A Christian's Road Home to Rome and Journey Onward
[I outlined this post a few Saturdays ago but got busy and didn’t finish it. It refers to the day’s prayers at Mass. For the record, they are from Saturday, March 18.] Growing up as a Pentecostal youth, pretty much the sum of my Christian experience was in waiting for, proclaiming, or savoring the presence …
Continue reading “A Pentecostal Discovers the True Working of the Holy Spirit”
So as I journeyed to the Catholic Church, sola scriptura didn’t put up much of a fight. I don’t remember ever even considering, at the earliest stages, whether a particular doctrine could be found in Scripture: if it could be found among the teachings of the early Church Fathers, that was good enough for me. …
The other day was the three-year anniversary of my entering the Church. And as I’ve been helping dear ones through their own conversions this year, it occurs to me that once again, I’ve left my own conversion story hanging. Here is another chapter. The first week I moved to Oxford, Mississippi, for graduate school, I …
Continue reading “I went to Mass and didn’t like it: Faltering steps in my journey to the Church”
This is my 100th post here, apparently. Time flies, and the counter runs up quickly, when I post every day like I have been this month! Brad posted this video, and I’ve seen it floating around the Twittersphere — and it’s excellent: a short but very powerful piece on liturgical reform by the Catholic News …
Continue reading “Expression vs. Impression in Liturgy and Worship”
I wondered if receiving the Real Presence would feel any different than any other time I’d taken Communion in my life. I wondered if the Sacrament of Confirmation would evince any inward or outward change in me — if I would feel that, too. Through the years of confusion I experienced as a Pentecostal, I …
The liturgy of the past two days has been intense, emotional, overwhelming — more moving than any Christian service I’ve ever been a part of. I have been in some truly ecstatic, sensational services in my day — experiences routinely described by the people around me as “powerful” and “awesome” — but even then, it …
Tomorrow begins the Triduum, the three days leading up to Easter: Holy Thursday (or Maundy Thursday), Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. And then, the Easter Vigil — at which I will be initiated into the Church through Confirmation and receive my first Holy Communion. It seems surreal that this moment has come. All of the …
My posts here, after starting so strong and frequent last semester, have slowed to a trickle now, it seems. I regret that. The troubles and stresses and demands of school have dogpiled on. And, more significantly, I am grappling with serious depression. Growing up, I always heard that “Jesus is the same, yesterday, today, and …
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 …