Last Tuesday, I took an amazing trip. I was on a distant swift journey towards Earth! As I began, Earth appeared as but a timeless, seemingly lifeless point of light on a black background, surrounded by countless similar lights.

And mine was a very strange journey, for the minute size of the Earth was not only the result of my being light years distant, but of my infinitely larger size, for the Earth was a mere fleck of dust in comparison to my enormity. My journey involved traversing space and time, approaching Earth not only in relative distance but also in relative size.

I descended, closer and closer, until the Earth became a solid recognizable mass, a swirling blue and white ball of liquid and matter, cushioned in a life sustaining gaseous atmosphere. Descending and shrinking further, I saw distinct bodies of water separating masses of green and brown firmament.

The swift momentum of my descent brought life into view. Birds inhabiting the air, then cities, at first indistinguishable, became defined into streets and buildings. The abundant evidence of life startled me. Movement everywhere! Cars, trucks, busses, trains. People walking, riding bikes, standing, sitting, talking, reading, sleeping, everywhere. I listened and watched, and as the momentum of my journey continued, I sensed the realities of life. I discerned charity and selfishness; I felt the presence of compassion and hatred; I saw peace and war; and in an instant, I was granted a vision of history: past, present, and future. In this swift moment, I realized the infinite diversity and sweetness of life. I wanted to stop and observe, to listen, to help. But the momentum of my trajectory could not be interrupted. The human life around me grew gargantuan as I journeyed in size out of sight.

Continuing on, I watched as I came closer and closer to the very substance of earth and life itself. I discerned great physical diversity and unity, biochemical structures and amazingly ordered pathways of life. I journeyed down, deeper into and through matter itself. Before me were portrayed, in a limitless diversity of arrangements, the very elements, the building blocks of all creation. Continuing on, I discovered that these basic elements were but swirling universes of atoms, electrons, quarks and other indistinguishable points of light and particles, dispersed and separated by vast regions of empty space. And I was startled by the familiar, timeless scene now before me. I felt as if I had arrived back where I had started. I had traversed from infinity to infinity, and had found a world, a universe that appeared the same whether viewed from an immense distance away or from a microscopic distance within.

Yet, I continued on, farther and deeper, into the darkness. And my mind started to wander. I began to reflect that there had been an important peak between the infinities of my journey, like a spike on a sharp bell-curve of life, reaching from the middle of existence upwards to the heavens, and yet extending endlessly on in both directions. And on the pinnacle of this spike, this peak, was man.

From the perspective of this apex, looking out upon the universe around him, man sees himself as the very center of everything, interpreting all that he sees and experiences as totally relative to and dependent in significance upon himself.

Yet, when viewed from the perspective of both infinities, large and small, distant and infinitesimally close, man becomes either a meaningless flaw in a limitless nothingness, or the pinnacle of providential expression in the immense, timeless mind of the Creator.

I had taken a spiritual journey, gazing at Earth, life, and man through the eyes of God, discovering with the eyes of faith that all exists, all is held together from infinity to infinity by the very Breath of His Love.

But then I was startled out of my journey. My swift momentum into the unknown was abruptly terminated when my large, yellow cat named Joe jumped into my lap. I returned quickly to reality, interrupted from slumber, to the Calvin and Hobbs cartoon strip from which my journey had begun.

He is the image of the invisible God,
the first-born of all creation;
For in Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities -
all things were created through Him and for Him.
He is before all things,
and in Him all things hold together.
He is the head of the body, the Church;
He is the beginning, the first born from the dead,
that in everything He might be pre-eminent.
For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things,
whether on earth or in heaven,
making peace by the blood of His cross.
Colossians 1.15-20

How does one determine truth? This was the core of my own journey to the Church, and though I won’t repeat the details here, I must admit this journey, for me at least, did not cease once I became Catholic. I knew my old Protestant ways of determining truth did not work and led only to a cacophony of conflicting opinions that divides Christians from other Christians. But then once inside the gates of the Church, I was sadly stymied by the unexpected breadth of opinions and sad divisions amongst Catholics. To some people these divisions seem no different than the divisions amongst Protestants. For others these divisions have caused them to leave the Church and return to the more comfortable confusion of their past. Then there are those who are not happy with the bishops and have begun defining a Catholicism on their own terms.

But how are Catholics to determine what is true when we are surrounded by so many seemingly faithful Catholics with conflicting opinions and lifestyles? Allow me to approach this quest with the illustration of a personal experience—of my own ignorance.

About fifteen years ago, when my wife, Marilyn, and I were but three years Catholic, we had a Christmas party at our home in Steubenville that many of our Catholic friends attended. At one point in the evening I was standing in the kitchen enjoying a beverage of preference with four theology and philosophy professors from Franciscan University. They were carrying on a lofty discussion, using terms my brain had never heard nor could wrap its flimsy muscles around. To be a part of the conversation, from time to time, loosened by my beverage of choice, I would interject a point of comic relief, maybe something I felt was particularly enlightening from the latest Far Side or Calvin & Hobbs comic strips. My interruptions, however, were generally met with blank silent stares, until they returned to their conversation, as if I was the butler imposing the mundane into a discussion of substance. I know my friends did not intend ridicule (they were probably just being kind) but when the party was over, I retreated alone to my office in the basement, wondering if I’d ever “get it” enough to hold my own in such a conversation.

I had come into the Church in search of truth, because I knew that the Bible alone was not sufficient to know what is true, but now that I was in the Church, I was so inundated with Truth at so many levels, I frankly felt I was drowning.

I turned my computer on to play my favorite computer game: Disc Defrag. Now you computer geeks out there know that I’m being tongue in cheek. Disc Defrag was not a game; it was a utilities program that defragmented a computer’s hard drive.

Think of a computer hard drive like a small library. All the books should be in nice order, arranged according to subject, title, and author, so that when you want to find something, you know exactly where to look. But suppose over time, people have added or replaced books to the library at random, not paying attention to subject, title, or author, just stuffing the books in willy-nilly, even sometimes taking the books apart, placing one half randomly in one place, and the other half in another place. The library would become a mess, nearly unusable, almost useless to find anything. What would have to be done to make the library useful again? A librarian would need to go in and rearrange the books, putting back together all the halves, according to the intended order: subject, title, author.

This is what Disc Defrag did. Over time, as a computer was used, programs and files were opened, modified, added, erased, all to and from the computer hard drive, the library if you will, and often without any discernible order. As a result, the disc library became fragmented, disordered, and the computer would slow, sloow, slooow down. But then Disc Defrag could straighten it all out. It would completely evaluate the condition of the disc, measure the level of disorder and defragmentation, and then through a process of cut & paste, put all the programs and files in a proper working order—an order predetermined and programed into the computer by computer technicians who knew far more than I did about how a computer ought to work. The programs and files were rearranged into a proper grid, putting the most basic programs first, then the secondary programs, and on and on until the least important less essential files.

Now the reason I considered this a “game” was because the computer gave a visual representation of this process: you could watch as the computer rearranged, moved, and sometimes deleted little multicolored boxes, bringing a haphazard collage of tiny specks of colors into nicely arranged, large, ordered blocks of colors. In the end the library was back in working order, and the computer could operate efficiently.

That night I sat watching the program Defrag my computer, watching the little colored boxes disappear from one place show up temporarily in another place and then finally reappear in their proper place, in working order with all the other programs and files.

And as I watched, I wished that somehow I could do that to my brain—to defrag the mess of random images, information, memories, and knowledge I’d picked up over the years, from uncountable sources, some trustworthy, some not so, some despicable and sinful. Oh, that I could rearrange my memory and my conscience into a more efficient, functioning, living machine, but how is this to be done? What criteria would I use to rearrange all of my knowledge, to put it into sensible working order? What criteria would I use to set priorities; which information is most basic and true, fundamental; which information is less so and therefore subordinate; and which information should be cast aside as unnecessary or untrustworthy or downright destructive to my life and soul?

As a Protestant I would have answered the Bible alone. Or as a Presbyterian I might have answered biblical Theology. But as I sat there, a fairly new Catholic, reflecting on the conversation that had driven me to the solitude of my basement, I came to a new conclusion (for me) that the grid that put everything in proper order was philosophy: to understand the Bible and theology and all of life correctly and in the right order, one’s thinking and conscience must be built upon the grid of good trustworthy philosophy. And this is what I assumed, within the context of faithful Catholic teaching of course, for many years after. I would share my insight, this illustration of defragging our minds with philosophy, with my philosophy friends, and would receive in return a good hearty “at-a-boy” slap on the back!

But then, as I matured in the faith, reading and growing in Catholic teaching and philosophy, I came to the realization that my conclusion concerning philosophy was insufficient—as my previous conclusions that Scripture alone was insufficient or that right theology was insufficient—because I discovered that good faithful Catholics don’t always agree on philosophy. Some are Thomists, some Augustinian, some Suarists; others are Personalists or Phenomenologists, even Existentialists; and among these camps there are countless divisions as to which ideas are essential or non-essential. I became disheartened to discover that among Catholic philosophers there isn’t one essential philosophical grid upon which to arrange and order all truth. In fact, I discovered that there are divisions within the membership of the Church among otherwise faithful believing Catholics, based primarily upon their different philosophical understandings of truth and how to determine what is true; Catholics who lift themselves up above the Magisterium: believing they understand truth better than the bishops in union with Peter.

So if the corrective grid isn’t the Bible alone or theology or philosophy, what is it? Or is there one? Are we left to our selves to order our thinking and our consciences?

It is here that I more fully and humbly came to realize and appreciate the truth that every good Catholic knows, or at least should know, and in fact which draws near every convert to make their journey home. And at first mention of this, most Protestant listeners will cringe back in horror and disgust, even more so than the thought that philosophy could be any kind of trustworthy grid of truth. At first mention of what I now more fully appreciate as this gift of truthful and trustworthy order, some of you may wonder, “Wait, how does that help? Isn’t that just as subjective and intangible as the Bible alone, or biblical theology, or philosophy?” And my answer to that is no, not at all, if one trusts that Jesus established the Church—the pillar and bulwark of the truth—and established her Magisterium built upon the rock of Peter, guided and protected by the promised Holy Spirit.

What is that one trustworthy grid upon which we can build our lives, correctly order our thinking, and form our conscience? Sacred Tradition. But how can we know Sacred Tradition? Do I need to read all the Early Church Fathers, all the conciliar documents beginning with Nicea, all papal pronouncements, etc., etc? No, trusting the Church’s Magisterium, believing in humility that she knows better than we do that which is essential for us to believe and upon which to form our consciences, we must accept the gift she has given us for this purpose at this time in the life of the Church. That gift is the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This is crucial and important. If we reject the present Catechism because we prefer a previous one, or because we think the new one has changed what was said before, then we are lifting ourselves up above the Magisterium of the Church, thinking we know better than the Church, and essentially doubting that the Church is still being guided by the Holy Spirit. We are therefore setting ourselves up as the sole, trustworthy grid for determining what is true.

The reality is that if we died tonight and stood before God, and if being a good faithful Catholic makes any difference to our entrance into heaven, then the criterion will not be what it meant to be a good faithful Catholic 100 or 50 or even 25 years ago, or what it might be 25, 50, or 100 years in the future. What is essential is whether we are a good faithful Catholic, a trustworthy, humble, holy follower of Jesus Christ, today. And how can we know that? What has the Church given us to help us know precisely what this is, how to defrag our minds, to put
everything in order, to move to the front those things that are essential, to move to the side the less essential, to put everything into the right context, to determine which things, ideas, and actions need to be set aside and cast out of our lives, and maybe most important of all, what things, ideas, and ideals are worth dying for? For this, the Church has given us the Catechism, in which she states: “This catechism aims at presenting an organic synthesis of the essential and fundamental contents of Catholic doctrine, as regards both faith and morals, in the light of the Second Vatican Council and the whole of the Church’s Tradition. Its principal sources are the Sacred Scriptures, the Fathers of the Church, the liturgy, and the Church’s Magisterium. and her liturgy” (para. 11). Read it; know it; pray it; live it.

I invite you to share your thoughts on this article in the comments area below. — Marcus

One of the more commonly shared experiences of Protestant converts to the Catholic Church is the discovery of verses “we never saw.” Even after years of studying, preaching, and teaching the Bible, sometimes from cover to cover, all of a sudden a verse “we never saw” appears as if by magic and becomes an “Aha!” mind-opening, life- altering messenger of spiritual “doom”! Sometimes it’s just recognizing an alternate, clearer meaning of a familiar verse, but often, as with some of the verses mentioned below, it literally seems as if some Catholic had snuck in during the night and somehow put that verse there in the text!

The list of these surprise verses is endless, depending especially on a convert’s former religious tradition, but the following are a few key verses that turned my heart toward home. This article is a reprint from the topic I covered on the July 31, 2006 broadcast of The Journey Home on EWTN.

1. Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

Ever since my adult re-awakening (read “born-again experience”) at age 21, this Proverb has been my “life verse.” It rang true as a guide for all aspects of my life and ministry, but then during my nine years as a Presbyterian minister, I became desperately frustrated by the confusion of Protestantism. I loved Jesus and believed that the Word of God was the one trustworthy, infallible rule of faith. But so did lots of the non- Presbyterian ministers and laymen I knew: Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, Pentecostals, Congregationalists, etc., etc., etc . . . The problem was that we all came up with different conclusions, sometimes radically different, from the same verses. How does one “trust in the Lord with all your heart”? How can you make sure your not “leaning on your own understanding”? We all had different opinions and lists of requirements. A verse I had always trusted suddenly became nebulous, immeasurable, and unreachable.

2. 1 Timothy 3: 14-15 I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these instructions to you so that, if I

am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth.

Scott Hahn pulled this one on me. “So, Marc, what is the pillar and foundation of truth?” I answered, “The Bible, of course.” “Oh yeah? But what does the Bible say?” “What do you mean?” When he told me to look up this verse, I suspected nothing. I had taught and preached through First Timothy many times. But when I read this verse, it was as if it had suddenly appeared from nowhere, and my jaw dropped. The Church!? Not the Bible? This alone sent my mind and essentially my whole life reeling; the question of which Church was one I was not ready to broach.

3. 2 Timothy 3:14-17 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

Verses 16-17 were the texts I and others had always turned to buttress our belief in sola Scriptura, so to this I quickly turned my attention. Among many things, three important things became very clear, for the first time: (1) when Paul used the term “scripture” in this verse, he could only have meant when we call the Old Testament. The New Testament canon would not be established for another 300 years! (2) “All” scripture does not mean “only” scripture nor specifically what we have in our modern bibles. And (3), the emphasis in the context of this verse (vereses 14-15) is the trustworthiness of the oral tradition Timothy had received from his mother and others—not sola Scriptura!

4. 2 Thessalonians 2:15 So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.

This was another “too-hot-to-handle” verse Scott threw in my lap. The traditions (Dare I say, traditions) that these early Christian were to hold fast to were not just the written letters and Gospels that would eventually make up the New Testament, but the oral tradition. And even more significant, the context of Paul’s letters indicates that his normal, preferred way of passing along “what he had received” was orally; his written

letters were an accidental, sometimes unplanned add-on, dealing with immediate problems—leaving unsaid so much of what they had learned through oral teaching.

5. Matthew 16:13-19 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesare’a Philip’pi, he asked his disciples, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Eli’jah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

There is so much to discuss in this verse, so much I never saw. I always knew that Catholics used this to argue Petrine authority but I wasn’t convinced. To the naively ignorant, the English words “Peter” and “rock” are so different that it’s obvious that Jesus was referring to the faith Simon Peter received as a gift from the Father. For the more informed seminary educated Bible students, like myself, I knew that behind the English was the Greek, where one discovered that Peter is the translation of petros, meaning little pebble, and rock is the translation of petra, large boulder. Again an obvious disconnect, so so for years I believed and taught specifically against Petrine authority. Then, through the reading of Karl Keating’s wonderful book, Catholicism and Fundamentalism, I realized the implications of something I knew all along: behind the Greek was the Aramaic which Jesus originally spoke, in which the word for Peter and rock are identical—kepha. Once I saw that Jesus had said essentially “You are kepha and on this kepha I will build my Church,” I knew I was in trouble.

6. Revelation 14:13 And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord henceforth.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!”

For years, as a Calvinist preacher, I recited this verse in every funeral graveside service. I believed and taught sola fide and discounting any place for works in the process of our salvation. But then, after my last funeral service as a minister, a family

member of the deceased cornered me. He asked, with a tremble in his voice, “What did you mean that Bill’s deeds follow him?” I don’t remember my response, but this was the first time I became aware of what I had been saying. This began a long study on what the New Testament and then the Early Church Fathers taught about the mysterious but necessary synergistic connection between our faith and our works.

7. Romans 10:14-15 But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? And how can men preach unless they are sent?

I had always used these verses to defend the central importance of preaching and why I, therefore, had given up my engineering career for seminary and the great privilege of becoming a preacher of the Gospel! And I was never bothered by the last phrase about the need of being “sent,” because I could point to my ordination where a cackle of local ministers, elders, deacons, and laymen laid their hands on my sweaty head to send me forth in the Name of Jesus. But then, first through my reading of the history and writings of the Early Church Fathers and second through my re-reading of the scriptural context of Paul’s letters, I realized that Paul emphasized the necessity of being “sent” because the occasion of his letters was to combat the negative, heretical influences of self-appointed false teachers. I had never thought of myself as a false teacher, but by what authority did those people send me forth? Who sent them? In this I realized the importance of Apostolic [those who have been sent] succession.

8. John 15:4 and 6:56 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.

He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. The book of the Bible I most preached on was the Gospel of John and my most preached on section John 15, the analogy of the vine and the branches. I bombarded my congregations with the need to “abide” or “remain” in Christ. But what does this mean? I always had an answer, but when I saw “for the first time” the only verse where Jesus himself defines clearly what we must do to abide in Him, I was floored. “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.” This led me to study a boatload of verses in John 6 “I had never seen before,” and in the end, when it came

accepting Jesus at His word on the Eucharist, I had only one answer: “Where else can we go? Only you have the words of life.”

9. Colossians 1:24 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.

I don’t know if I purposely avoided this or just blindly missed it, but for the first 40- years of my life I never saw this verse. And to be honest, when I finally saw it, I still didn’t know what to do with it. Nothing in my Lutheran, Congregationalist, or Presbyterian backgrounds helped me understand how I or anyone could rejoice in suffering, and especially why anything was needed to complete the suffering of Christ: nothing was lacking! Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection were sufficient and complete! To say anything less was to attack the omnipotent completeness of God’s sovereign grace. But then again, this was the apostle Paul speaking in inerrant, infallible Scripture. And we were to imitate him as he imitated Jesus. It took a reading of Pope John Paul II’s encyclical on the meaning of suffering to open my eyes to the beautiful mystery of redemptive suffering.

10. Luke 1:46-49 “And Mary said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.’”

Finally the hardest hurdle for so many Protestant converts to get over: our Blessed Mother Mary. For most of my life, the only place Mary came into the picture was at Christmas—and dare I say, as a statue! But I never referred to her as “blessed.” Yet Scripture says all generations will call her blessed. Why wasn’t I? This led me to see other verses for the first time, including John 17 where from the cross Jesus giave his mother into the keeping of John, rather than any supposed siblings, and by grace I began, in imitation of my Lord and Savior and eternal brother Jesus, to recognize her, too, as my loving Mother.

The Coming Home Network International PO Box 8290, Zanesville, OH 43702 (740) 450-1175 www.chnetwork.org

Dear Friends in Christ,

Since the CHNetwork started 17 years ago, we have been contacted by over 1800 non-Catholic clergy who were considering “coming Home” to the Catholic Church (this is not counting the thousands of non-clergy, laity, and fallen-away Catholics who have contacted us). Over half of these former clergy have “come home,” but the rest are still on the journey. With the joy of being received into the fullness of faith, these men and women also face many disheartening questions about the future. This it not only because they do not know how they will use their gifts and training after they convert, but also because they have heard about the struggles of other clergy converts. Often, this admixture of joy and fear leaves them in “no man’s land,” stuck between two worlds, unable to move forward or backwards.

Whenever we look to the future, Saint Paul reminds us that “[w]e know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28). Sometimes, though, in the immediate, when all the perceived ramifications of our decisions “out-shout” the voices of faith, hope, charity, and even reason, we can forget this promise.

In the midst of the spiritual battle, however, we must remember Jesus’ instructions: “Abide (remain) in me and I in you” (Jn 15:4). This does not imply a simplistic “Jesus and me” individuality, the trajectory of which leads to a rejection of the need for any church or community. Rather, this abiding relationship is an intense, complete, and ongoing union with Jesus through the means he has given us: through baptism, by which we become members of His Body, the Church (Jn 3; Eph 1:13; 3); through the Eucharist, by which we receive Him into our very being (Jn 6:56); through obedience in love and holiness, by which we please Him and become like Him (1 Jn 2:3-6 and following); and through prayer, by which we learn His will and to seek it (1 Jn 5:14-15), and receive His peace (Phil 4:6-7). Through these and other ways, we remain “in Him,” and since apart from being “in Him” we can do nothing (Jn 15:5), we need to be in union with Him in His Church. This is why the CHNetwork exists: to help anyone who asks to truly “abide in Him” as a member of His Body, the Church.

Please pray especially for the many Protestant clergy, and their families, who are presently on the journey home to the Catholic Church.

In Christ,

Marcus

Here is an intriguing quote from Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Bishop, (330-395) taken from Monday morning’s Office of Readings. He describes how our new life in Christ–our new existence–is nurtured through the Church and her sacraments.

Would love your thoughts.

“The reign of life has begun, the tyranny of death is ended. A new birth has taken place, a new life has come, a new order of existence has appeared, our very nature has been transformed! This birth is not brought about by human generation, by the will of man, or by the desire of the flesh, but by God.

 

“If you wonder how, I will explain in clear language. Faith is the womb that conceives this new life, baptism the rebirth by which it is brought forth into the light of day. The Church is its nurse; her teachings are its milk, the bread from heaven is its food. It is brought to maturity by the practice of virtue; it is wedded to wisdom; it gives birth to hope. Its home is the kingdom; its rich inheritance the joys of paradise; its end, not death, but the blessed and everlasting life prepared for those who are worthy.”