A Living Faith

Go listen to this talk by Fr. Newman about Evangelical Catholicism, linked by my very good friends here. It is a reminder that our call to holiness is really about an individual relationship with God--necessarily linked to, but not solely confined to, our weekly (or daily) encounters with Him in the sacraments. Very simply explained and easy to listen to, even if you don't have time for the entire thing; it's very good.

I'm sure there are misunderstandings and legalities that most cradle Catholics, especially, have had to face in their personal journey at one time or another. This past weekend, I was telling stories about going to Confession as a child, every Saturday afternoon.
I dreaded Saturday afternoons, but felt that this was the way I was going to grow in holiness. During the week as I remembered my sins, I would write them down in a pocket notebook--calling it my "sin list." That way, I would be sure not to forget anything when I arrived at Confession! The priest was a very holy man, but was even more scrupulous than I was, and did not make those encounters particularly easy for me. Every week, my penance was the same: a set of mysteries of the Rosary. It got to the point where I would go early and start the Rosary beforehand, just to save time later!

"Girls I know like you," Colin's dad told me, "are now Protestants."

He has a point. Because the Church contains the fullness of Truth, there is so much to cover; it cannot all be taught at once. The essentials are taught first, which is good. Children need the basics first. Different emphasis is made about different aspects at different stages of life. Understood. But I think that part of the problem that some cradle Catholics have is that no one taught them beyond the essentials. And it is necessary to obtain more depth.
Hence, Fr. Newman's observation that ex-Catholic Protestants say they left because they never "met Jesus."

I know that my parents' early emphasis of a personal relationship with Christ, through His mother, was a crucial aspect of my consistent participation in my Faith growing up. They encouraged me to nurture a personal prayer life. I was provided with instruction on how to start, and then how to develop that.
But of course this makes sense, if you think about it--if the sacraments do not translate into something personal that I can keep within me, then what's the point?

I remember a spiritually difficult time during my junior and senior years of college, when I was studying St. Thomas and learning more about the divine nature of God. The difficulty was not about belief in God, or in His Church. But it was then that I had the most trouble connecting the God of Creation with the God in my heart, and understanding that He was the same Being. Between Theology classes, when I would go to daily Mass, I would almost have to "put aside" my newfound knowledge of an unchanging, unaffected, About-Which-Nothing-Can-Be-Attributed eternal Being, for the loving, expressive, and personal God I met in prayer. It took me a while to really connect the two identities with one another. I still don't know if the full connection has been made.

But here is an article that reminds us how essential it is to really keep that connection intact. It is a short read: Fr. Paul Scalia shows how the gospel story of the woman who touched Jesus' cloak illustrates the difference between encountering God accidentally and encountering God on purpose, or with faith.
This is now the challenge of those who are beyond the crisis of whether to keep the Faith. Now the challenge is to keep the Faith alive. To remember, Sunday after Sunday, the gravity of what I am experiencing, the reality of what is going on. I know I, personally, have been guilty of receiving Communion "accidentally," or with casual complacency. Ironically, it is even more tempting to do so when I get into the habit of going to Mass daily, because the habit of it makes it harder to remember the awesome mystery of the Eucharist.

But this is the challenge: receive the sacraments with purpose and reverence, and then cultivate the life of Christ in me by meeting Him daily on a personal level.

And I suppose that the word for that these days is Evangelical Catholicism.