Journeys Home (46 page)

After much thought and study (and just a little prayer; to this
stage I wasn't yet seriously praying), I decided that the central
claim of Christianity is the claim of Jesus' bodily resurrection.
The truth of the biblical witness seemed to me to hinge on this
claim. So how should one judge the authenticity of the Resurrection?

I tried to approach the biblical texts as I did other ancient
texts. At this time, I was also reading Julius Caesar and Thucydides
for their insights into military strategy and tactics. Most thinkers
accepted these texts fairly straightforwardly. Was Scripture less
trustworthy?

The text I first found most compelling was 1 Corinthians chapter
15. Here St. Paul tells of all those who had seen and experienced
the risen Lord: more than five hundred witnesses, many of whom
were still alive when Paul wrote the letter (about twenty years
after the events).

This letter seems to be an authentic testimony to the truth of
the bodily resurrection of Jesus. The hundreds of witnesses lend
credibility to Paul's own experience of the risen Lord. If these
others had not really experienced the convincing proofs of Jesus'
resurrection, Paul would quickly have been seen as a fraud.

As I studied more, I was startled by the overwhelming evidence
for the Resurrection, especially in the life of the early Church.
Almost to a person, those first believers went to a martyr's death
for their firm and certain belief in the Resurrection. No other
explanation made sense of the data.

Could it be that Jesus really had not died? No, the medical evidence
in John's Gospel of "blood and water rushing from His side" shows
that He really died. And even a cursory reading of Roman history
shows that no Roman soldier would so botch a crucifixion as to
allow a condemned man to survive.

No, for anyone "with eyes to see and ears to hear," the accounts
of the Resurrection and the lives of the men and women who had
witnessed the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus were convincing
evidence of the authenticity of that startling event.

In addition, there were existential, subjective reasons for me
to believe. Throughout my sojourn away from practicing the Christian
faith, I had never been comfortable in denying what I had experienced
in prayer and worship as a child. On some level of my being, I
knew that I had encountered the living God in my life.

I could not "unhear" that Word that had spoken to my heart as
a child. Now my mind was united with what I knew connaturally
in my heart all along: that Jesus is our risen Lord!

With this rediscovery, I began studying the Scriptures closely,
looking for a community of believers in which to worship. I found
one in an Evangelical Anglican Church in Oxford. But after a few
months of worshiping there, I found I needed more than just that
wonderful community's charismatic preaching and singing.

I now
really
knew, on an adult level, that the Scriptures were
true. I wanted to find a community that also believed this and
was trying to live it daily. I also wanted to answer the many
ethical, moral, and political questions that still intrigued me.

As I studied and prayed more, I kept encountering the issues that
divided Catholics and Evangelical Protestants.

I read of how Jesus commissioned His Apostles to forgive sin in
John 20:22 - 23. But where and how was this power exercised today
in the community?

Scripture talked about anointing the sick in James 5:14 - 15.
Yet only Catholics seemed to take this text seriously.

What Jesus said about Holy Communion seemed very straightforward
to me, especially in John 6. Yet Evangelicals speak of the Lord's
Supper as only symbolic.

The Scriptures talked about the transformative power of God's
grace, so that one can speak like St. Paul of total transformation
of oneself to become like Christ (see 2 Co 3:18). But most Evangelicals
believe that Christ's righteousness merely covers our sinful nature
instead of transforming it.

Sacred Scripture speaks of the intercession of the heavenly host
on behalf of God's people on earth (see Rev 8:2 - 4). But only
Catholics prayed to the saints and angels as intercessors and
friends.

Then there were the moral teachings of the Church, which seemed
to make more sense to me each day. As I examined the alternatives,
secular and religious, no other ethical system had the same internal
consistency and tight argumentation that I found in the Catholic
moral tradition of natural law.

In addition, the Catholic moral tradition answered the question
of
how
to decide moral issues -- by appealing to the teaching
authority given to the Apostles and to their successors (the Magisterium
of the Church). This teaching authority made sense of God's love
and desire to lead His children into all truth.

Still another influence was the example of the Catholics I knew
as friends, who lived their faith with a peace and joy about them
that I didn't find elsewhere in the world. In fact, it was a peace
and joy that "surpassed all understanding" (see Phil 4:7). I knew
that I needed and desired that same peace and joy.

I began seeking private instruction in the Faith from Oxford's
Catholic chaplain. For two and a half years, he patiently met
with me each week as I struggled to learn what the Catholic Church
teaches. I examined every aspect of the Faith that I could handle.
I attended lectures on questions of faith and morals held around
the university. I visited with Father Thomas More Mann, a saintly
Franciscan who introduced me to a side of the Church entirely
new to me: its outreach to the poor and vulnerable. I began to
pray seriously and to attend Mass each day. I loved to pray before
and after Mass in the chapel in front of the Tabernacle.

Growing up, I had been exposed to different theologies of the
Eucharist. To the Baptists and Methodists, it was only a symbolic
remembrance. Lutherans believed in "consubstantiation": Jesus
is present "with" ("con-") the substance of bread and wine, but
only in its "use" at Communion. The elements remained bread and
wine at all times.

In fact, I once watched my Lutheran pastor return extra communion
hosts to the bag for a later use after they had been consecrated.
When I questioned him about this practice, he told me that they
were no longer consecrated because Jesus was present only in the
"use." When I pressed him to explain how this was possible and
how this squared with Jesus' own words, "This is My body; this
is My blood," he told me that it was a mystery that we couldn't
hope to understand.

As I prayed in the chapel day in and day out, I had a very real
sense of Jesus' abiding Presence in the place. When I finally
got to the Church's teachings on the Eucharist, I grew excited:
I had already been experiencing the Real Presence in my own private
prayer in the chapel.

Once I became conceptually aware of what I had connaturally experienced
with the Eucharist, I began truly to hunger and thirst for our
Eucharistic Lord. But before I could receive Him, I had to be
honestly able to say that I believed what the Catholic Church
believed. So I redoubled my efforts to study the teachings of
the Church, trying to come to terms with them, particularly her
sexual ethic, which seemed so idealistic. It was beautiful but
seemed impossibly demanding.

By this time, my friends knew I was examining questions of the
Faith. I was trying to see whether I could accept every aspect
of the Church's teaching. But my friend Dermot Quinn pointed out
to me the futility of this approach.

Even if I could study every detail of every teaching, he observed,
and come to say honestly that I agreed with the Church, this would
not make my faith truly Catholic. What made a person Catholic,
Dermot insisted, was not just belief that the Church taught the
truth in matters of faith and morals, but the belief that the
Church is a "truth-teaching thing."

In other words, the most important question I had to answer was
this: Is the Catholic Church who she says she is? Is she the Church
founded by Jesus Christ, containing all that Christ's believers
need for their instruction and sanctification?

If I believed this, I should be (had to be!) Catholic. If I did
not, it really didn't matter whether I happened to agree with
particular Church teachings.

The choice before me was clear. I had come to believe that the
Church was who she claimed to be. The fact that I still had difficulties
with some of her teachings didn't really matter. As Newman said,
"A thousand difficulties do not make for one doubt."

I didn't doubt that the Church was the Mystical Body of Christ
extended through space and time. I was confident that the Church's
teachings in faith and morals were true even if I didn't fully
understand why they were true, because I believed that God had
endowed His Church with a special charism of the Holy Spirit that
ensured that her authentic teachings in matters of faith and morals
are, at least, not false. So I was ready to be received into full
communion.

I knew then, as I know now, that my life as a Catholic would partly
be spent in coming to a better understanding of my faith. I would
need to do theology ("faith seeking understanding") to know and
live the truth better.

This point needs to be emphasized: If God truly loves us, then
He must ensure that we have a way of knowing what He is like and
how we are to live. A loving father wants to be known by his children
and teaches his children how to live and how to love. Any father
who didn't would be negligent.

I had come to know and experience that our loving
Abba
is no "reclusive"
father. He has provided us, His children, with a way to know how
we should live. The teaching office of the Church ensures that
in every age we have access to the fullness of truth that has
been revealed to us in Jesus Christ, who empowers the Church's
official teachers, the bishops in union with the Bishop of Rome,
to teach with a greater-than-human authority in the areas of faith
and morals.

He does this out of love for His children. But like all children,
we must attentively listen to our Father and seek to understand
His teachings if we are to live them out.

It is also very important for us to have confidence and trust
in this function of the Magisterium of the Church. This is especially
true when it comes to accepting
and living
the difficult and demanding
teachings of the gospel. When faced with temptation, often coupled
with intense emotions, we have a tendency toward rationalization.

In such difficult times, we must have at least moral certitude
about the teaching authority of the Church. One of the great injustices
that dissenting theologians, pastors, and teachers have done to
God's people is to place uncertainty in people's minds, doubts
about Church teachings and even about the very authority of the
Church to teach. This makes it easier for us to use our difficulties
and doubts as excuses not to live up to the demands of the gospel.

That June night in 1985 off the coast of Beirut, I needed certainty
that God did in fact demand that I love my enemies. I needed confidence
that God's promises to me would be fulfilled. I needed to know
that God's grace was sufficient for me to follow the gospel's
call to love. Without this confidence, I could well have lost
my soul.

Once received into the Church, I was soon back in the Navy, serving
as a line officer aboard frigates and destroyers. I found it challenging
to try to live as a devout Catholic in the military. It was particularly
difficult not to be able to attend daily Mass.

At sea, we would often go two months without seeing a Catholic
chaplain or making a port visit. But I was determined to serve
the Lord as I served my country. It was the height of the Cold
War, and it was easy to see that the Soviets and their empire
needed to be contained. As I was soon to learn firsthand, innocents
needed protection throughout the world, especially from the threat
of terrorism that was (and is) affecting so many.

Throughout my time of service, but especially after the events
of the summer of 1985, an old desire began to reemerge in my soul.
When I was five or six, if you had asked me what I wanted to be
when I grew up, I would have said a minister. Of course, I had
put away such "childish thoughts" as I grew, especially in light
of my struggle with faith.

But now these thoughts began to reemerge. I discussed these feelings
with spiritual advisers, who recommended that I wait three years
after my conversion before acting on them. Converts often can
be overly zealous in their desire to serve the Lord.

I loved the Navy. But over time, I became more and more convinced
that God was calling me to a higher form of service: the priesthood.
I wanted to share with others the joy I had experienced: the joy
of knowing God's forgiveness, the joy of receiving Him in the
Eucharist, and the joy of knowing the truth revealed to us in
His Word.

So I resigned my commission in order to enter the seminary. I
was ordained a priest on May 25, 1991, and I had the honor to
serve much of my priesthood as a Newman Center chaplain on campus.
As a "Newman convert" myself, I felt right at home in this capacity.

Each day God challenges me to go deeper into the mystery of His
love. In hindsight, I see my life as a constant call to just such
an ongoing conversion. At times, I'm faithful to this call, and
other times I fall far short of a proper response to His grace.
What has been true all through my life is that the Lord continues
to be kind and "merciful to me, a sinner" (Lk 18:13). My greatest
joy as a priest is sharing that kindness and mercy with others -- even with my enemies.