Submerged in the Ocean | David Paul Deavel | Catholic World Report
The challenges in Catholic conversion don’t end at the Church’s door.
“I think more should be written about conversion within the Church. It is a more difficult subject than conversion without.” — Flannery O’Connor
By the time I was received into the Catholic Church 15 years ago I had already read a number of stories of conversions to the faith—Newman’s Apologia, Avery Dulles’ A Testimonial to Grace, Scott Hahn’s Rome Sweet Home, and many others in essay or book form. I still love reading conversion stories, not just from people whose background is like mine (Evangelical and Calvinist), but from a wide variety of religious, philosophical, and cultural backgrounds. Each one reminds me yet again that, in Chesterton’s words, “The Church is a house with a hundred gates; and no two men enter at exactly the same angle.” Yet entering from a hundred gates they all find a welcome since, as Hilaire Belloc put it, the Church is “the natural home of the Human Spirit.”
But conversion stories, with their dramatic conclusions, may by their very genre leave an incomplete impression. The convert has found the gate and entered and is now at home. The story is now over. There is nothing more to be done. In the case of some lives, that may be true. If you enter the Church on your deathbed, there isn’t much to be done but pray and wait for the end—after that a bit of roasting in purgatory, but that’s passive. For most of us who enter the Church, our conversion is not the end of this life, but more like a new beginning. While it is a home, it is also like the stable in Bethlehem: it is bigger on the inside than the out. This discovery is both exhilarating and frightening in equal measures. It requires that the Catholic convert always be a convert, not just in the sense of having that past action a part of his identity, but also that conversion is a lifelong activity. Flannery O’Connor wrote to a friend, “You don’t join the Catholic Church. You become a Catholic.” That process, I’ve discovered, involves more than just the sacraments of initiation and a good first confession. It has its own joys and challenges.
“It felt like being submerged into the ocean.” Former Episcopalian R. R. Reno used this image to explain to a friend what his experience of conversion was. He meant that, like the ocean and unlike his Protestant denomination, he found ultimately that the Catholic Church was beyond any theological theory and needed no theological theory to prop it up. It is, as Reno puts it, “the mother of theologies.” The Church partakes in the infinite mystery of Christ and is thus beyond our comprehension. While many converts can say this, the actual experience of it is something different.
Excellent article by Mr. Deavel. I too can relate to much of what he said. It seems some days like just yesterday (I came into the Church in 2003) and at other times I feel I have always been Catholic.
That is why I often repeat that old saw, "the reason I am a practicing Catholic is that I am not very good at it yet."
I remember telling my brother back when I entered the Church that "if I wanted it easy, I would not have become Catholic." There are days when I feel like a prophet when I think of that but then I also remember the experience I had when I first received communion.
It was a Saturday evening. Our priest had just baptized and confirmed me one sacrament right after the other, without RCIA, after having been convinced I had fully studied the faith and knew what I was about. That was in the afternoon and my wife and I stayed for the vigil mass. I could not wait to receive until Sunday morning.
When I received the Body of Christ I returned to the pew to kneel in prayer and it was in that instant that I sensed the presence, all around me, of faithful Catholics, saints and unrecognized faithful, all of them gazing down at me in love and welcome, peaceful and reassuring. It seemed that they came from all down through the ages of the Church and were there to welcome me. I had tears in my eyes. I have never felt so at home in my entire life.
I had received the Body of Christ and these people were the body of Christ as well. The doctrine of the Communion of Saints has never had any difficulty for me ever since.
Posted by: LJ | Friday, June 22, 2012 at 07:54 AM