Postby Rei » Wed Apr 11, 2007 6:20 am
II. Liminality
i. Lent
The Wednesday after the first time I went to Mass alone was Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. For several years previous, I had been observing Lent just because it was a good thing. I, to the bewilderment of my family, made it to morning Mass at six o'clock at the Abbey. Now typically I know exactly what I will be doing for Lent before it rolls around. Generally something just falls on me and I do it. This year I was going to do the same and had discussed with Marie as to what I might do. She also had not decided and after some prayer, we felt that God would direct us together and tell her what we were supposed to do for Lent. Ash Wednesday rolled around and we still did not know what God would ask of us. In the evening we had a chance to talk and after evening Mass she had been filled with the urge to cover her head and felt that this is what God was calling us to do.
Now the first thing that people tend to think is, "Is that all? Wear a hat?" And it is true that it is a fairly simple item. But wearing one for forty days excluding showers, Sundays, and sleep is a bit of a task.
During this time I felt that it would be good to meet with a priest to try and sort things out for myself. One Sunday, after Mass, I managed to snag a priest and ask him whom I could talk with. He told me to talk with the Guest Master. So I went home and phoned to make an appointment to meet with the Guest Master. Around a week later I went up to the Abbey again and met with him and we had a general talk and got to know him a bit. Not a whole lot was achieved in my personal understanding of Catholicism, but it felt good to talk with someone other than just Marie and it gave me personal contact with the people at the Abbey. It was shortly after this that I felt I ought to learn how Mary fits into Catholicism, however God told me that I could not learn anything more from Marie at this time and that I should not meet with anyone until after the season of Lent.
ii. Easter
According to several people, the Easter Vigil at any Catholic church is a beautiful thing. So I decided that, instead of going on Sunday morning, I would go Saturday night. It was indeed gorgeous at the Abbey. I adored seeing all the candles and the procession and everything. There were no baptisms or confirmations because they do not do those at the monastery (although at normal parishes, the Easter Vigil is when they usually do these), however it was lovely all the same.
Afterwards, I went to the Guest House with the hopes of meeting someone, anyone, and visiting. I had been feeling rather alone in attending Mass, much like the church I had attended for years, and I wanted to be a part of the community. There were people milling about and I saw a seminarian standing there, so I said to him one of the most neutral greetings for that day, "Christ is risen!" To which he replied, "Amen!" to my brief amusement and bewilderment at not hearing, "He is risen indeed!" We spoke a few minutes and he told me his name is Daniel. He invited me to the high school students' dining hall where a reception was being held. We got there and all the food had gone, but a group of the older seminarians (university level) were going to Boston Pizza and I was invited along. We ended up staying there until nearly two in the morning. I left that night feeling like I had entered the community in a small way.
iii. What Happened After
With Lent over I decided to e-mail the Guest Master and see if he could help me to arrange a meeting with someone to discuss Mariology. There were several items I needed to understand about Mary as they were contrary to what I had learned growing up (her immaculate conception, her remaining a virgin, and the Assumption). Also, according to Marie, the rosary had something to do with Mary and I was curious how that fit in with everything.
Part of how I come to believe something is I first must be convinced factually that something is possible and the I must see how it applies and why I should care whether or not it is factual. If something can be explained and shown to me to likely be the case, I need to know what difference that makes in order to accept it as important in my beliefs.
My first meeting with Father Placidus went very well. We discussed the plausibility of these three beliefs and in a factual sense I could accept the first two without too much difficulty. The trouble came with the Assumption. The strongest factual evidence for it is that no city lays claim to Mary's remains, despite the running trend of claiming the bones of any saints a city can. While this does count for something, it did not count for very much to me. Father Placidus then gave me an image to consider. "Have you ever seen a fishing ruler," he asked me. "One of those ones where the first three inches are the same, but by the end of the twelve inch ruler it has thirty inches marked on it?" I replied that I had. "Well," he said, "When you place that ruler next to an accurate one, you will see that they can only match up so far. If one person believes their ruler is accurate and the other believes their ruler is accurate, there is no way of knowing what is real. However, one of them has to be right. It is all a question of whom do you believe. Catholics believe that the Holy Spirit can work through people and teach them and if you believe that the Pope has been taught that Mary was assumed into heaven. We believe our ruler is the accurate one and that the fishing ruler is the one that says she wasn't." I found this made sense to me and as I already knew that the Pope could not just decide something like that and make it official on a whim, I found I had to accept it.
The next week, we met again and this time discussed the practicality of these beliefs about Mary. This was useful; however God had told me I would not fully understand until I prayed the rosary. Father Placidus explained the rosary to me and its role as a method of devotion, and then he lent me one of his along with a brochure with the prayers and mysteries and explaining the order and such, in case I forgot.
That evening I decided to give this thing a try. And the next night. And the next. For several weeks I prayed it every night, according to the direction God gave me. And He was right. Before long it began to make sense. Not a factual kind of sense, but an understanding of Mary and her role in my life.
iv. A Picnic and What Followed
Around a fortnight after my second meeting with Father Placidus, I was up at the Abbey again for Mass on Sunday. After Mass I saw Daniel. As the school had let out for summer a few weeks earlier, I had not seen him for a while, so I went to say hi. He and a group of friends had come up that day from New Westminster to have a picnic and I was invited along. First, Daniel snagged one of the priests and asked if we could have a tour of the bell tower. It was really neat being able to climb up and the view was spectacular. Afterwards, we sat beneath a large spreading tree and had our picnic.
Part way through, a fellow who used to be a youth leader for the college-aged group at my church showed up. He had become a Catholic a few years back, although I had not heard of it, being less than deeply involved in the youth groups at church. When I told him who I was and my situation, I asked him about why he chose to become Catholic and he said that it was the Eucharist that grabbed his heart. He also said that I ought to talk to the senior pastor and tell him my intentions of becoming Catholic. Apparently when he left it was kept very quiet and he wished he had been clearer about his decision.
I told him that I planned to speak with Pastor Joel. At this time, he had retired from his position as senior pastor. But, as he baptised me and we had no senior pastor yet, he still represented the church leader to me—more importantly, the Protestant Church leader.
After this I e-mailed the church to find out how I could reach Pastor Joel. They forwarded my e-mail to him and he replied to me and we agreed to meet at a Tim Horton's one Saturday morning. He took it very well. He asked me how I stood on issues such as Mary (I emphasised that I do not believe she is divine) and why I was deciding to become Catholic. We talked on the abomination of denominations and how they divide the Church. In the end he gave me his blessing and we prayed. It felt right to have this sort of parting and that it was not really a division.
v. A Summit
There is a group entitled Catholic Christian Outreach. The former youth-leader at my church now works for them and is a major organiser in this area. The third Saturday of every month they put on an event called "Summit". At this event they spend time in prayer and song and Eucharistic adoration. Afterwards the church provides food and drink for the people who came.
It is summer, by this point, and while I have an academic understanding and belief in the Eucharist as the actual Body and Blood of Christ, my heart is unwilling to be fully convinced. And not for lack of trying. I prayed about this and God told me that it would be made clear after I spent some time in Eucharistic adoration and that I ought to go to the Summit gathering. The day of the Summit, Corpus Christi, I was at an SCA event that was being held a half-hour east of where I live. I drove there in the morning and then drove to an hour west of where I live, only to drive the hour back that night. However, after the driving, I was exhausted when I got to the church and a bit anxious as I did not know anyone there (my circle of Catholic friends is notably small). More people began to arrive and eventually it began. After a welcome, a small praise team started and we spent the next hour in Eucharistic adoration. Somehow, by the end of the night, my heart was largely convinced (at the time I thought convinced, although later I was to find that I still have so much further to go in my understanding) and I was able to believe with both my mind and my heart.
At the end of the period of Eucharistic adoration, we were told that there were several priests who would offer the sacrament of Reconciliation for those who would like it. Inside of me I felt a call that I should participate in this. Having been to youth events, albeit usually more lively than this, I was wary because very often people feel impassioned and think they are being led by the Spirit when really they are being driven by a crowd mentality and what is called a "Spiritual high". (I am not saying that this is true of everyone in every instance, but it is common enough, or perhaps it is just my weakness of character.) I do not feel right when I do things because of feelings like that because I question whether they are from myself or from God and if they are from myself, I do not feel I should do them. Not in those circumstances where I am claiming it is God, anyway. So I remained in the pew and prayed, trying to discern whence this voice, this calling was coming. The quiet persistence that it was of the Spirit did not leave me. Finally I decided to get into the line with the other people. There were around a half dozen people before me and each person took a little while, so I kept praying, realising that God had plenty of time to give me a warning feeling so I could get out of line and avoid doing something He did not want me to do. Further, I did not even know if I was even [i allowed[/i] to take Confession as I was not a Catholic. However, God kept me in that line and kept reassuring me in prayer. Finally it was my turn. I stood up, kneeled as I passed the Eucharist, and sat next to the priest. I explained to him that I had never been to Confession before, that I was not Catholic, that I was a baptised Protestant and in which tradition, and that I did not even know if I was allowed to be there or not. He was very kind about it and walked me through it. I did my best to confess everything I could remember, all my flaws, my deepest and darkest sins, my frequent and daily sins, everything. And at the end, when he absolved me of my sins in God's name, I could feel a change sweep through me. Despite having asked forgiveness long since and knowing that I had been forgiven for many of these things, the deep sense of grace I felt at those words allowed me to forgive myself in a way I had not realised I needed.
In a later discussion with Father Placidus, I found out that I was not supposed to receive that sacrament yet as it is restricted to Catholics, much like the Eucharist is. However he did not condemn me, and I am not convinced that it was not God leading me to it. And no matter what, I know that there was a deep power of grace in it and it was an experience I doubt I will ever forget.
vi. 525,600 Minutes
It is here that I resume writing after a long break. I moved to Toronto in autumn of 2006 and things began to move quickly and unexpectedly. This point begins the era of submission, or rather, learning to submit. Perhaps, I now suspect, this should be divided into two parts: my de-Protestantisation and my Catholicisation.
When I got to Toronto, I hoped to finish this cycle and complete the circle that had been made, preferably on 17th September, which was a Sunday that year, to make the trip exactly a year long. I mentioned this to the head priest of the parish I attending after Mass early on and he pointed me to the director of the RCIA who was in the Newman Centre, which was right next to the church, and having a meeting for people interested in joining the RCIA. It was not a meeting so much as handing out a sheet of paper and answering any basic questions regarding the process itself, when it began, etc. I waited off to the side and until last, watching and feeling somewhat unsure. My first impressions of her were less than charitable. All I saw was a lady who looked rather odd and very spacey. She said her name was Sister Mary-Clarence, gave me a sheet, and encouraged me to come to the meeting next Sunday several hours before the evening Mass. And then our brief meeting ended and I left feeling a tad discouraged. RCIA is a long commitment. I had already been waiting a long while, I felt. But what could I do? The people at Newman were not going to let me go through things faster, even though I already knew that I was going to
go through with this and become Catholic. So I did the only thing I could do. I went to the meeting and kept going.
I found out recently Sister Mary-Clarence's first impressions of me. I was, as she said, like a bull rushing in, and she thought There's no way he's going to make it! She was shocked when eventually I just suddenly stopped resisting and fell into place. I suppose that goes to show how little we knew of each other. I failed to see the years of all sorts of experience she has from travelling all over, and she did not know that I was not going to give up after being dragged through a year of having my beliefs reworked and reconsidered. You do not just give up after something like that because things are not going as smoothly as you would like.
It took several weeks of meetings, I suspect, before I finally accepted what God was doing. He was teaching a virtue that I rather dislike: Patience. Or rather, that is what it seemed, and that was good enough for me. Once I accepted that I was just going to have to learn to be patient because He was not going to let things go any faster, it was easier to drop into the flow of things.
vii. Rite of Acceptance
On the feast of Christ the King, I took the Rite of Acceptance to be a candidate for Confirmation and full communion with the Catholic Church. There were six of us, four to become catechumens and two to become candidates. A little while earlier I had to choose a sponsor who would walk with me on this journey. So I asked a girl who was on the RCIA team named Sari. She was a nice girl, but unfortunately she was very busy which meant that I did not get to talk with her loads. Because of this we were not certain who would present me for the rite at first. Marie had been there with me a lot more and Sari had been far more swamped with schoolwork than she had expected. However, at last second Marie had to go to a funeral and could not be there, so Sari presented me. After the Gospel reading the priest performed the rite and we left Mass partway through to discuss further. Almost everyone agreed that they felt welcome, more involved, closer to the Church. Instead, I felt separated, cut off.
Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point.
~Blaise Pascal
私は。。。誰?
Dernhelm