The Catholic Church is mean. That was my first impression.
We were there for a funeral. My first visit ever to an actual Catholic church. While still attending seminary, I was serving as a Methodist pastor at a small church in rural Georgia. A close friend died. My wife, Anita, and I attended the funeral. So far, so good. Since I was a pastor, it just naturally occurred to me to stand and move toward the altar when the time came to receive communion from the priest. In the Methodist Church, the communion elements were offered to anyone who presents himself to receive. Moving forward was a natural response for me.
In the small church, with only a handful of pews, we were seated near the front, immediately behind the family of the deceased. When the priest issued the invitation at the funeral, I moved toward the aisle to go forward. As I stood, a woman directly in front of me, who knew me well enough to know I was not Catholic, turned around, stuck her finger in my chest, glared directly in my eyes, and said very pointedly, "You cannot receive communion here. Sit down."
Message sent. Message received. Clearly.
My takeaway? The Catholic Church is mean. At least that is what I thought and felt at the moment since this was my very first encounter in a Catholic church.
But years later, my experience in the dining room of the old house would change all that.
Sister Rose Plants the First Seed
Several years after that "sit down" encounter, the Holy Spirit introduced me to the dining room of the old house. It was there that God planted the first seed. I am still trying to understand how He did that. I do know this: it did not happen overnight. It was a gradual process, but when it did, the results overwhelmed me.
This dining room discovery was the very beginning of my journey home to the Church. Ironically, it also proved to be the final climax.
The dining room is where it began and ended. In a way, this makes sense. We often begin our family time gathered around the family table. We linger after meals in the dining room. For most families, our best conversations take place in the dining room. In more ways than one, the family table becomes the centerpiece of our family's life together. The dinner table cannot be replaced by the drive-through window nor by an entertainment center. Something mysterious, even sacred, occurs when we sit down together and break bread. Even research shows that families who eat together usually experience greater strength and remain together. It may be as simple as this: in the dining room, we share the family meal. And that meal binds us together.
In the same way, in the Catholic Church, the dining room takes center stage. It serves as the focal point of the entire house. Why? Because as a friend of mine says, "It all rides on the Eucharist." And it took me a long time to discover he is right.
After completing seminary at Emory University in Atlanta, my family and I moved to New Haven, Connecticut, for me to pursue a Ph. D. in New Testament and Ancient Christian Origins at Yale University. Of the four students admitted to the highly selective degree program that year, one was a Presbyterian, one a Jesuit, one a Dominican, and, of course, I was a Methodist. Much to my surprise, the Dominican friar, Fr. Steven, and I immediately became close friends upon meeting in our first week. Fr. Steven fascinated me. I had never spent more than five minutes with a priest in my life. He slowly opened all the doors to the Catholic Church for me. Up to that point, I really had had no exposure to the Church, but when it came, it came like water from a fire hydrant.
At times, God uses friendships in remarkable ways. We listen to real friends. To strangers, we often turn a deaf ear or a cold shoulder. But to real friends, we will listen, even when listening stretches us in new ways. I do not think Fr. Steven intended to lead me home. Rather, he loved me and my family with abundance in a time when we desperately needed it. That friendship and love led to conversations about things of faith. Those conversations percolated and bounced around in my soul for years. I am constantly amazed at how God uses genuine friendships to shape our lives.
Essentially what Fr. Steven did was he introduced me to the dining room and the family meal. In our second year together, Fr. Steven arranged for the two of us to give Lenten lectures to a group of cloistered Dominican nuns in North Guilford, Connecticut. Of course, first, he had to explain what a cloistered monastery was. Talk about naive! I had no idea such places even existed.
A gathering of 50 nuns, located in a monastery whose grounds they vowed never to leave. A place of regular prayer, Mass, and simple, humble service. A group of nuns who supported their mutual life of prayer by making fudge (and it was great fudge!) and operating a book store. It was in their monastery that God planted the first seeds for my conversion, seeds which took sixteen years to come to fruition, and seeds which I did not even realize were being planted at the time.
Fr. Steven and I spent four wonderful afternoons giving talks to the nuns at the Monastery of Our Lady of Grace. I discovered later that I had been the first male who was not an ordained Catholic priest ever to instruct the sisters within their walls. It was a rare privilege and blessing, which I could not have fully appreciated at the moment. God had opened a door of grace into which I had stumbled.
Best of all, the experience proved eye-opening for me in more ways than one. This invitation into a cloistered monastery rocked my world.
The holiness of these sisters stunned me. Keep in mind that these women would be the first to disagree at any suggestion that they are holy. They would be wrong.
Never before had I encountered persons so completely given over to God. Their faces shone with a grace and a light that unnerved me. The love of God revealed itself physically in their eyes, cheeks, and smiles. These were women whose entire lives were dedicated to the glory of God.
Remember this was totally new to me. I had no context or background to understand this place or these women. No such group exists in any Protestant tradition. Very simply, I was bumfuddled. It is not often that we have an experience that is so out of the ordinary and so out of place that we have no real way to process it at first.
This was all new territory to me. In some ways, it was scary because I was accustomed to teaching, speaking and being in charge of my setting. That control and leadership clearly did not apply here.
Fr. Steven and I shared lectures focused on the great Dominican doctor of the Church, Thomas Aquinas, and on John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement. We discussed sanctification and holiness, and the places where our beliefs intersected far more than we had anticipated. The common ground between us surprised the nuns, Fr. Steven, and me. We enjoyed great interaction and conversation together. After our last lecture, we reserved time for questions and answers. For many of the sisters, I was the first Methodist they had ever met.
One sister, whom I call "Sr. Rose," raised her hand and, as I remember, said, "Allen, thank you for having come these past few weeks. We've enjoyed your teaching." She paused and continued, "You sound so Catholic. After hearing you, I can't help but wonder, 'Why aren't you a part of the Church?'"
The nuns giggled. The question startled me. "A part of the Church?" What did she mean?As a Protestant I was taken aback by that. I thought to myself, "Well, I am a part of the Church. Don't you understand that? I'm a Methodist pastor." Then all of a sudden it dawned on me: she meant the Catholic Church is the one and only Church.
I laughed and gave a quick answer. I said something like, "Why am I Methodist as opposed to being Catholic? Well, you are some of the first Catholics I have ever met. The main reason revolves around communion. It seems very obvious to me that Jesus is using a metaphor when He talks about the cup and the loaf. The wine doesn't literally become His blood; that seems kind of obvious to me as a Methodist. It's still wine, or in the Methodist tradition, it's grape juice. The loaf, He is saying, 'It's my body,' just as He also says He is the door, He is the light, and He is the shepherd. It's just bread and juice. I really do not understand why you all take it so literally. It's a symbol."
Believe it or not, I had never had that conversation in my brain before. As a Methodist and in my training in seminary, it was just something we assumed. I took it for granted.
Sr. Rose then came right back at me. Very kindly but very directly, she said, "Well, you are a New Testament scholar, right? So why does Jesus say..."
With that introduction, she then began to walk me through chapter 6 of the Gospel of John and Jesus' teaching there on the Bread of Life. I thought I knew this passage, but Sr. Rose carefully paused on eight separate occasions to make the point: Jesus is serious about His body and His blood.
6:35: I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
6:47: Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.
6:51: I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the...
