Write for God

We who were born Roman Catholic have had our faith since the cradle. Converts come to our Mother the Church through their own volition. Perhaps they’ve heard the call or perhaps someone brought them. RCIA programs turn our new Catholics each year with the new-found fervor of a new enterprise of great magnitude.

Some of the most faithful and admired Catholics have been converts. My spiritual guide, Thomas Merton, and our most inspiring Catholic activist, Dorothy Day, both came to the Church as adults. John Henry Cardinal Newman, St. Edith Stein, Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha and a host of great Catholics have recognized the Lord on their own road to Emmaus to come home to the Catholic Church.

There’s a story that’s probably not true, but is entertaining nonetheless. Clare Boothe Luce, author, diplomat and wife of media mogul Henry Luce, was an adult convert to Catholicism. With her usual spunk and outspokeness, Mrs. Luce set out embrace her new religion with a passion. There’s a tale that she was describing the joys of being Catholic during a meeting with Pope Pius XII when someone heard His Holiness say, “But, Mrs. Luce, I’m Catholic, too!”

I like to think of myself as a cradle who is also a convert. The first stop that my mother made after my birth was our parish church so that I could be baptized. The family didn’t arrive home until after I’d been welcomed in the Church. It took my own epiphany to bring me back to the Church as a converted spirit when I was an adult.

After four children, I had been seeking an authentic religious experience. I had tried Buddhist meditation, but had gotten to the point where my meditation was leading me nowhere. I kept reaching nothingness. My belief in God never wavered, but I didn’t think an earthly Church had any answers for me.

As I kept meditating, reading and seeking in my heart, I began having bizarre visions that seemed to be scenes in a movie. I would be driving or reading and a scene would flood my consciousness. I was a child standing outside in the darkness before a door with warmth and a bustling kitchen behind it. The voices of my late grandmother and great-aunt would call me to come in to eat. That would be the extent of my little reverie. Each time, I would be outside in the dark and the women in the kitchen would call me in to eat.

I couldn’t interpret what this waking dream meant, but I wondered if it was an omen of death. Why would two of the people I had loved the most and who had passed on be calling me to eat? Gradually, my husband and I began to reconsider Catholicism. Kevin and I were both cradle Catholics who found ourselves heading home as we spent more time married and raising children.

One Sunday, I attended my first Mass in many years with the kids. We sat in the back of the Church because I didn’t feel I belonged anywhere near the sanctuary. The celebrant of the Mass was an older priest whom I would later come to know as a quiet saint in the parish we joined.

During his homily, he said, “God serves a banquet and he calls us to share it during the Eucharist.” I was being called to come in and eat at God’s banquet! The persistent images of my grandmother and great-aunt calling me in from the darkness had to be a divine invitation to once again share the Body and Blood of Jesus.

Like Paul on the road to Damascus, I was struck by the call to serve God more fully. In the years since, my faith has deepened to levels I could not have imagined if I’d not been seeking God. I had to heed His invitation to partake of the Eucharist. Each time I step up to receive Communion under both species, I am humbled and awed by the miracle of the gift I am receiving.

For a few years, I served as an extraordinary minister at Communion. A fellow minister mentioned to me that I went about my duties with extreme reverence. It did me good to hear that I was indeed demonstrating how privileged I felt sharing the Eucharist with others.

God calls each of us in our own time. Some at birth, some later in life. When you are called twice, His voice is louder.