Off the map

Posted on October 16, 2012 by Joseph T. Richardson

(It’s been months since I last posted an entry in my personal story. That’s because this next chapter is one of the most painful, and most personal. I was nearly inclined to skip over it — but it’s an important prelude to the events that followed. I’ve written three or four entries and discarded each as insufficient. Yesterday I wrote another one, what I thought was the final one — but it still felt too distant, too detached. So last night I read about a year of my journal entries from that period, and remembered the agony. I think now I’m ready.)

“Desert Road” (2008) by Matt Hintsa. (Flickr, CC-licensed)

My experiences in Rome had woken me from my spiritual apathy, and reminded me that there was a God who loved me. I knew in my mind that I needed Him. I set about, in my own striving, to seek Him. But I was still too caught up in myself — my life, my needs, my pain, my wounds — to truly embrace Christ’s.

I believed I was seeking God, but I was looking for fulfillment, for salvation, in the wrong places: in friends, in girls, in acceptance, in personal satisfaction. I bounced from one infatuation to the next with beautiful, godly women who weren’t the least bit interested in me. Time and time again I dashed my own heart against the rocks of heartbreak. All the while I was striving so desperately for love, when I didn’t even know what love was; I only knew selfishness. All the while I was seeking completion, the missing piece to my heart, when that could only be found in God.

“Near New Market,” by author. Taken on one of these wanderings.

It was a time of increasing restlessness. Some deep discontent was always boiling just beneath my skin. Most of the time I couldn’t put a finger on why — was I worried about money? about school? about my singleness? about the future? So often I would just get in the car and drive, not knowing where I was going — I just needed to get away.

This was the Baptist leg of my wandering road, almost by accident. I knew I needed to get back in church, but I couldn’t make up my mind where to start, or move myself to visit someplace where I didn’t know anybody. And then, thinking it might be a chance to get closer to some or another girl, I found myself in the Baptist church.

The Southern Baptist faith is the most deeply and essentially southern flavor of Christianity there is. It is the archetypical church in the southern mind, the kind of religion most people think of if you don’t specify otherwise. And so it was comfortable and safe. I liked the pastor and his preaching, and I liked the worship. But over the months I was in that church, I increasingly felt alone and out of place. Being about twenty-six years old, I was a part of the “adult singles” ministry; but I was the youngest person there by easily ten years. Every other “adult single” was older, divorced or widowed, with kids and a career. I, too old for the “college” ministry but still in school, never married, without a job or family of my own — had none of the concerns of these other people. In fact, there were few people in that church my age at all. It dawned on me more and more that they had no real place for me there. I felt disheartened and trapped.

Meanwhile, I had a blog in which I had come to invest an unhealthy degree of my self-worth. I posted every day, hoping someone would read me and validate me.* It was the golden age of LiveJournal, and I was one of those people. I had discovered a circle of blogfriends who were young (younger than me), educated, intellectual Christians who’d grown up with an evangelical persuasion but were searching for something deeper. The looming question for each of them was whether to convert to Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy — and I believe every one of these people eventually did become one or the other. I admired them all a great deal — I longed for an intellectual faith like theirs more than anything — but having no foundation in theology or doctrine, I couldn’t follow their arguments or post anything intelligent in response. I felt like the lonely little kid chasing after the gang, eagerly wanting to play with the big kids, but left behind and left out every time. Oh, how I tried so hard to impress them — to be noticed; to be accepted — but just as I had always felt in my youth group growing up — for entirely the opposite reason — I felt an outsider.

* Now you see why I’ve been so concerned with blogging humbly.

There was one blogfriend in particular whom I considered an especially close friend — and then one day, she was gone. She dropped me from her friends list (ah, LJ drama!) and stopped answering my messages. In retrospect, I was entirely too dependent on my blogfriends for my self-esteem and emotional support, and letting go was the best thing for me in the long run; but at the time, I was fairly devastated. I searched and searched for reasons for this rejection, and the unfortunate conclusion I drew was that intellectual Christians, especially those inclined toward Catholicism and Orthodoxy, were arrogant, condescending snobs with whom I wanted nothing more to do.† I allowed the trauma to turn me away from Catholicism, from several favorite TV shows and books this friend and I had shared, even from C. S. Lewis, whom I associated with thinking Christians and this friend in particular. I didn’t take up any of those things again for a good four or five years. And so I came to associate Catholicism, even more than I had before, with coldness, rigor, and emptiness.

† In fact, as I later learned, the reason was that she had realized how unhealthy this sort of thing was for both of us.

Already unhappy and disillusioned with the church I was attending, I turned away from God in anger. My nascent search for a church that “fit me” — my first attempts to delve into Christian theology and thought — had brought me nothing but pain. I felt utterly rejected, utterly alone, even though my true friends were with me all along. My faith had been shallow, selfish, immature, and poorly rooted: I was the seed sown on stony ground that sprang up vividly, but met with affliction, withered away. If church had failed me yet again — what else was out there? Shaking off what I thought were shackles, I aimed to find out.

That was six, nearly seven years ago. For the first time in my life, I entered truly uncharted territory — a world not constrained by my Christian faith, which I left in tatters, flapping helplessly in the wind. Over the next months, I charged further and further away, deeper and deeper into the unknown. I hope I never go the places I went again.

But God was always there. By my Baptism, I was a Christian: one with the Body of Christ. And He still had plans for me. He wasn’t going to let me go so easily.

Seeing the Pope

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Joseph T. Richardson

Pope Benedict XVI, greeting the people just after his election was announced.

So when I left off my personal story, I was in Rome, on what became a pilgrimage of sorts: enthralled by the majestic churches, captured by the sense of history, drawn to God and Church for the first time in years.

We visited all four major basilicas of Rome: St. John Lateran; St. Mary Major; St. Paul outside the Walls, where I was powerfully moved at St. Paul’s tomb; and St. Peter’s. St. Peter’s in particular was overwhelming in its size and grandeur. I found the tomb of St. Gregory the Great, who was one of my favorite saints even then; and I’ve already told of my wonderings about St. Peter’s tomb. Some of the other churches we visited included San Clemente, the oldest of any church we saw, whose foundations reached back to the first century; Santa Maria sopra Minerva, where lay interred St. Catherine of Siena; and Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, built in the remains of the Baths of Diocletian. There is far more to tell of my time in Rome, and far more still that I failed to see for my closed spiritual eyes. I long to go back now that I’ve found the Church.

The façade of the Basilica of St. Mary Major.

One more anecdote about Rome that I’d like to relate: I saw the pope. As I related briefly before, Pope John Paul II had died only weeks before our trip, and Pope Benedict XVI had succeeded him. Pope Benedict had only just taken possession of St. John Lateran as cathedral of Rome the week of our visit. (Many people don’t realize that St. John Lateran, not St. Peter’s, is Rome’s cathedral church.) I was very sad at the passing of Pope John Paul, but I was glad, at least, that he was no longer suffering, and that I might have the chance to see the new pope.

Every Wednesday, the pope holds a General Audience in St. Peter’s Square. A group of my fellow students and I decided to attend. It was an overcast Wednesday morning when we set out, five or six of us, from our hotel — without umbrellas. It wasn’t very long before we regretted that lack of foresight. It came a downpour, and by the time we arrived at St. Peter’s Square and had been sitting there a few minutes waiting, we were soaked to the bone. Gradually the rain slackened to a drizzle, but it was still overcast and unpleasant.

Finally the time came for the pope to appear. He rolled out at one end of the piazza in his pope-mobile, to the cheers of the people greeting their new pontiff. Two giant projection-screen TVs broadcast his arrival for those of us sitting at a distance. He circled the square, waving to the faithful, before coming to the stage erected on the steps of the basilica, and exiting.

The pope stepped out onto the steps, and raised his arms in a blessing. At that moment, the clouds parted. The sun appeared, brightly and warmly. The rain stopped. It was as if God was smiling on this man and on us who had come to hear him.

He spoke for a few minutes. I suppose he was speaking Italian, since I don’t remember what he said. But I felt very glad just to be there, to be standing a mere few yards away from the leader of Western Christendom.

At the end of his address, he said a blessing over the people, and announced that all religious items brought to the square that day were now blessed. I suppose many of the Catholic faithful brought Rosaries, statues, icons, and other devotional objects. I happened to have a Bible in my backpack, a compact NIV my dad had bought for me before I left. It is a religious item, I thought. I considered it ironic that the pope had unknowingly blessed a Protestant translation of the Bible; but I nonetheless considered it meaningful and important. I inscribed the event on the frontispiece of the book, and have cherished it ever since as “the Pope’s Bible.”

As soon as the pope was done speaking and had left the stage, the rain resumed. The clouds returned to cover the sun. I considered it an amusing coincidence, and have often jovially told the story, as I am now — but looking back I see the experience as yet another subtle gesture from God to the authority of this man and this Church — a nod as if to say, I am looking after this foundation. Looking back over the years, through all that I traveled, I consider it no small matter that the pope of Rome prayed for me and said words of blessing over me: At very long last, after seven years, those words have brought me home.

The Eternal City

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Joseph T. Richardson

In 2005, I had the opportunity to travel to Italy with Dr. G and a small class of students, most of them members of the Society (and so passionate nerds for Latin and antiquity like me). It was a course on the history of the city of Rome, and in two weeks, we covered some 3,000 years of Roman history, from Romulus to Mussolini. In the mornings, Dr. G lectured us, and in the afternoons, we went out into the city to tour the sites that pertained to that day’s period of history. The whole expanse of history is right there before you in Rome, to see and experience. It was magical.

This was the culmination of three years of tutelage under Dr. G. But all was not well. I had just run aground of two of the unhealthiest, most disastrous semesters in my entire college career, one after the other. My academic future stood precariously on the rocks, and even amid the wonder and joy of being in Rome, I struggled against despair and hopelessness. In a minor coup, I forced out a research paper in the week before I left — on the Christian Catacombs of Rome — and handed it to Dr. G as I was boarding the plane. And I tried to leave my catastrophe behind me.

The trip was too full and too vivid and too wonderful to cover here in any great detail. I kept extensive journals while I was in Italy, striving to capture every moment. Because of this, most blessedly, I am able to re-create my thoughts and feelings at the time of my experiences, unclouded by the years. More than any other fruit of this journey — though I had no notion of it at the time, and only now, seven years later, am realizing it — it laid the paving stones of my journey to the Church.

The Basilica of St. John Lateran.

We arrived in Rome on a Saturday. The next day, Sunday, we collectively decided to go to Mass — when in Rome, do as the Romans do. We picked the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome, which wasn’t on our itinerary otherwise. It was only two days after Pope Benedict XVI had had formally taken possession of it as pope and bishop of Rome. It was a glorious choice for my first Roman church and my first Roman Mass. The account from my Roman journal:

We arrived at the church just as the ten o’clock Mass was ending. Outside it was impressive, but that was nothing compared to what I saw inside. Immediately upon walking through the doors, I was so awed by the size, beauty, and magnificence that I began to weep. The ceilings were high and vaulted, and everywhere was ornate work in gold. Splendid paintings and mosaics covered the walls. In alcoves along the walls were Baroque statuary of the twelve Apostles that looked as if the Apostles were about to come alive and walk among us. High above the altar rested the relics of St. Peter and St. Paul. I felt I was in the presence of God.

By this time, I had been drifting spiritually for about seven years. I always called myself a Christian, always thought of God from time to time; but I hadn’t been going to church regularly, praying, or reading my Bible for a very long time. I felt that God had forsaken me, when in truth I had forsaken Him, choosing instead idols and sins and spiritual oblivion. But in Rome, from this very first moment, I was awakened to His presence. If there was anywhere where I could encounter God, I thought, it was in these ancient churches in this eternal city, where saints and martyrs had walked.

The Basilica of St. Paul outside the Walls.

A couple of days later, we took a trip down to the EUR, Mussolini’s planned city district. Our plan was to visit the Museo della Civiltà Romana (Museum of Roman Civilization), with its scale model of ancient Rome — but when we got down there, it was closed. The rest of our day was now open; what else would we do? Hibernius, my Catholic convert friend, and I made the case for us to take the subway back up a couple of stops to St. Paul outside the Walls.

The high altar of St. Paul outside the Walls.

The Basilica of St. Paul outside the Walls is one of the four major basilicas of Rome. It is also the traditional burial place of St. Paul, over which the Emperor Constantine built the original basilica in the early fourth century. Only months earlier, I had read the first whisperings of a remarkable discovery there: Vatican archaeologists had discovered Paul’s sarcophagus. The plaque over it read, “Apostle Paul, Martyr.”

I went to the church with this on my mind. We entered the church through the apse end, so I didn’t get the impact of the façade; but I was immediately impressed with the church’s size and grandeur. That’s not what really moved me, though. I made my way to the high altar. There I saw the representation of a tomb (not the ancient sarcophagus, I realized) at the foot of it. Being generally unfamiliar with Catholic churches and relics, I wasn’t sure if this was where Paul’s tomb had been discovered or not. I anxiously queried Hibernius, and he found a priest who spoke English and asked him. It was.

When I found out, I was overwhelmed. I knelt down at the altar, and tears began streaming down my face, as the words of St. Paul, which have always meant so much to me, echoed in my head, and I thought of the road to Damascus. ‘Thank you, Lord, for sending your servant Paul,’ I prayed.

Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, Archpriest of Rome's Basilica of St. Paul's Outside-the-Walls, shows the passageway through which one side of St. Paul's stone coffin is visible. (National Geographic)

I’m not sure how long I knelt there praying — ten, fifteen, thirty minutes? — but when I looked up, I saw my friends and classmates standing there looking concerned. They were ready to leave, but wanted to give me my time. As we left, several of them thanked me for bringing them there. Several people told me later that it was their favorite place to visit. It was certainly the highlight of my trip.

I had a touch from God that day, and I knew it — my first true religious experience in a number of years. From then on, my time in Rome became a pilgrimage. Visiting churches was what I most looked forward to; and I was acutely aware of God’s presence in them and my experience of Him. I remember commenting, thinking little of it at the time, that it was hard to stand in those churches and not want to be Catholic.

Before I left St. Paul’s, I bought a small statue of the Apostle. Even at the time I bought it, I was conscious of it being more than just a souvenir: it was an object of devotion. That statue has stood on my bookshelf ever since, watching over me; as I believe St. Paul himself has watched over me, and guided me home to Rome. I wasn’t aware of it then, but God was working, slowly but deliberately, to bring about my redemption.

A Musical Journey

Posted on December 10, 2011 by Joseph T. Richardson

I’ve already written a little about my first flirtations with liturgy: how I began listening to Mozart’s Requiem as “mood music,” at a time when I was feeling morbidly depressed. I listened to it repeatedly, reflecting on failure and death and loss; recalling the sad end of Mozart’s life, and the idea that he was writing music for his own funeral — it seemed the most pained, desperate thing I could manifest. I had little concept of liturgy or what that even meant, only the sense that these words in Latin were somehow sacred and powerful. I downloaded their text; I memorized it. This fascination was one of the motives that brought me to study Latin.

Johann Sebastian Bach, a Lutheran, but someone who knew how to worship God.

My next contact with liturgy was Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B Minor, BWV 232, a recording of it that came highly recommended. Honestly, at the time, I’m not sure I could have even told you what a “Mass” was, other than “something Catholics did.” At the time, it was just beautiful music to me; or so I thought.

But then, some four or five years later, something remarkable happened. It was after I had graduated with my bachelor’s. I was teaching at a small, Christian school. Preparing for class was one of the most stressful things I’d ever done. Peace was more a premium than it ever had been before. I had discovered Last.fm; I was listening, I think, to the J.S. Bach radio. And then, like a breath of fresh air, I heard this:

(The English translation on the first slide should read, “Hail, O sweetest Mary”)

Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa.

Voices so worshipful, so longing, so mournful, so penitent — the music pierced right to my soul. The composer was Carlo Gesualdo, Italian nobleman, musician, composer — and murderer. As a young man, he had murdered his wife and her lover. Later in life, wracked with depression and guilt and fearful for the fate of his eternal soul, he wrote some of his most expressive music in penance. The story of the man, and especially his music, immediately captured my heart.

And listening to Gesualdo on Last.fm led, soon, to Dufay, and Josquin, and Tallis, and Byrd, and others — my collection of early, sacred music quickly mushroomed in a matter of a few weeks. As did my obsession with it. Very soon, it was all I was listening to. It had burrowed into my soul — these sounds of so long ago, carrying such order and peace; this worship — for I understood immediately that it was worship, and worshiped God with it — so clean and bright and pure and heavenly. What affected me more than anything was the Mass settings. I felt the sense, very early, that the Mass was spiritual food.

Josquin des Prez, my current favorite composer (this frequently changes).

Prompted by the feelings of worship that the music stirred in me, I soon was devoting time every morning to daily Bible study, something I hadn’t done consistently for a very long time. I made my way through the whole New Testament in a matter of a month or two; there had been books, up until that time in my life, that I’d never read before. I played the music while I worshiped and prayed. I told myself that it “made me feel like a monk” — prayerful and contemplative and ascetic — this was a good thing. I felt I was drawing on some ancient, powerful store of spiritual power.

And I was. That store was liturgy. I was hearing the Mass every day. The music of the Mass was piercing my heart and drawing me to worship. The words of the Mass were pouring into my soul — even before I understood them or knew what was happening; though by this time my Latin was good enough that I understood them quickly. On a number of occasions I found the Roman Missal online, in Latin, and followed along. I began to practice the prayers of the Mass in my private spirituality. I had little inkling at this time that I was on the road to Catholicism; I had no intention, starting out, of ever attending an actual Mass. But the Holy Spirit was drawing me to the Church through the Mass, through liturgy.

My pope

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Joseph T. Richardson

Blessed Pope John Paul II.

John Paul II was the first pope I ever knew. I don’t remember when I first became aware of him — he was just always there, on the news, in the media. Not being Catholic, not having any Catholic friends, I never felt he had a direct impact on my life. But as I grew older, I watched him travel widely. I saw his witness, how he reached out to Jews, and Muslims, and Buddhists, and Christians of all stripes. As I began to seek, he was there to welcome. And I grew to love this man, this servant of God, who was so full of love for all humanity.

By my twenties, I had come to see Pope John Paul as a loving, wise, grandfatherly figure, a spiritual father to all Christendom and all the world. He began to grow old and feeble as my own beloved grandfather grew old and feeble. My heart ached to see him stumble and fall, to see him weaken, yet continue on his mission.

As I developed as an historian, and studied the history of the Church, I became fascinated with the popes, these leaders who claimed their mandate and descent from the Apostle Peter. I remember getting carried away for hours on Wikipedia, going down through the ages of the papacy. I am by nature drawn to lists. Lists, the putting of items into order, give me a sense of order and coherence. As a young teenager and fan of the space program, I memorized the missions and crews of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, and the first half dozen Space Shuttle missions. At sixteen, I became enthralled by genealogy, and quickly committed a complex web of names and dates, ancestors and descendants and family relationships, to memory. And in my twenties, I was captured by yet another list: the popes of Rome.

In 2005, as Pope John Paul entered his final days on this earth, I was planning a trip to Rome with a school group. I had looked forward to seeing the pope, but then, at the beginning of April, just weeks before we were to go, the pope’s health took a turn for the worse. He was dying. During those final hours, I felt a heaviness I’ve only felt a few times since, in the final hours of close loved ones. The night before he died, I joined the world in their deathwatch, staying up on the couch and falling asleep in front of the TV, so that I would not miss the moment if it came.

Pope John Paul II's tomb in the Vatican Grottoes. I took this photo a few weeks after his death. (Since his beatification, his tomb has been moved to the floor of the basilica.)

He died on Saturday, April 2, 2005, after a papacy of twenty-six years. I felt a profound sadness, watching the mourners in St. Peter’s Square, and hearing the bells toll. That night I wrote in my blog:

Pope John Paul II died today.

I am not Catholic, so I do not feel the same profound sense of loss that many of you may feel. But I know that he was a great man, who served God and God’s children, and did a lot of good in this world. And I admire him for that, and I am saddened by his passing.

Requiescat in pace, Serve Servorum Dei.

I watched with equally rapt attention as the papal conclave began on 18 April. Not only was I watching history unfolding, but I realized that if the conclave ran long, it might impact my group’s ability to tour the Vatican and see the Sistine Chapel. (But wouldn’t that be an exciting time to be in Rome!) Thankfully, it only lasted about a day. The result was the election of Pope Benedict XVI, whom I would also come to cherish in the years to come.

But I will always feel that John Paul II was “my pope.” Even though I was not Catholic, even though I had no real claim to him, I admired him greatly and found in him a spiritual father, a light on the horizon, at a time when I was first beginning to earnestly seek. My love for John Paul has played no small part in my journey to the Church.

Approaching Rome

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Joseph T. Richardson

So in a very real way, liturgy drew me to Latin; Latin drew me to history; and history drew me to Rome. I had begun listening to the Requiem Mass out of a desperate feeling, not any liturgical impulse. I chose to take Latin by a chance, extemporaneous decision. My conversion to a history major was a pragmatic resignation to forces that had been pulling for a long time. But in these moments I can perceive a gradual, steady progression; the gentle guidance of God’s hand.

Perhaps more significantly, Latin led me to the Society. The Society was our university’s classical language society, founded by Dr. G and held together by his gravity. The Society met weekly to read and discuss Latin texts (and occasionally texts in Greek and other ancient languages), gave public readings, and brought in distinguished academic speakers on subjects of classics and history. Dr. G actively recruited members out of his classes; I was drawn immediately. The members appointed me secretary the first time I attended. And suddenly, for the first time since high school, I had found a social and academic home; a sense of purpose and belonging. Over the next half dozen years, my association with the Society and Dr. G would shape me more as a student and as a person than any other influence.

The Venerable Bede.

The next semester after my introduction to Latin, Dr. G taught his History of the Christian Church. I was still maturing as a student and as a historian, so I certainly didn’t get as much out of the course as I could have; but what I did get was profound: an historical, scholarly, and rational approach to Early Christianity — one that could coexist with matters of faith, that questioned them academically, but not polemically. Dr. G, the son of a long line of prominent Lutheran ministers, had an equal and unconflicted love for the richness and beauty of the Catholic tradition and the boldness and courage of the Protestant Reformers. As a medieval historian, he held a deep admiration for the Church Fathers and the saints, the world of popes and abbots and monumental cathedrals — this he conveyed to us as students. One student, Hibernius, a philosophy student and atheist, Dr. G’s course made a Roman Catholic. I discovered that semester the first of my many heroes of the faith, the Venerable Bede. I wrote my term paper on Bede’s account of the Synod of Whitby and its import. If listening to the Requiem had planted a seed in me, Dr. G planted a forest that semester.

The Baptism of Clovis, a scene from Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks, on which I wrote my research paper for Medieval Latin.

That summer, having traversed Wheelock’s Latin, I took my first advanced Latin course — momentously, in Church Latin. Over the next weeks, I would immerse myself in the writings of the Church Fathers, medieval historians, hagiographers, and theologians, and come to love them not just in thought, but in letter and in word; not just as history, but as literature and life. My pantheon of heroes grew by leaps and bounds: St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, St. Gregory of Tours, St. Anselm, and others; and of course St. Bede. The process had begun in earnest: I was falling in love with the medieval Church.

Of course, I still had so far to go. This was still seven years ago. I still had so many misconceptions about the modern Catholic Church. I believed it was corrupt, bound up with baseless, man-made accretions that only served to keep man away from God; I believed it was so set in tradition that it could neither move nor change. Raised in the Protestant tradition, I never conceived that the Reformers might have been wrong — or that anything beyond the Protestant tradition might have been right. I had never attended a Mass; it never occurred to me that I might. But I was approaching, surely and steadily, even if I didn’t know where I was going. The coming year would bring me to the threshold of Rome itself.

The Wandering Road

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Joseph T. Richardson

In the next phase of my life, I spent a great deal of time on the road. I took several grand road trips, taking off all across the Southern United States. I was always going somewhere, if only to the next town or county or state. At the time, what I thought I felt was freedom, liberation, the ability to go where I wanted, when I wanted. But I was irresponsible with my money and time, impulsive, and foolish. In retrospect I can see that I was actually in flight — fleeing to escape the pain of my failure; to escape who I was and where I was; to be someone else, somewhere else. Many people fall into drugs or alcohol out of similar drives. I never went to those places, but I fell to many other sins during this time. The chief among them, though — the root of everything else — was always that escapism.

After several years, I returned to school, to a more local university to which I could commute. Out of practical concerns, I began a degree in computer science. Programming was always something I had enjoyed, and I saw in it a good career. Immediately, though, history was once again a compelling interest. Whenever I picked up a course catalog, I dreamily eyed the history section, imagining all the history courses I would somehow have time to take. The first history course I took was Western Civilization from ancient to medieval. The topic I chose for my research paper, picked from a preselected list of topics, was the Great Schism. At the time I picked it, I was thinking of the Great East–West Schism that formally split the Western and Eastern Churches — a topic that interested me, and still does; I would still like to learn more about it. I remember being initially confused that there was more than one “Great Schism” — and whatever sources I found led me to write instead about the Western Schism, an event I had previously been unaware of. Although I’m not sure it presented a very positive picture, that research gave me my first introduction to the medieval papacy, and my first academic look at the Catholic Church.

For my second history course, the second half of Western Civ, from Renaissance to modern, I carefully studied the faculty bios of the history department. I chose Dr. G, who impressed me as being the most erudite and the most learned about what the course would be on. I was not disappointed. I had never had a teacher like him, who enriched his lectures with only the drama of history, but a sense of the underlying forces that drive history. He taught socratically, challenging me in new ways and urging me to do more than sit back and take notes. Initially, I did well. But towards the middle of the semester, a nagging anxiety and perfectionism took hold of me. His research paper called for a historiographic approach — something many students never hear about until graduate school — and paralyzed with fear, rather than seek help, I sank.

A page from the autograph of Mozart's Requiem.

I remember an episode during this dark time that presaged my journey to Rome, and my entire future course, more certainly than anything else I can think of. Like many a depressed and struggling young man before, having visions of my own impending doom, I turned to Mozart’s Requiem. I listened to it obsessively, often on my commutes to school. It was Latin; I wondered what its words meant. I went online and printed off a transcript of the Latin and its translation. Within a few weeks, I had memorized it. I had little concept then that was I was learning was liturgy, or even what that meant; but it planted a seed that was to bear fruit.

I tanked completely that semester. It was the first of many times I failed, usually in the face of term papers and major projects. I ran away and medicated rather than faced my demons. But I returned. The next semester was better. It wasn’t until a year later that I dared attempt another history course — but rather than avoid the situation and the man who had defeated me before, I recognized the value of the challenge Dr. G presented. I registered for his course again, and charged once more unto the breach.

This time, I excelled thoroughly. I clearly had an aptitude. I wrote my research paper, the historiographic one, on different historians’ interpretations of Charles I and the Battle of Naseby. That time, it presented little difficulty. I remember staying up all night (oh, to still be able to do that) the night before the final exam, rewriting and memorizing my notes backward and forward: I blew the exam out of the water. It felt to me a great coup, the first victory in overcoming my demons.

In order to major in computer science, I would have had to minor in mathematics. At one time, when I was younger, I was pretty good at math. But that part of my brain had atrophied over the years, partly because it had then been five years since I had graduated from high school, but mostly because I had lost interest in it. It had become something painful for me, and even worse, I was unwilling to devote the time necessary to study for it. The next semester after my triumph with Dr. G, it was time for me to face Calculus B. The first day of class, the professor, a kindly man named Dr. M, gave a pre-test to assess where we stood coming into the course: I missed every single question. Afterward in his office, with concern in his voice and not a trace of condescension, he asked me if I was sure I needed to be in his course. “No,” I answered, quavering.

So I needed another course to fill out my schedule. That semester I was also taking another course with Dr. G, a survey of ancient history. In all of Dr. G’s courses, he peppered explications of the etymologies of words, to uncover the deeper meanings of concepts: I was fascinated. As it happened, Dr. G was also the professor of Latin at my school, and he frequently plugged it in his history classes. Poring over the course schedule, looking for something I could fit in, I fell upon Latin. I thought back to my fascination with the Latin of the Requiem Mass. It could work, I thought.

I went to Dr. G’s office, and told him that I was thinking of transferring into his Latin class. By this time it was three or four days into the course, but he didn’t hesitate, and didn’t give me the opportunity to. “Well, come on; it’s about to begin.” He handed me a copy of Wheelock’s Latin.

Immediately, the Latin language seized me. I went home that night and wrote in my journal that I didn’t think there would be any turning back. And there wasn’t. If I was abandoning math, then logically I would have to abandon computer science also. And I did: within a year, I was a history major. The next summer after taking Latin, I translated the Dies irae of the Requiem Mass on my own. So marked the first, real steps in a journey that has led me to Rome.

The Questioning

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Joseph T. Richardson

Also toward the end of high school, I began to question my faith. This questioning isn’t associated in my mind with the other struggles I was having, but it was no doubt connected. What I was doing wasn’t working. Though I didn’t fully realize it at the time, I was searching for something more.

The apologetic works of Josh McDowell, his Evidence that Demands a Verdict series and More than a Carpenter, among some other books, were reassuring to me for a time. In this phase of my questioning, reassurance, more than anything else, was what I was seeking. I was looking for reasons to believe what I believed. But a broader challenge was yet to follow.

My senior year, I was a co-leader, with my friend Josh the Baptist, of our school’s Bible club. (I remember, notably, that there was a Catholic girl in our group. I was curious about her faith; it was the first time I’d ever known a Catholic — at least, it was the first time Catholicism had ever come up with someone I knew. We never really talked about it, though.) I took an aggressive posture in planning to get the word out, finally set to “take my school for Jesus” like Pastor Pat had urged. But it all was steam. I remember one day before biology class, I was pushing some religious view or another, when an Indian friend challenged me. I don’t even remember what he said, but it probably had something to do with evolution. I was entirely unprepared for it. Suddenly, all my gung-ho and bluster fell flat. I realized in an instant that for all my bold insistence and assertions, my beliefs had no intellectual foundation. My punctured faith rapidly deflated.

More than searching for why I believed what I believed — for which I now seemed to have no adequate answers — I also began wondering why I believed this, instead of something else. Why Christianity, out of all the other religions in the world? I realized how little I knew about Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. I realized how little, ultimately, I knew about the big bang theory or evolution or scientific theories of the beginning of the universe. I went to the library and checked out books.

My search, admittedly, was never as deep or far-reaching as I know many others have sought. I remember in particular only three or four books that I read: one book about the big bang theory — the evidence for it, and different scientific interpretations of the evidence. I remember the “oscillating universe theory” provoked a lot of thought. It was the first time I truly wrestled with the idea of eternity and infinity, of when and how the universe began its existence from non-existence. And I remember a book, a broad, unbiased, comparative examination of a number of major world religions, especially Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. I remember there being attractive elements of each of them, but deciding ultimately that Christianity was the “best fit” for me, and that I had no reason to put my faith in anything else, or to disbelieve what I believed. My quest at that time didn’t do much to strengthen my weakened foundation, but at least it brought me to a point of rest, however precarious.

I first found that my faith had no intellectual foundation, but was founded instead on emotion; then I discovered what a weak foundation emotion could be. Pastor Pat left Calvary, abruptly and unceremoniously. His successor, Pastor Glenn, was a good guy, much more down to earth and less fiery. But the excitement and hype of Pastor Pat’s time were quick to evaporate. In its absence, I fumbled for something else to stand on. To my dismay, I found so much of what I’d been building to be a house of cards. It only took one good gust to knock it down.

I must have been having inchoate doubts for a while. I must have been reading Scripture. But one weekend I went with the youth group to our state youth convention. The guest speaker was a particularly fiery one I’d heard a number of times before, one popular and well-liked. But something was different this time. Very suddenly and all at once, something hit me. This is all wrong, I thought. Finding no peace in the auditorium, I retreated to the restroom with my Bible and a notebook, and sitting on the floor, began furiously scribbling notes about all that I saw that was wrong.

Hillsong Church, Sydney, Australia.

Charismatic Christianity, of which Pentecostals and the Assemblies of God are an element, centers on miraculous spiritual gifts, including prophecy and especially speaking in tongues (see 1 Corinthians 12-14); charismatics believe that these gifts continue to this day, and didn’t die with the Apostles. Charismaticism, at its essence, is very emotional — some would say ecstatic. Glossolalia itself is commonly defined as “ecstatic speech.” Being “moved by the Spirit” generally entails being moved to high emotion. And at that moment I realized the fallacies of being led by emotion. How could one know what was God and what was just excitement? I noticed that the louder the preacher shouted, the more excited everyone became. I noticed that when it came time for an altar call, the musicians would begin to play something sentimental to pluck at the crowd’s heartstrings. Most troubling of all, I noticed the preacher speaking in tongues before the crowd, babbling into the microphone — something plainly contrary to Scripture on its face:

If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn, and let someone interpret. But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God.
(1 Corinthians 14:27-28, ESV)

There was no one to interpret; it was only empty babbling. And this was, and is, a common occurrence. Charismatic Christians, who claim their belief in miraculous spiritual gifts has scriptural support, ignore the guidelines of the very Scripture they claim for support. (Granted, this by itself doesn’t undermine the validity of speaking in tongues — those people could, it could be argued, just be undisciplined and practicing disorderly worship — but another time for that debate. At the time of this realization, it seriously undermined my faith in charismaticism.)

I had filled up several pages that night before I was done. It all flowed out like water, like a dam bursting. When I got home, I made an appointment with Pastor Glenn. I brought him my list of challenges. He had no answers for me.

I believe I stopped going to youth group soon after that. I had lost faith in the brand of Christianity I had been pursuing. The intellectual and emotional foundations of my faith had been tested, and proved to be weak. In short order, when my world fell out from under me, I would have no faith to cleave to. I was stranded in the wilderness.

But even through all those years of darkness, of being lost, of feeling abandoned, I never seriously questioned that God was there. I couldn’t find him — I felt he had forsaken me — but deep down, at the core of my being, I had a kernel of faith: I believed in God. Even when I doubted everything else, this much I knew. Even when all my world was shaken, this much I could I could stand on.

The Wilderness

Posted on October 9, 2011 by Joseph T. Richardson

Toward the end of high school, I entered a dark period of my life. The wounds from this time have now mostly healed, but their scars are still a tender, vulnerable part of my soul. Let us not linger here very long.

I had built my faith upon emotion — upon the conception of a Christ who moved in ecstasy, whose presence was marked by thrills and good feelings, by a “high” I saw all around me in my friends at church. The high was an idol, a false savior I pursued with everything I was. Wrapped up in it were all my feelings of self-worth, my feelings of acceptance by my peers. Pastor Pat, our youth pastor, kept us pumped up to the heights of that high; he had us at the church every day of the week for youth group or prayer or youth choir or drama team; he sent us on a mission to “take our school for Jesus.” Meanwhile, I was struggling with the sins of youth. Every week after I left church that high would fade, to be replaced by emptiness and guilt: and I thought that Jesus was forsaking me, that I must be the most wretched of sinners, worthless in my savior’s sight. Every week I would go down to the altar to “get saved” again; I would sing and dance that I had been forgiven and redeemed; I would return to the high again, only to fall again.

I often wonder if this cycle, being buffeted constantly by the most exultant highs and the most infernal lows, wasn’t itself at the root of the onset of the mental illness that impacted me during this same season. In any case, the two went hand in hand. By the end of high school, I was barely functional. Nonetheless, because I had been offered full scholarships, I felt it was imperative that I pursue a college education immediately. But I was in no condition, psychologically or emotionally, to be on my own. My cataclysm was all but foreordained.

A photograph I took at my first university.

The one or two bright spots I recall from my time at my first college were harbingers of my future path. My major, in theory, was biology/pre-med, but I don’t think I ever actually studied any biology. On this lovely, old, southern campus, I was immediately taken with a deep fascination with my school’s history. I spent most of my time copying buildings’ dedication plaques, and researching the people for whom the buildings were named, and the subjects of the portraits who watched over me. I explored local cemeteries, learned the names and biographies of all the past university presidents — meanwhile, I entirely neglected the courses for which I was supposed to be studying. The root of all this was a paralyzing, pathological anxiety and avoidance; I was unable to face my work; but even through it all, it never occurred to me that I would rather be studying history.

The Good Shepherd (Pastor Bonus), Catacomb of St. Callixtus, Rome

The Good Shepherd (Pastor Bonus), an early symbolic representation of Christ, from the Catacomb of St. Callixtus, Rome, mid-third century.

I also remember, in this, the golden age of the History Channel, seeing a show one night that captured my imagination and has never let go: In Search of History: “The Catacombs of Rome.” (In Search of History now seems to have been absorbed into History’s Mysteries; I haven’t watched the History Channel in years.) The fascination with the Apostles and Early Church that had briefly taken hold a few years earlier was now reignited, and joined to my obsession with cemeteries. Here was a tangible, visible record of the earliest Christians in Rome. Here were the oldest, the original, Christian cemeteries. The antiquity of the art and belief compelled me; that eerie feeling of death and eternity and continuity; the realization that this was where my faith began. Little did I know then that my path would someday take me to that place.

In time, not very much time, my fall did come. I returned home in disgrace. The feeling that this had been my destiny, that my twelve years of schooling had brought me to this point, and that I had failed, hit me with a finality and fatality. I sank into a deep despair. I naïvely expected my friends, my pastor, my church family, to care for me and support me; but they were all a bunch of kids, caught up in their own world; they took no notice. In the midst of all this, Pastor Pat had unceremoniously left Calvary. I was not the only one whose faith, for so long confused with emotion and hype, abruptly collapsed when the man was no longer there to keep it pumping. I felt abandoned by my friends, my church, my God.

I had entered the wilderness. Though the darkest part of it lasted only a couple of years, for some eight years, I didn’t pray, I didn’t read my Bible, I didn’t go to church, with any regularity. I was angry, hurt, and bitter from my experience at Calvary. Though I still called myself a Christian, I had turned my back on God, and convinced myself that God had forsaken me. I was the man insisting that he was blind, all the while unwilling to open his eyes. Not looking where I was going, I fell into a ravine of sin, and rather than striving to get out, I only wandered deeper and deeper into its recesses, and got myself more and more lost. In time, I made myself comfortable, and deceived myself into thinking that this was the lot God had set aside for me; that he was okay with where I was; that even my sin was not really sin, but a necessary salve to my wounded soul — that I was only human and weak, and Jesus understood and forgave me.

The First Harbingers

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Joseph T. Richardson

The Apostle Paul

The first and only time I ever had a formal Sunday school lesson curriculum was in my seventh grade Sunday school. For two semesters, we were taught about the journeys and epistles of the Apostle Paul (the first time I learned the word “epistle”). We had a small, intimate group of boys, a nurturing teacher, and truly instructive and edifying lessons — perhaps the only formal Bible instruction I ever received. I do not remember our teacher’s name; only that he was a good man and a good teacher, a leader with the Royal Rangers (the Assemblies of God’s answer to Boy Scouts). He looked an awful lot like the image of Paul on the cover of our lesson booklets — short and bald with a beard and moustache — so to me he will always be Paul. (I will have to inquire about his name; I would like to know.)

I remember being fascinated with the historical Paul and his times. It was the first time I had ever truly conceived of a biblical character as a true, flesh and blood person, or of biblical times in the context of history. This was the same year that I first became enthralled with ancient history in Mr. Reece’s Social Studies class (may he rest in God’s mercy). I remember the maps of Paul’s missionary journeys; I have always loved maps. Every Bible I’ve ever had has included maps of Paul’s three missionary journeys, but I distinctly remember there being a fourth one. Perhaps it was his journey to Rome, as few evangelicals seem to acknowledge anything that took place outside the certainty of Scripture; but I do recall this map taking him to western Europe and to Spain, as he had hoped (Romans 15:24). My ESV Study Bible notes that there is “some historical evidence” that Paul did preach in Spain — among the Church Fathers? This mystery has compelled me for years.

(An aside: Another memory, another song, that’s always dwelt on the edges of my memory, from the Christian conference in Richmond we used to attend when I was a child: In our daytime class, they taught us a song about the twelve disciples. All these years I’ve been trying to remember that song, every time I’ve tried to recall the twelve Apostles — but all I could remember was the last one, “and Bartholomew.” For that reason, Bartholomew has always had a special place in my heart, as the “last one picked.” Anyway, recalling vaguely the tune, “and Bartholomew,” I set out to find that song tonight — and I found it! To the tune of “Bringing in the Sheaves.”)

I remember the first time I ever heard of the Roman Catholic Church — some outlandish rumor from a friend, when I was ten or so, that Roman Catholics drank wine and worshiped naked. Perhaps he had it confused with some pagan ritual?

The next harbinger — the first clear indication that I was longing for the roots of my faith — appeared when I was sixteen or so. At Calvary in those days, we had a zealous, emotional youth pastor named Pastor Pat, who encouraged us to be “on fire” for God. In many ways this was a painful time for me; it was even more painful in its coming to an end. So it is ironic — no, it is the work of God’s hand, bringing all the pieces together — that an experience that came so close to driving me away from God completely should be so instrumental in my discovering my true path so many years later.

The Crucifixion of Peter, by Caravaggio

A number of Pastor Pat’s sermons left a mark on me — some ridiculous, others thoughtful but overblown — but there was one in particular that I will never forget. Pastor Pat had somehow gotten a hold of a book other than the Bible, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (which he declared to be “the closest thing to inspired literature other than the Bible”), and he passionately preached the martyrdom of St. Peter, crucified upside down because he felt unworthy to die in the same manner as his Lord, and of St. Polycarp, burned at the stake but miraculously spared from the flames, until pierced by the sword.

The vivid pictures Pastor Pat painted of these early heroes of faith captured my imagination. Very soon after that, I ventured to the library (I was driving by this time) and checked out a book on the fates of the Apostles after the New Testament. For the first time, I conceived that our Church had a history after the New Testament but before us. I also around this time began to wonder about the New Testament itself, and discovered the New Testament apocrypha. I was deeply fascinated, and more than a little disturbed, that there were writings that the early Church had rejected. I checked out several books of apocryphal writings. I did not study them deeply, but read enough to convince myself that there was a reason they were rejected, and that we have the New Testament we are supposed to have. This was perhaps the early stages of the real period of questioning my faith that I entered my senior year. Reason, with regard to my faith, was awakening.

The Lonely Pilgrim

A Christian's Road Home to Rome and Journey Onward

Category Archives: Signposts