and I want to let him know that his fears can be overcome, that her worries can be addressed.
So let’s begin. First let me tell you a little about myself and how talented I was at avoiding becoming a Catholic. Then we can have a look at the things that helped me on my journey into the Church. I hope they’ll help you, as well.
Part I
Sprinting to the Starting Gate
or
How God Hauled Me Kicking and Screaming into the Catholic Church Despite My Best Efforts to Avoid It
Chapter 1
Happy Easter! Now What?
Peter [said] to them, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the holy Spirit.”
— Acts 2:38
I remember that night vividly, and I know I always will. My heart was pounding with excitement: I believed — hoped, prayed — that I had finally come to the end of a long and complicated journey, one that had led me to the last place I ever expected to find myself, leaning awkwardly over a baptismal font in — of all places — a Catholic church.
But had I really arrived? Had I truly come to the destination that God had in mind for me? I have to admit that even at that moment of no return, I was still having a little trouble accepting my own decision. This had to be the right choice, I reassured myself as I stood there; it simply had to be, because I was betting everything on it. By my side was my wife, Kathi, her presence a minor miracle. Up until that very night I hadn’t known if she would be received into the Church with me, but here she was, and I was overjoyed. As I half stood, half crouched there, feeling rather foolish and working hard to bend my six-foot-four-inch frame into positions it was never made for, I could feel the warmth of her love and support. I can’t describe how important that was to me.
But it was not her love alone that I felt. Toward the front of the church sat my mother and Presbyterian minister father, holding our two infant sons. I stole a surreptitious glance at them and smiled a smile I hoped they noticed. I waited, feeling my parents’ improbable support as a source of tremendous comfort. In the midst of my lingering doubts, my uncertainty, I knew I had their blessing, and that meant a lot.
And I felt yet another kind of warmth as I waited that long-ago night, one that astonished and gratified me at the time. On my first visit to the church that was to become the place of my baptism, things had not gone very well. I had felt unwelcome, unnoticed, even invisible. No one had greeted me, or even acknowledged my presence. Catholics had still seemed a strange breed to me back then, cold and off-putting, unconcerned with the people around them — unconcerned (not to put too fine a point on it) with me. When had that all changed? And how had it changed without my quite noticing it? By the night of my baptism, everything had become different. It was as if I were surrounded by family, a family that actually cared — a family I actually cared about. Yes, it was the right decision, I told myself again, and this time I think I really believed it.
Then, finally, the cold waters of Baptism flowed over my forehead, and I was overwhelmed by a sense of mercy. It all seemed so simple — almost too simple. I was all too aware of my many years of sinfulness. I had regrets. In fact, I had loads of them. Were they all truly washed away by such a little bit of water, I wondered? If so, that changed everything — and I was born again at the age of twenty-five. I was new again. I was newer than my young sons.
And now, more than two decades later, I am deeply aware that it really did change everything. As I look back on the night when I became a newborn for the second time in my life, I recognize that a new world opened for me, or perhaps the world simply opened in a different way, enabling me to discern what had been there all along but which I had been unable to see — miracles that I had walked past like a blind man. Whatever the case, I was given something for which I had unknowingly yearned for most of my life: a sacramental world, a world that was simply suffused with God, a world in which holiness could be touched.
I was given tools that night to build a life of sanctity — tools I had never had before. I was offered new perspectives, new insights into human life, particularly regarding suffering and hardship — things that all those many years ago I didn’t even know I would need. The waters of Baptism may have been cold that night, but through those waters I entered a relationship with Christ that was far deeper and far warmer than any I could have imagined otherwise.
By the way, my doubts, my uncertainty, disappeared a long time ago. I don’t know exactly when. They just faded away over time until one day I realized that they were simply gone and I knew for certain that I really had found the place God wanted me to be. The Catholic Church is my home, and I have never thought about leaving it. In fact, after all this time, I don’t think I could ever leave it.
Chapter 2
An Event and a Process
May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the endurance of Christ.
— 2 Thessalonians 3:5
My baptism took no more than five minutes, but the journey to the baptismal font took the better part of ten years — or maybe I should say twenty-five years. In the beginning — and the beginning lasted for a long time — I wasn’t even aware that a journey was underway, but it was, and God was directing me down strange and sometimes uncomfortable paths, usually in ways I didn’t even notice. Along those paths, there were countless obstacles, humiliations, misunderstandings, and even estranged relationships. Yet they were somehow all a part of that journey, all leading me, all nudging me in one direction.
Slow Start
When did it really begin in earnest? It’s hard to say, but I usually date it to the time I was sixteen and exasperating everyone.
Looking back at my life, I can finally see something that completely escaped my notice when I was in my teens, but it was something my parents (and probably everybody else) saw all too clearly: something needed to be done with me.
To put it mildly, I was as cocky as they come. Since the time I’d been a small child, I’d been considered gifted; by the time I was sixteen, I thought that meant I was extraordinary. Not only that, I was running amok in the manner of many teenage boys: having a good time, not caring about (or even believing in) the future, driving everyone crazy with my world-class self-centeredness and devil-may-care approach to life. I was within a few months of graduating high school but had no inkling concerning what I would do next. For some reason that didn’t bother me much: I was living for the day, for the moment, for the second, and the world was full of fun and overflowing with possibilities.
Out of all those many possibilities that stretched before me, however, there was one that did not occur to me. In fact it would never have occurred to me if I had been left to my own devices. Yet it was that very possibility that was to change my life, and it was offered to me one fine day by my dad, who, as I mentioned, was a Presbyterian minister.
He almost casually suggested that I take a few days off from school, which was just the sort of proposal guaranteed to capture my attention. Let me tell you, I lost no time in informing him that as far as I was concerned, he had come up with an excellent — perhaps even spectacular — idea. I was all ears when he told me he was contemplating a trip that just he and I would make: it was to be a road trip
