The call from God that persists

There are many stories that recount how someone had a notion or calling that they couldn’t let go of, no matter how much they avoided it. They would find that life’s circumstances would lead them back again to where they had to scratch the itch they been ignoring.

So it is with me and my journey to the Catholic Church. It’s now been 25 years since walking into St Thomas’s cathedral in Canterbury and wondering if this was my spiritual home. Two and half decades since sitting with that wonderful Franciscan Brother John (I wonder where he is now) and discovering some of the riches of Catholicism.

It is fifteen years since I was commissioned to write an article surveying the available books on Church history, and in the process discovering the historicity and the validity of the claims of the Catholic Church. A decade and a half since I discovered how ancient belief in the Real Presence was and I first read the words of St Ignatius and felt the lightning bolt of revelation:

Wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be; as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful to baptise or give communion without the consent of the bishop. On the other hand, whatever has his approval is pleasing to God. (St Ignatius, Letter to the Smyrnaeans)

 It’s been seven years since my wife and completed the RCIA in Shrewsbury and met some wonderful people there but, for complex family reasons, didn’t convert at the time.

 Maybe now is the time. It feels like the time is right and I cannot ignore the call of God that has been there for most of my adult life.

Meeting Christ whilst going through the motions

I have now attended three RCIA classes covering such diverse topics as the nature of the Church, the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Healing and Ecumenism. There was, it must be admitted, nothing too challenging or surprising which is probably understandable when almost everyone else on the course is converting due to a spouse or family member who is already a Catholic.

Sometimes it feels like I am only attending to tick all the right boxes, to show willing so I can do what in my heart I know is the right thing. But then I stop and realise that the last eighteen months has meant facing challenges in my own life and issues in my marriage that this has brought to the surface. The specific time since January that I have attended the RCIA group has been an intensive time of self-reflection where I have had to come face-to-face with my own sinfulness and failures, and to bring to the fore those dreams for my life that haven't come true.

Last week I was able to go on a retreat day hosted by our Bishop. The talks were excellent (especially the Bishop's passionate defence of the centrality of the Eucharist) but it was the chance to pray before the sacrament for an hour, thinking through the many heartaches and worries I have, giving them to God and praying for my family and my rather precarious work situation. In the midst of all of these worries I found Christ again, I knew his presence was there; and I knew that, in the end all would be well.

"Where the bishop appears, there let the people be"

Wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be; as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful to baptise or give communion without the consent of the bishop. On the other hand, whatever has his approval is pleasing to God. (St Ignatius, Letter to the Smyrnaeans)

St Ignatius of Antioch

For a while I owned the trade magazine for the religious publishing and retail industry here in the UK. After I sold it in 2002 I continued to write articles for the new owner. One rather daunting task was an extended round-up of titles on Church history - from the popular to the academic. With my growing awareness of the breadth of Christianity I made sure I included titles from Catholic and Orthodox perspectives and publishers.

In the extensive reading for preparation for the article I can remember being startled, ut somewhat encourage, by a number of things. The Real Presence in the Eucharist was there from the earliest post-Apostolic writers and, most importantly at that moment, the Episcopacy. My Christian formation up to this point was essentially Baptist - local Churches that are self-governing with a multiplicity of 'elders' governing the congregation. I had thought until recently at this point that this was the 'clear teaching' of Scripture. The evidence from the few generations after the apostles gave me considerable pause for thought.

In particular, the quote above from the early Church Father St Ignatius was light a lightening bolt that illuminated, initially briefly, the centrality of the Episcopacy for the validity of the Church. Without a Bishop there was no true Church, and no guarantee of the presence of Christ.

It took another eight years, and much more research, for this to form into a convinced belief in the importance of Apostolic succession. The implications of this became clear to me in 2011 but it took another eighteen months before I finally started to act on it.

RCIA and church-bashing

I was able to attend my first RCIA course evening last week and I was delighted that my wife was able to come along and support me. As the priest I have been meeting with predicted, I found the content a little bit basic - a study of the Resurrection and a short session on 'One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church' - but it was interesting to see the variety of people also attending. The truth is, having worked through some of the Catechism, having read the Compendium to the Catechism and also digested other papal documents I don't really need any convincing.

It was quite wonderful to listen to the Deacon who was doing the presentations though. He was 90 years old, converted from Anglicanism in 1960 and was ordained deacon 25 years ago. His life experience, wisdom and gentle approach was perfect for the session.

However, at the end there was a time of open discussion and one lady - who completed the RCIa last year and was accompanying her daughter this time through - engaged in a certain amount of vocal criticism for what she saw as the spiritual 'deadness' in the Church of England. In fairness, the Deacon quickly closed this down with a comment about not bashing other churches and how important ecumenism was, but for wife the damage was done. She is currently completely committed to the Church of England and found this rather upsetting. Not so much because of the C of E, but because it displayed a sectarianism that she wasn't expecting.

By the time we were able to sit down with our Priest the following Thursday things had calmed down somewhat and we had a fruitful time talking through various issues with him.

This weekend we are attending the local cathedral for Candlemas (or the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord as I think it is now called). It is the first time in around a decade that the feast day has fallen on a Sunday and we plan to take some candles along to be blessed.

Back on the Journey

It’s been over a year since I last posted. Everything was put on hold just before Christmas in 2012 for some very good reasons.

St Peter's Basilica as painted by Panini

I was diagnosed a while ago with Adult ADD, and one tendency I have is to leap into any activity with plenty of energy, only to see the initial enthusiasm wane quickly. This momentous decision was such that my wife was, quite rightly, concerned that I was doing that again here, and she was particularly worried that I was using the entry through the Ordinariate as a short-cut, bypassing the process of discernment that the conventional RCIA offers. She also, with plenty of justification, felt I wasn’t giving proper consideration to some of her concerns.

I made the decision to slow everything down. In fact, I stopped pushing the issue at all, trusting in the Holy Spirit to work in my heart and in hers. About 2 months ago she came to me and said that if I still felt called to reception in the Catholic Church I should start to explore it again, but that it would be better to go the conventional route. I went back, read through the Compendium to the Catechism again and Evangelii Guardium which had just been released by Pope Francis.

We all visited Mass at one of the local Churches – one that was particularly family-friendly – and I slowly started to talk about some of the things I was thinking about. I made contact with a local priest (not part of the Ordinariate) and we spent time on the phone talking about the practicalities of joining the current RCIA course now. We recently also met-up for a coffee and agreed a provisional way forward.

One thing that I particularly pleased about is that my wife is going to join me in the RCIA classes, partly to walk through the journey with me and partly to help with her own journey.

Discovering the Ancient Paths

Stand by the roads, and look,    and ask for the ancient paths,where the good way is; and walk in it,    and find rest for your souls. Jer 6:16

As I wrote in an earlier post, one of the driving factors of this journey has been the search for roots and tradition - for meaning from heritage. In 2001 Terry Virgo, leader of Newfrontiers - a 'new church' charismatic movement of which our church was a part - released a book called No Well Worn Paths. Part spiritual autobiography and part ecclesiological manifesto the book describes how Virgo developed a conviction that there was a need to 'restore' the Church. He saw this as local, informal gatherings with an emphasis on preaching and charismatic manifestations.

At the same time, my wife and I were talking about the scripture above from Jeremiah 6:16 - to 'ask for the ancient paths' (some translation render it 'uncover the ancient paths'). The disparity between what the leader of our Church movement was writing and what we were discovering was stark, and the timing of it seemed almost prophetic.

Around the same time I was working on an article providing an overview of books on Church history, and was able to spend a week absorbing some of the best scholarship in print writing about the origins of the Church. It was, without wanting to indulge in hyperbole, an epiphany. Episcopal structures, Apostolic Succession, the Mass and even the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome were all clearly there to be seen in the writings of the earliest Church Fathers.

Terry Virgo's ecclesiology was the logical outworking of Protestantism - independent, ahistorical and esoteric. Our path was moving in a different direction and the divergence had never been clearer. Within a couple of years we had rejoined the local Church of England church ("at least we're only one step removed from the original Church" as my wife put it), and started to embrace a more historical and rooted spirituality.

Eucharist and the Blessed Virgin

There was always something about a liturgical setting for communion. At the Church of England Parish church I sang in as a boy treble, the 'Parish Communion' movement was in full swing and I can still recite both Rite A and Rite B communion services. What I didn't realise is that, thanks to the efforts of ARCIC the Rite A Service, and especially the eucharistic prayer we used, owed an awful lot to the Ordo Missae of the Catholic Church.

During our time attending Charismatic Churches, and especially in Canterbury, we would attend Canterbury Cathedral on high feast days - in particular Easter and Christmas - appreciating the majesty and presence of Christ we found in these times. This is something that came with us when we returned to the Church of England in 2004, armed with a good amount of hurt and pain from a number of tragedies and difficulties. Weeping before Christ during Mass was a healing time, coupled with the caring prayers of a great Anglican priest. As time went on, my vague Lutheran understanding of what happens in the Mass hardened - I saw the importance of the sacramental reality, that Christ was indeed truly present. When I served as Churchwarden for a year, the honour of preparing and handling the bread and wine was the most precious part of that job.

Along with a growing sacramentalist approach to Holy Communion, I also started to look again at Mary, the mother of Our Lord. This had always been one of the biggest stumbling blocks to me when looking at Catholicism, but that changed in 2010.

In 2000 we lost a baby. Tristan was born on the 31st January and died on the 4th February from brain and organ damage due to a trauma in the womb that we were not aware of until he was born. We had one more child after that, but then struggled to conceive again. My wife was in constant emotional pain and I could not find a solution. In 2010, having been unemployed for 6 months following redundancy, I went on a retreat to find some answers. In truth, I was more concerned about my work and career (and the need to provide for my family), but my mind turned to my wife's pain during this time.

I was kneeling in prayer in the 'Lady Chapel' of the monastic house I was staying in when I found myself gazing upon the statue of Mary. In something of an act of desperation I found myself addressing Mary directly - asking for wisdom and insight into my wife's situation. An answer appeared as clearly as if I had just read it. Love and Loss were the two sides of the coin that is motherhood. That Our Lady felt both when Jesus was on earth and that to embrace that is to discover the grace that makes motherhood a unique and highly valued call before God.

As you can imagine, I came away from that weekend with a new perspective, and felt myself being nudged further along the road, but wasn't yet aware where it would end.