. Who knows save God alone. But the Truth shall set me free (even as it ‘tees me off’).
But for now, I’ll close with a quote that best describes what happens to me within the realm of Catholicism, a quote from another (much older, wiser, more accomplished) evangelical convert to Catholicism, Dr. Peter Kreeft, when he said “God comes in one end and out the other…”
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
I have been debating…and procrastinating…and fumbling…and avoiding writing about one specific topic. And oddly enough this topic is one of, if not, THE most important ‘thing’ happening in my life.
I am “wading across the Tiber.” I am Coming Home to Rome.
Ok. I’ll just say it. I am finally answering the echoing call that has been in and out of my life for over 20 years: I am becoming Catholic.
I am journeying deeper with Jesus and following his leading into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. I am actually writing about this now even before I have had the cojones to actually tell most folks. But seeing as I live in West Virginia right now, it is impossible for me to go tell everyone face to face. And since no one ever reads my blog
I’m just writing this out for me.At this juncture I am not going to write about all the study, prayer, study, prayer, anguishing, struggling, etc., that has gone into this decision. Suffice it to say that when I finally said my “fiat” to God that I would obey what I was being led to do, I felt as much peace if not more then when I had my first ‘conversion’ to Christ back in 1985.
And this has not been an easy decision, for if any of you know anything about Evangelical Protestants, it is that they think they are the ‘true church’ and find Catholics to be at best lost and wayward and at worst idolatrous heretics. But I am following the gentle and not so gentle leadings of the Spirit as he guides and provides for me the grace to do this.
Some will question my ‘salvation’ to which I will reply, I love and hunger for Jesus more today than I ever have in 25 years. Some will question my sanity to which I will reply, I lost that a long time ago, so this decision has nothing to do with it. Some will wonder “why now?” to which I will reply that the grace and movement of God regarding my becoming Catholic has been so strong, so pervasive, and so persuasive that I am no longer able to deny the truth: I believe what the Church teaches as both historically sound and biblically rich, and I believe her to be the Church that Christ established on earth (Matt. 16:15-19).
And there are many, many, many other pronouncements that the Church makes that make not only empirical sense but hold sway within Tradition, and lastly within my heart as I seek and ask God to lead me into all the truth (not just the truth with which I feel comfortable), and that truth is the Catholic Church. If you click on the “Bio of Friar Puck” to the right you will see that most of those who have fed me spiritually (Jesus aside) are Catholic.
And let me also state unequivocally that I am grateful for all that God has done in and through my Evangelical brothers and sisters; I am grateful for their passion for a ‘personal’ intimacy with Jesus and their love for Sacred Scripture; I am grateful for the grace of God I experienced there.
When I try and describe this conversion deeper into God and led by the urging and promptings of the Spirit, I find the truest answer to be (and I am quoting the Coming Home Network), that the Catholic Church is “deep in history, deep in Tradition, and deep in Christ.”
I am receiving personal catechesis from Fr. Krempa, parish priest at Sacred Heart Church in Winchester, VA…a beautiful Church filled with the Spirit and filled with the faithful. As it stands now, if things go along schedule, I will be received into the Catholic Church on Pentecost Sunday (June 12, 2011) but all of this is up in the air and in God’s time – for this is truly a Kairos Moment, a time of God’s visitation into my life and world. But in my heart of hearts I am already a Catholic Christian.
I will write on this more…for I know this decision will alienate some and endear me to others; it will cause some to stop being my friend, or think I’m backsliding and in dire error, and it will make some stop reading me, and others possibly start. Who knows save God alone. But the Truth shall set me free (even as it ‘tees me off’).
But for now, I’ll close with a quote that best describes what happens to me within the realm of Catholicism, a quote from another (much older, wiser, more accomplished) evangelical convert to Catholicism, Dr. Peter Kreeft, when he said “God comes in one end and out the other…”
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
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