A Wrench in the Works, part II

Wow. Just wow. Where do I begin?

There was a time, not so very long ago, that I thought "I could never be Catholic." Apostate, corrupt, deceitful, distracting . . . these were all adjectives I'd used to describe the Catholic Church. I was a daughter of Luther -- someone who loved his faith so much he was willing to die for it, and who believed his church had gone astray. He did what he could to save it from within, then left when he realized he could only keep his faith from without.

Luther was a good thing. I still believe this. I love his heart, his courage, his commitment. And he did what he set out to do -- in the end, the Roman church reformed itself on the matter of indulgences-for-sale -- which was the crux of his grievance from the start. It was only later, after the bitterness of rejection and persecution had clouded his vision, that he made many of the changes he did in his own theology, and by extension, the entire protestant world's.

But therein lies the rub. Luther's actions were never meant to start a new religion. He didn't intend to split off from the Catholic (universal) church. That he ended up doing so is an accident of the Roman church's slow reaction and Luther's own human frailty.

Where am I going with this?

Sigh.

My husband went out of town this week. I had a lot of time to think, pray, read, study, etc. And somewhere along the way, God smacked me upside the head with His truth -- and I'm pretty sure He told me it's found in the Roman Catholic Church.

Oh, my God, my parents are going to kill me.

The website I have listed at the right, Scripture Catholic, was the final straw, so to speak, though at the time I thought it was nothing more than a catalyst. But I say it was the final straw because looking back, God had been setting me up for this all along. How did I not see it? The desire for liturgy. The longing for Holy Communion. The constant whispered reminders that if I truly believe, my WORKS will tell the story. The searching online for a Crucifix to wear, because I felt like I needed to remember Jesus ON the cross and what He did there, and not just the fact that He had risen.

At the appropriate times, He placed little treasures in my path, things I didn't even know my heart was pondering until the full truth of them hit me all at once like an avalanche. There was a little article that mentioned in part how protestants were like Pharisees and the Church like Jesus: these upstanding religious people wailed and tore their garments at the sheer arrogance and audacity of an entity that would call itself the one true way. It cut me to the core at the time, but I ignored it. Then the article about infant baptism -- backed up with thorough Greek scholarship and exegesis. It was enough to make me want to barge into my toddler's bedroom at 1 AM and baptise him myself, only I didn't know if it would be considered valid.

And then I saw the citation at the bottom of the article: Scripture Catholic. I spent hours at that site, Bible in hand, poring over text after text . . . only to find that, when read in light of Catholic theology, Holy Scripture simply CAME ALIVE. I have always envied Beth Moore for her sheer joy in reading the scriptures. She is on fire for the Word of God in a way I always thought I could just hope to be. But as I read the Gospels with the mind of a Catholic, I had the same passion. Peter was real. Jesus was real. Paul was real. Mary was real. Not that I didn't believe in them before, but they always felt so far away. But I suddenly I felt kinship with them, and a real sense that they were right there with me, saying "See? We've been there too, and we have so much to offer you if you will only come fellowship with us!" And I knew that the way to do that was through the Communion of Saints, found in the Catholic Church.

I'm not there yet. There are still too many questions. But here I stand, on the edge of the Tiber, and suddenly it doesn't look so cold, deep and shark-infested. Suddenly it looks like I could walk on that water like Peter did. Straight across into the arms of my Savior.