OPINION: A Conversion Story And All That Nonsense

(CHRISM NEWS/ CHRIS POTRATZ) As any Catholic can attest, there is something decidedly unique and powerful about being in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament – especially during an hour of Adoration or Benediction. As I write this, I am feeling the need to be very candid about myself and my conversion to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Maybe, I hope, it will be of some benefit to a reader out there. And I promise, I will bring this back around to what this has to do with the Blessed Sacrament before I conclude.

I recall very clearly my conversion to Christianity in general. I was 17 years old and living in a northern suburb of Dallas, Texas. My youth was not what anyone would call “productive” – although the older I get the more I realize that, indeed, it may have been.

At the age of 13, I was arrested for burglary of a habitation. I will not bore you with details. Suffice it to say, I was young and made very bad choices. As a condition of my probation, I was required to complete a certain number of hours of community service. I decided to stuff envelopes at St. Jude Catholic Church in Allen, Texas. Mind you, I was not Catholic – or even a Christian. It simply seemed an easy enough task to complete.

I don’t recall the experience being necessarily powerful, or mystical. I do, however, remember feeling a certain sense of peace being in that church, chatting with a nun. Being the frivolous youth that I was, I thought that it would be funny to fill my water bottle with holy water and take it home with me. Later on, I would drink some of it – but I clearly recall storing the bottle with some care, as to preserve its contents.

Fast forward several years and we find a 17 year old, who through a series of powerful experiences slowly came to the realization that surely God must exist. I began to shed my relativistic view that all gods are the same – I knew truth existed, and I knew I had to find it.

Many Evangelicals speak of the “moment” they were born again. I had such an experience. I was delivering pizza for Domino’s. I was driving up a large hill, with the sun setting on the other side. I asked specifically, at that very moment, for God to let me know if he was real – and to this day I firmly believe that he did.

As I reached the top of the hill and the setting sun hit my eyes, I was forced to close them, just briefly, as the light was refracting in just such a way as to make it impossible for me to see the road. At that moment, I had a clear vision of Jesus Christ.

Not a living Jesus, but the unmistakable image of what I would describe then as a “Catholic” Jesus. The image on the right is as close an image as I can find to represent what I saw.

I was amazed, totally amazed. As soon as I got back to Domino’s from that delivery, I began to tell everyone that Jesus was God, and indeed, I was going to be a Christian. As I also recall, that very same conversation fostered an interesting relationship I had with an elderly Mormon man who worked there with me. We would spend all of our down time debating religious issues. Truly, a time I will not forget.

From that moment on, I began attending Grace Evangelical Free Church in Allen, TX. I met several great Christians there, and it was there that I received my Baptism – in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. My Dad attended my Baptism. Because my parents are not church going folk, this meant a great deal to me, and still does.

During this time I grew in my faith. I would read the Word like it was the most nourishing medicine I had ever encountered. And after my very troubled years as a delinquent youth, it most definitely WAS medicine. Despite my Evangelical start, I was never able to shake that big “C” – the Catholic Church. What was this Church, and why was it different from my own? Moreover – why did I encounter such animosity toward all things Catholic from each and every apologist and theologian that I would listen to? (I now know why – Satan attacks what he most hates)

My Evangelical church would occasionally serve bread and grape juice during Sunday worship. Not every Sunday, mind you. I knew, almost intuitively, that something seemed very lacking about this bread and wine service. To start with, Jesus Christ offered wine at the last supper – not grape juice. I could be flexible in understanding that they view it as a mere symbol, but at the very least get the symbol right.

To supplement my lack of spiritual nourishment from the bread and wine service, I would offer myself a communion service in the privacy of my bedroom – one that seemed to more closely fit the standard of a practice that Jesus not only commanded of us, but a practice that, by his very words, we must do to inherit eternal life. That was plain as day to me in the Scripture, and I was at a loss as to why my Evangelical cohorts did not see this (or maybe chose not to, knowing what following that logic would lead them to ….. cough, cough …. Catholicism ….. cough, cough).

I would sit in the quiet of my childhood bedroom, at my desk, and have a personal communion service. I would light a candle. I would set up images of Jesus and Mary. I would play Gregorian chant on my boom box. And I would read the words of the Gospel:

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

I would then eat my non-salted saltine cracker and drink my grape juice (hey, I was only 17, I could not buy wine – what excuse did my church have?) I would then proceed to sit and listen to the Gregorian chant, and look at the images of Jesus and Mary. Mind you, I had never even been to, or seen, a Catholic Mass at this point. Why I was so compelled to this format continues to amaze me. Recently, I discovered that my mother preserved the cups I used for my personal communion service, and I now have them in my possession.

Let’s fast forward some more. During the first few years of my service in the Air Force, I became intellectually convinced of the Catholic Church’s claims. Scripture alone? Makes no sense. Real Presence? Makes total sense. Fractured denominations? Makes no sense. Unity under the Bishop of Rome, an office appointed by Christ? Makes total sense. You get the point.

However, from the time I intellectually decided the Church was right until my actual Confirmation into the Church, eight years passed. I backslid. I left the military, went to college, and like so many in academia I neglected my faith. But that was about to change – and in a big way.

During my final years of graduate school, I was at a low point. A LOW, LOW point. Depressed, anxious, suicidal – you name it. In the throes of one very terrible night, with tears in my eyes and too much pain to account for in one man’s heart, I drove myself to Christ the King in Omaha, NE sometime after 2:00 a.m., as I saw online that they had perpetual adoration. Something I remembered reading about and experiencing, briefly, years ago while I was in the military.

I sat in that Chapel, staring at a large, gold metal disk with a piece of bread in the center, and wondered what in the hell I was doing there, and what this encased piece of bread had to offer me. Moreover, why was I so compelled to drive at 2:00 a.m., full of alcohol, halfway across town to sit and stare at a piece of bread?

No matter, the dimly lit chapel full of candles flickering in the late hours of the night were comforting, and so was knowing I was in this Chapel with a dedicated old woman sitting in the front quietly praying her rosary - showing me, without her even knowing it, what real faith and piety looks like.

I began to thumb through a bible, and inside found what I believe was a novena of some kind to St. Jude. The novena required me to say the prayer to St. Jude for 9 days, and also to write the prayer out by hand each day, and leave it hidden somewhere in a Church for another to find. A few days into this practice, I was across town and decided to stop in at St. Joan of Arc Church, as they too have perpetual Adoration. I went in, said my prayer, wrote it out, and hid the prayer. As I was walking out, I saw on the back table a stack of prayer cards. To whom? St. Jude, of course.

At this point I felt the promptings of the Spirit telling me that I should be encouraged by this. I went home, and read online about St. Jude. As many of you likely already know, St. Jude was one of the 12 Apostles of Jesus. He is also, according to the Church, the patron saint of lost causes. Could there be a more perfect saint for how I felt?

And then it hit me. St. Jude Catholic Church in Allen, Texas – where I first saw a Catholic Church, and where I foolishly drank holy water. It was too much, and I was overcome with that unique and almost eerie feeling that someone was standing right behind me. I knew who it was, and I welcomed him. The next year I entered the Catholic Church at Christ the King in Omaha, taking the confirmation name of Jude.

It is funny, really funny, how the Lord follows you through your entire life, setting up situations which seem like perhaps the most forgettable and insignificant of events, which eventually come right back around – showing you that his ways are not our ways, and that an eternal perspective is vastly different from the chronology of our day to days lives. Namely, God seems to have much more patience than I do. And I need to be more thankful for that.

So, what does my story have to do with the power and majesty of the most Blessed Sacrament? I would hope a keen reader would emphatically answer: “Everything, of course!” To which I would reply, “Exactly.”

Becoming Catholic is not simply a process. It is not simply being a member of some church. It is not to have something to do on Sundays. Anyone who has supernatural faith will look you square in the eyes and tell you that Jesus Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament is THE reason we are Catholic. We kneel when entering a Church, because the King of Kings is present. We kneel during the consecration at Mass for the very same reason. We expose the Sacrament for Adoration because being in the very presence of God – body, blood, soul, and divinity – is decidedly more powerful than someone who has yet to experience it can hardly imagine.

Jesus clearly said, "Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”

Moreover, St. Paul teaches us:

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.

I implore my non-catholic family and friends, and even those Catholics who lack faith in the Sacrament, to examine very closely St. Paul’s words. He very clearly states that “anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself” In essence, those who take communion unworthily – i.e. not recognizing that it is, in fact, the body of Christ – are damning themselves. Does this sound like a mere symbol? Is St. Paul simply wrong here? Of course not.

Any serious Christian, if they are honest with themselves, should discern the following message from St. Paul's words: it is imperative that we foster within ourselves a much deeper appreciation, respect, and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament – lest we fail to listen to our Savior and his Apostle St. Paul. Or, if perhaps you never have developed such a sense of respect, I am living proof that it is never too late to start. Happy New Year!

#opinion