Does God want me to go to Mass every day?

I've been attempting the herculean task of trying to get myself organized and get on a consistent schedule, and one of the things I've been pondering is some way to make it to Mass every day. I spent a long time thinking over things like how I could adjust the kids' schedules, trying to come up with some creative way to get through the line when I have three kids under three years old, etc. And then it occurred to me that maybe I should take a minute to make sure that my assumptions are correct: does God even want me to go to Mass every day?

I had just assumed that more is always better when it comes to religious activities, but I realized that that's not necessarily so. To use an extreme example to illustrate a point, I'm sure it's not God's will that I go to three Masses every day, or that I pray ten rosaries, since that would impact my ability to care for my family.

And then I came across this article on the Catholic Encyclopedia, which added to my confusion. It doesn't exactly have a clear stance on the issue (that I could tell in my rushed read of it), but it does mention quite a few saints who only received Holy Communion a few times per year and notes that there have been a fair amount of differing opinions on the issue.

Since it takes a huge chunk of time to go to Mass with the kids (about 1.5 hours on a good day), it makes me wonder if perhaps daily Communion is not the right goal. I'm starting to think that I should focus my efforts more on making all of my daily work prayerful and taking moments here and there to say brief prayers that just take a few minutes, and then maybe just getting to Mass one other day than Sunday -- or something like that.

So, I ask my Catholic readers in particular: what do you think? Is it always the best thing to do to go to Mass every day, or is it equally fine to go less often if your life circumstances make it difficult?


[Since I am certain it will come up, I should note that, yes, I have read A Mother's Rule of Life. I'm actually looking through moving boxes to find my copy since I feel like it addresses this very issue.]

Embracing natural fertility

Mum2twelve links to a nice piece by a young (non-Catholic) woman who talks about what led her to embrace NFP in her marriage. I wanted to excerpt some of it since it highlights many of the factors that led me to the same decision. One thing she doesn't go into much that was a big factor for me is the observation that crazy stuff starts to happen when societies believe that the primary purpose of sex is personal pleasure. But it's a nice post and worth reading.

The other night as my husband of five months and I were cleaning up after dinner, we started talking about our experience as Natural Family Planners...During our discussion it struck us what a blessing NFP has been for us, in so many ways.

One of the most appealing things about NFP is that it is exactly what it claims to be; natural. NFP is free from devices and chemicals and side effects. It empowers women by teaching them the nature of their fertility cycle, helping them to understand why things happen and at what time...

Another benefit is that NFP is a two person decision. Not controlled by one or the other, NFP encourages two as a couple to communicate continually with honesty and love about whether now is a good time to avoid or achieve pregnancy...

The path to accepting NFP has been a long road for me. The idea of managing my fertility naturally was, in theory, appealing. However, I was scared about what this would mean for my life. Would it be too restricting? What if I have 14 kids?!? Will I have to abandon study?...

After a long time of praying and reading and talking about this all-too-big-and-scary venture into NFP, God replaced every fear with a blessing. This should not surprise us as we know the character of our God. When we put our trust in Him, God helps us to order our lives. He puts meaning into things that seem meaningless and he gives peace where there is unrest. For some this means the challenge of six children, 5am breast feeding and 40 loads of washing. For others, this means coming to terms with the fact that they could only have one child, even when they prayed fervently for a second. Then there are those for whom God grants peace, and purpose, when he has not granted conception at all...

What is it in our culture that leads us to prevent pregnancies from occurring? What does this mean about how we view our bodies, most especially our fertility? A doctor only prescribes medicine to ill people. Is fertility something we need to be protected from? Is it a disease?...What a major contradiction this presents; that one of the greatest gifts from God might be a burden for us. What a major contradiction that one of God's greatest gifts is 'unwanted' or a 'mistake.'

She also mentions that Christopher West's book The Good News About Sex and Marriage helped her make her decision. I also found that book to be instrumental in my own understanding of Church teaching on openess to life and contraception. I can't recommend it highly enough for those people (especially Christians) who are just baffled by why the Church insists on its stance on this issue.

For more on this subject I highly recommend the article Contraception the Love Killer in which John Mallon explains it all better than I ever could (via Dom).

[I believe my regular commentor Lyrl is also a non-Catholic who uses NFP, so I'll be interested to hear her take on all this.]

Screaming to ward off the emptiness

Lots of good food for thought in the latest post over at DarwinCatholic. Go read the whole post for his take on the Christopher Hitchens quote below:

Excursions to the bookshelf or the lunch or the gallery will obviously, if they are serious, bring us into contact with belief and believers, from the great devotional painters and composers to the works of Augustine, Aquinas, Maimonides, and Newman. These mighty scholars may have written many evil things or many foolish things, and been laughably ignorant of the germ theory of disease or the place of the terrestrial globe in the solar system, let alone the universe, and this is the plain reason why there are no more of them today, and why there will be no more of them tomorrow. Religion spoke its last intelligible or noble or inspiring words a long time ago...We shall have no more prophets or sages from the ancient quarter, which is why the devotions of today are only the echoing repetitions of yesterday, sometimes ratcheted up to screaming point so as to ward off the terrible emptiness.

I'm having kind of an exhausting day over here and first scanned the quote with only a half glance. I passed over the observation that some group's dissemination of ideas was "ratcheted up to screaming point so as to ward off the terrible emptiness," and thought that it was refreshing to see Hitchens offering such a candid description of the new vocal atheist movement.

Then I realized he was talking about believers. That's surprising. If anyone strikes me as needing to scream to drown out the emptiness, it's the atheists. At least from my experience, when you believe that you and everyone you know have no more inherent value than fungi and will cease to exist in a short time, you need to keep yourself busy so you don't think about it too much. I can hardly think of a better example of "screaming to ward off the emptiness" than putting great energy into churning out self-congratulatory books and articles that stridently announce that we have no soul and no afterlife to look forward to, and that people who would like to believe that are simple fools. Not much can really be gained from these sorts of writings, except perhaps the assuagement of the author's ego. It strikes me as busywork.

Five Memories of Easter Vigil

There's so much to say about entering the Church at Easter Vigil. Any post covering every aspect of it would be unreadably long, and even then I'm sure I'd miss something. So, to give you the feel of the evening in less than a zillion words, I'll offer a few highlights that stand out in my mind when I look back on the beautiful Easter Vigil Mass of 2007:


The church

No post about any Mass at our parish would be complete without a mention of the beauty of the church itself. Only completed in late 2006, this is the first Easter celebrated in this building. When we originally decided to start going to this church it was in a dated, unattractive building an we were unaware that there were plans to build a new one. I actually commented to my husband that it was a shame that it was in such an ugly building. Imagine my delight when I saw the first plans to build this new one.

Every time I step inside I feel inspired. Not just because of the obvious beauty, but because I know what is behind it. Our pastor and the church staff are incredibly devout, orthodox Catholics who love their faith and wanted to build something beautiful for God. Our parish is not particularly wealthy, so it was no easy thing to get this church completed.


Friends and family

Because of the chaos of moving -- and some general social awkwardness on my part -- I hadn't invited anyone to Easter Vigil. In typical me fashion, I got too caught up in over-analyzing who I should invite ("Only Catholics? What about Protestants? Would my agnostic/atheist friends be offended if I did or didn't invite them? What about lapsed Catholics who aren't practicing?"), and I never got around to inviting anyone. In fact, I hardly mentioned it.

So I was really touched when so many people showed up to support us. My aunt and uncle flew in from Atlanta; my dad (an atheist) came back from his job overseas; my mother-in-law (a Southern Baptist) came in from Houston; two couples who we're good friends with (the Darwins being one of them) came with their children and a friend from out of town; a good friend I met through RCIA was there, of course; and my mom, a very lapsed Catholic and agnostic up until recently, re-evaluated her faith and went to confession in order to be my husband's sponsor.

After the Mass there were calls for celebration, so all of us gathered at my mother's house for an impromptu cocktails and pizza get-together that lasted well past midnight (no small feat since most of us are the parents of young children).

Being surrounded by such kindness and support from our friends and family made the night feel all the more like it was a homecoming, that we were finally where we'd belonged all along.


The feeling

The Lent leading up to Easter Vigil was the most spiritually fruitful time of my life. I felt like I'd finally reached a calm understanding of God and could just relax, and trust. Through the grace of God I received some key insights (like this one) and some answered prayers (like this and these) that opened the floodgates for the peace of Christ.

When I walked into the warmth of the church on that bitterly cold, rainy Saturday evening, it was one of the first times I entered a religious building and felt really comfortable. Years and years of bad experiences at Christian churches left me with a deep feeling of discomfort, of always needing to be on my guard whenever I walked into a church. Even up until a few weeks ago I would look around the pews each Sunday and feel like for some reason I just wasn't one of "those people," the Christians. But that evening as I greeted my friends and family in the narthex, I welcomed them to my church, and it didn't sound odd. It felt like my place.

And as I sat in the pew and watched it all unfold, from the beauty of the candlelight-only beginning to the final blessing, I felt like I was, well, in communion with God and his Saints. It was beautiful on all levels.


St. Monica

As I mentioned, I chose St. Monica as my confirmation saint. As soon as I made the decision I was certain that this was the perfect saint for me, and I felt like she was watching over me. Over and over again when I asked for her intercession I received guidance and comfort. Also, I had been reading a lot about her character and her life and trying to use her as an example to live up to.

So when the priest walked up to me as I stood in front of the congregation and anointed my forehead with that exotically fragrant oil, I was caught off guard when he addressed me as "Monica". It's one thing to think about wanting to be like a saint and using their life as an example, but when someone looks you in the eye and addresses you by that person's name, it changes for a moment the way you think about them. I suddenly internalized her in a way I had not previously. For a fleeting moment I realized on a gut level that I really could be like her, that she was a mere mortal like myself, and that there is nothing that makes it impossible for me to be as holy as a living St. Monica. Of course I quickly reverted to my very un-saintly ways, but for a split second I knew with all my heart that we all have the potential to be Saints.


The Eucharist

I will skip to the moment you all want to know about: receiving the Eucharist for the first time. Unfortunately my worry of having a "Jen moment" (as my husband calls them), committing some embarrassing and possibly sacrilegious faux pas, overshadowed the moment. We hadn't covered the technicalities of receiving Holy Communion in RCIA and it had only been discussed in passing at the Monday rehearsal, so I was very nervous about doing it wrong. Seriously: it is not out of the realm of possibilities that when the priest said "body of Christ" I would have responded with "thanks" or "cool" as I grabbed the consecrated host from his hand. So, yeah, I was on edge.

Also, the physical sensations of the Body and Blood were distracting. Not that it was good or bad either way, just interesting, and not what I expected.

The biggest moment of the evening actually came right before I was about to receive the Eucharist. I was standing there, waiting for my husband to go up before me, and was hit like a ton of bricks with the profundity of the moment. "I cannot believe I'm standing here," I thought. How did I, a person who never even considered the possibility of God until my late 20's, who was a content atheist surrounded by worldly pleasures, who shrugged off most religions as irrelevant silliness and disdained Christianity, get here? I had a sort of "life flashing before my eyes" moment and began sobbing when I realized how close I came to not being here; how very easily I could be spending this night in a very different place, in a world without God.

And though I was mostly focused on myself when I actually received the Body and Blood of Christ for the first time, I did feel a noticeable difference afterwards. A few situations came up later that evening and the next day that would have normally resulted in snide comments and anger on my part, and I found it far easier than normal to be kind and charitable in situations where I'd normally fly off the handle.

Since then, every time I've received the Eucharist, I feel a subtle change. It's just a little easier to be kind, to be patient, to be selfless. Perhaps the change I feel is all in my head. It's possible. And that's OK, because I don't receive Holy Communion because it's some sort of drug that will give me instantaneous results. I do it because I believe that God exists, that this is his Church, that this is what he wants me to do, and that I will receive his sanctifying grace -- whether I feel it immediately or not.

Pope Benedict recently said that the great convert St. Augustine (son of St. Monica) recongnized "that the bountiful mercy of God was continually necessary for himself and the entire pilgrim Church." If I've learned one thing over this past two years, it is this. Without God's grace, I'm lost.

This quote reminds me of why it's been so difficult for me to write this post. I felt like readers were probably expecting some sort of thunder-and-lightning experience; and while it was one of the best days of my life, it was wonderfully uneventful. It just felt like I was finally coming in out of the cold, back to where I should have been all along.

And, per St. Augustine's thought above, after all my struggling and despair and searching, when I finally got to the place where I had access to God's grace through the Eucharist, it was very clear to me that it was not the end of my spiritual journey. It was only the beginning.

Big families and environmentalism

I enjoyed reading this post on Starry Sky Ranch, where Kim recounts what happens when you take your big family (and your pregnant self) to an Earth Day celebration.

The last Earth Day celebration our family attended was in the mid '90s. I had several young homeschoolers and was expecting another baby...Before attending this event I was not familiar with the term "zero population". I wandered past the Sierra Club table and saw literature with that phrase displayed. I stopped and read, bewildered. Did it really suggest that the solution to our environmental problems was the elimination of babies? Indeed.

The man behind the table was pacing and silently counting heads. He looked at my children like they were sucking his air. As the message his organization was presenting sank in I said, "My goodness! We must be your worst nightmare then, huh?" He didn't say no. In fact what he did say, looking at my belly, was, "It's not to late to stop!" I try not to think of what he was implying.

His solution to our environmental problems reminds me of those who are 'eliminating' birth defects by eliminating handicapped babies in utero. That doesn't solve a problem. We can do better than that...I am guessing our clan of 11 is easily more planet friendly than most families of four. We eat out maybe once a year. We make most of our food or buy it as ingredients rather than as packaged products. I drive an ancient van - twice a week. I buy all our clothing second hand and have furnished our home with about 75% thrifted treasures and refurbished hand me downs. We are raising animals suited to foraging in undesirable conditions. We tread lightly on the Earth. Tiptoes even. ;)

I admittedly have little tolerance for Hollywood figures jetting around the world dispensing environmental directives while they sip designer coffee in styrofoam cups, replacing their wardrobes every season, building oversized heated and cooled homes. My feeling is that environmentalism, like charity, begins at home. It begins small. It begins with self-denial and thriftiness. It begins with phrases like:

"Use it up," "Wear it out," "Make it do," "Do without."

My best advice for saving the planet? Stay home. : ) You will use less, spend less, and want less.

The Maureen Wittman article she links to is good as well.

This resonates with my experience as well. The big families I know consume about the same amount of resources (maybe less) as most of the small families I know (and I sheepishly have to include my wasteful self in the latter group -- but I'm working on that!) They seem to have less of a need to seek entertainment and fulfillment externally, and don't have the time or the money to run all over town for activities and shopping. They're not constantly shuttling kids around in the luxury minivan to soccer practice and the movies and the mall and to go out to eat at restaurants. They tend to leave the beat up old van parked in the driveway and stay home to play Scrabble and eat homemade pizza.

Becoming less wasteful is actually one of my big projects for this year. I grew up as a middle-class only child, surrounded by one- or two-child middle-class families, and my unthrifty way of running a household in terms of grocery shopping, reusing products, etc. just doesn't work after about the fourth kid.

Congratulations

Congratulations are in order to Edward of To Jesus Through Mary, who just found out that his bishop has accepted his application to the seminary. Go leave him a comment to tell him congrats!

Also, I've had his site on Bloglines for a while and only realized after reading this post that he's a senior in high school. Wow. I hope that this is the sort of blog my kids have when they're in high school! :)

The tragedy of a meaningless life

In light of the interesting discussion going on about my last post, I wanted to throw out this quote (via Melanie) to hear what you all think about it:

Millions all around us are living the tragedy of meaningless life, the "life" of spiritual death. That is what makes our society most radically different from every society in history: not that it can fly to the moon, enfranchise more voters, have the grossest national product, conquer disease, or even blow up the entire planet, but that it does not know why it exists.

--Peter Kreeft, Heaven: The Heart's Deepest Longing

I think this is exactly right, especially in the segments of society that have taken great pains to unmoor themselves from America's Christian roots. I'm currently working on a consulting project that puts me in touch with a lot of the big secular self-help authors and their ideas. And what I see frequently are very sincere, well-meaning people who are often just...flailing.

They're trying to lead people to some vague sense of happiness through the self, through introspection ad nauseaum and asking what you think and what you want and who you are, and it just always falls flat. At best this sort of advice leads to a fleeting, surface-level happiness; at worst it's a total waste of time. It's been interesting to me to see how even these people, many of whom are quite brilliant and putting forth their best efforts, simply cannot lead people to happiness -- and certainly not to peace -- without a higher purpose that comes from something outside of us, without God.


Anyway, I promised myself I was getting offline for the night about 30 minutes ago, so enough from me. What do you think?

Evidence of the soul

As you can tell from my post from the other day, I've been thinking a lot about how my spiritual journey was really started by simply acknowledging that there's more to life than the measurable. After a lifetime of insisting that all emotions, gut feelings, thoughts, etc. were nothing more than mere chemical reactions, at some point the dam began to crack and I could no longer keep up my stoic facade. Too often I came across an image, story, song or work of art that evoked a sensation that, to me, was clear evidence that there was some source of greater good (and evil) that lay beyond the material world. At some point the evidence overwhelmed me, and I just couldn't deny that there was more to life than meets the eye, and that there is such a thing as the eternal soul. Whenever I come across such things these days, I wonder how I could have ever denied it.

Since I've been meaning to start using Blogger's category feature anyway, I'm going to start a category called Evidence of the Soul, where I'll post examples of the types of things that slowly chipped away at my rock-solid atheism.

These pictures I recently came across from Pompeii are a classic example. Though I've never visited the site of the 79 A.D. eruption myself, every time I see pictures of the figures of the people trapped beneath the ash, my heart almost skips a beat. I remember the first time I saw photos of these plaster molds made from the holes in the ash left by the life in Pompeii. A friend brought back some prints after a vacation to Italy, and the scenes from Pompeii took my breath away. Yet it just didn't seem logical that I should react so strongly to the deaths of people who could not have anything less to do with me. I'm not related to them, their deaths didn't improve my or my offspring's chances of survival, they lived and died in a very far away place more than a thousand years ago...why should I care?

I tried to think of a good evolutionary reason that I would feel so deeply touched to see photos like the one of the form of a mother comforting her child as they suffocated to death so long ago, but I came up short. Nothing from the material world fully explained it. Now I understand why.

Update on the Blogger's Choice Awards

I'm excited to see that many Catholic blogs are in the lead. Also, a heartfelt thanks to everyone who voted for me. I sincerely appreciate every single vote.

If you would like to vote, it takes about 30 seconds to create an account, and keep in mind that you can vote for multiple blogs (like mine and, say, the ever-brilliant DarwinCatholic).


[...And I have finally started writing a post about Easter Vigil, which should be up soon.]

My second decoration

This beautiful painting (on a ceramic roof tile, actually) was an unexpected gift from some Catholic neighbors of ours who heard we were entering the Church this Easter. They bought it for us during a recent trip to visit relatives in Guadalajara. It just delights me every time I see it not just because it's so beautiful, but because it reminds of the amazing outpouring support my husband and I received this past week -- in many cases from unexpected places like these neighbors.

Expect to see many more pictures as the decoration of the new house begins! This is the second decorative item I'm hanging (the crucifix over the door was first), and I think I'm going to use it as the main "inspiration piece" (you can tell I've been watching Top Design too much) for the living room. I'm so, so, so excited to finally have my own place and to be able to create an environment that inspires me to be prayerful throughout the day.

Suppressing the soul

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science...He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.

- Albert Einstein

When I think back on my spiritual journey, I am sometimes surprised that I ever got to where I am today. Even just reading through the archives of this blog makes me recall how little faith I had (anyone remember this post?), how many questions there were and how skeptical I felt. I asked myself as I was getting dressed for Easter Vigil, What kept me going? Why did I stay on this path when prayer after prayer seemed to go unanswered, when I had no great visions or signs, no big religious experiences?

The biggest part of the answer, of course, is that Church teaching smacked of truth. It explained the world far better than anything else I'd ever heard. I thought that this may very well be the box top. But, as I found out, reason will only get you so far when it comes to knowing God. Your heart has to be involved as well -- and that was the big sticking point for me. Without having that "personal relationship" with Jesus that so many people talk about, many times I came close to throwing in the towel and simply deciding that having faith must not be for me.

But one thing kept my search moving forward through all the ups and downs: the relief that hit me like a waterfall when I finally acknowledged my soul. All my life I had denied its existence, and I was suffocating.

I remember the first time I ever set foot in an old, great cathedral. I was a teenager on vacation in Mexico City with my family and we swung by the 17th century Metropolitan Cathedral (photo here) as part of our touristy stops. I had been busy looking for a new purse at the street vendors outside and shuffled along apathetically when my parents wanted to go in and see this historic building.

When I first stepped through the towering doors it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness. When I could see again, I was awestruck. Never in my life had I seen -- and felt -- such a thing. I took slow, deep breaths to steady myself as I took it all in. The thought "God is here," immediately popped into my mind. I quickly dismissed this random, irrational statement that had just come out of nowhere, and took a seat in a back pew. I wanted to stay here. I felt like I could just sit and sit in this place and never tire of it. I saw a few old ladies praying in the pews in front of me, and for once it didn't seem irrational. It seemed like exactly what one ought to be doing in this surreal place. As I gazed at the altar way in the front of the building, lit mostly by candlelight, I felt deeply conflicted.

As with other times in my life I'd experienced great awe and wonder, something seemed horribly amiss. I had to consciously remind myself not to get too wrapped up in these feelings I was experiencing since, after all, they were nothing more than chemical reactions in my brain. I kept wanting to place more meaning on them than that, but would admonish myself not to be silly. Any sort of beauty or importance I ascribed to places like this were a product only of some neurons firing in my head, and nothing more.

I similarly had to remind myself not to overestimate feelings like love and sorrow since, again, they were only chemical reactions in my brain. It was hard work. Because what I was ultimately doing was denying my very soul.

Every time I experienced awe like that day in the cathedral there was something inside me that was screaming to be known, demanding that I admit that this place had a beauty that existed independent of the neurons in my brain -- that if I and every other person died tomorrow it would still be beautiful and still be important, because its value was not of this world, not given to it by humans. When I heard of people being treated unjustly, there was that inconvenient feeling again, shouting that this was wrong not just because I perceived it to be so and not just because my species had evolved an instinct that drove me to believe it is so, but because there is such a thing as objective wrong, the truth of which comes from a place far removed from the material world. And when I thought of the family and friends for whom I felt deep love, I couldn't help but feel that they mattered much, much more than a more complex version of a gnat should. I felt so strongly that they had great value that came from somewhere or something completely independent of humans. That if they died, their deaths would be something much bigger than the mere cessation of chemical reactions.

My soul was crying out to be heard, but I suppressed it every time. "Where's the proof?" I'd think. "Science has not shown that there is something mysterious about this cathedral or something other than evolved chemical reactions driving my feelings of love for my family," I'd insist, blowing it all off as wishful superstitious thinking.

It took a lot of determination and a very hard head to exclude all but the immediate, material world from my life. The fact that there is a meaning to our existence, that there's another realm, that our knowledge of objective good and evil comes from somewhere else, was really the most obvious thing in the world. But I couldn't get comfortable with the vulnerability that came with venturing into that territory, so I denied it all. And, over time, it made me feel a little less alive. A soul suppressed starts to wither.

I'm not exactly sure what it was two years ago that started my spiritual journey. There were a lot of factors at play. But a big, big part of what kept me searching down this path was the deep relief and satiety I felt when I stopped suppressing my soul. When I would hear a stirring piece of music or drive through the mountains or hold my newborn child, I could finally let the beauty of it all wash over me and recognize it for what it was. After years of suffocation, my soul could finally breathe.

Blogger's Choice Awards

I hadn't heard of the Blogger's Choice Awards until I came across this mention in Into the Deep. I checked out the nominees in the Best Religion Blog category and was unpleasantly surprised to see that the current leader is an atheist blog, and there are no Catholic blogs in the top five.

Let's get some Catholic blogs nominated! And, of course, if you're inclined to vote for my blog, I would not be opposed. :)

A couple of notes...

I want to thank everyone who has emailed me, and to say that I am going to reply to all emails, I simply haven't been able to get through them all yet.

I'm still trying to squeeze in some time amidst the chaos of unpacking to write about my Easter Vigil and Marriage Blessing experiences. In the meantime, I wanted to share this picture I took of the inside of our parish church just before the marriage ceremony. We're lucky to be able to enter the Church in such a beautiful space.

Happy Easter!

I glanced at my computer this morning and was surprised to see my inbox filled with emails welcoming me into the Church. Thank you all so much, and thank you to all the other bloggers who linked here with well wishes.

Last night was actually more beautiful than I'd expected, and we were overwhelmed with the support we received from friends and family. I will write about it more when I get a free moment. Tomorrow we go to the church to have our marriage blessed, which is another huge occasion for us.

I need to get back to managing jelly bean consumption and Easter egg dying with the brand new white carpet that came with the new house, but I just wanted to post quickly to say thank you all for your kind emails and blog posts. Have a happy and blessed Easter.

A new day

Things are finally settling down here at the new house after moving. This afternoon my husband came across a crucifix we recently received as a gift that had been blessed by the Pope. Not wanting it to be lost among the boxes and paper, he hung it above the front door. It's our first decoration to be put up in the new house and, I realized, the first time I've ever lived in a house with a crucifix. (For the past couple years we've lived with my mother, who does not like religious objects on display, and before that we were not religious.)

I had been worried about moving just before Easter Vigil, but it now seems like the perfect timing. Perhaps (especially based on all the answered prayers) that's just what God had in mind. My religious journey started shortly after we moved in with my mother, so to both finally have my own house after two years of waiting, and to finally be in full communion with the Catholic Church after two years of searching, makes this weekend all the more momentous.

I feel free in every way. Free to control my own environment, to put myself in a prayerful mindset with walls adorned with icons, a picture of the Pope, and other religious objects. And free in the knowledge that God exists, and that through his Son I am saved.

As soon as I hit Publish on this post I'm going upstairs to my new master bedroom to get ready. As the boxes and packing paper are cleared off the floor to show my beautiful new house, so has the clutter accumulated over a life without God been cleared from my soul through reconciliation and, tonight, the Eucharist. Sorry for the lame cliche, but I really think of this as the first day of the rest of my life.

Thank you

I was hoping that this would be a long, eloquent post worthy of the people to whom it is dedicated, but unfortunately time constraints require that I dash it out rather quickly.

I've said it before, and I want to say it again: I would not be entering the Catholic Church this Easter without the commentors on this blog. (For those of you who are new readers, it won't take much reading through the archives to see what I mean). I started this site because I felt drawn to Christianity but didn't know where to turn with all my questions. I felt kind of lost, and very confused.

I could have never imagined just how integral this simple blog would become to my spiritual journey. Chronicling my experiences helped me clarify my thoughts at each step of the way and, most importantly, my commentors would answer all my questions, however dumb, and engage in friendly debates when we disagreed. The Catholics and other Christians explained faith and God, and the atheists asked all the right questions and were civil even when they held the minority opinions.

I assume (and hope) that God would have eventually led me home to the Church, but it would not have happened this quickly without you -- all of you.

Thanks for reading.

St. Monica

I am taking the name Monica as my confirmation name, after St. Monica, mother of St. Augustine. Because of my spiritual immaturity, I felt like it was important to choose someone who was also a mother and lived in the world. I occasionally grouse that I could be a whole lot more saint-like if I lived in a convent, if I weren't surrounded by the demands of being a wife and a mother and life in the world. I chose St. Monica so that she can remind me always that these are just lazy excuses and there is absolutely nothing about my station in life that really hinders me from fully living my faith.

Because she is such an inspiring figure I'd like to share her story with those who may not be familiar with her:

[St. Monica] was married early in life to Patritius who held an official position in Tagaste. He was a pagan, though like so many at that period, his religion was no more than a name; his temper was violent and he appears to have been of dissolute habits. Consequently Monica's married life was far from being a happy one, more especially as Patritius's mother seems to have been of a like disposition with himself. There was of course a gulf between husband and wife; her almsdeeds and her habits of prayer annoyed him, but it is said that he always held her in a sort of reverence. Monica was not the only matron of Tagaste whose married life was unhappy, but, by her sweetness and patience, she was able to exercise a veritable apostolate amongst the wives and mothers of her native town; they knew that she suffered as they did, and her words and example had a proportionate effect.

...All Monica's anxiety now centred in Augustine; he was wayward and, as he himself tells us, lazy. He was sent to Madaura to school and Monica seems to have literally wrestled with God for the soul of her son. A great consolation was vouchsafed her -- in compensation perhaps for all that she was to experience through Augustine: Patritius became a Christian.

Meanwhile, Augustine...fell into grievous sin. Patritius died very shortly after his reception into the Church and Monica resolved not to marry again. At Carthage Augustine had become a Manichean and when on his return home he ventilated certain heretical propositions she drove him away from her table, but a strange vision which she had urged her to recall him. It was at this time that she went to see a certain holy bishop, whose name is not given, but who consoled her with the now famous words, "the child of those tears shall never perish."

There is no more pathetic story in the annals of the Saints than that of Monica pursuing her wayward son to Rome, wither he had gone by stealth; when she arrived he had already gone to Milan, but she followed him. Here she found St. Ambrose and through him she ultimately had the joy of seeing Augustine yield, after seventeen years of resistance. Mother and son spent six months of true peace at Cassiacum, after which time Augustine was baptized in the church of St. John the Baptist at Milan. Africa claimed them however, and they set out on their journey, stopping at Civita Vecchia and at Ostia. Here death overtook Monica and the finest pages of his "Confessions" were penned as the result of the emotion Augustine then experienced. [MORE]

A first confession, part II

Click here for Part I

One of the things I never understood about Christianity was the concept of accepting people who embraced the religion late in life. It struck me as unfair and hypocritical that someone could have all the fun they want then decide at the last minute that they're a Christian. When I first started reading Christian authors, this was actually something that nagged at the back of my mind. Not that I would ever fall into this mostly silly belief system, I thought, but if hypothetically I did decide to become a Christian, it would just seem so unfair that I could get to be in heaven right alongside a devout lifetime church-goer who had lived her whole life following all the "rules".

I was starting to think that religion, Christianity in particular, offered some interesting insights about the meaning of life and might be worth looking into. But then I thought of my years making (and spending) lots of money, living only for myself, indulging in vanity and greed and whatever else I felt like doing, staying all night at wild parties, not being confined by anyone's oppressive rules, etc. and felt sorry for people who never got a chance to live a little like I had before getting mixed up in all the religion stuff.

But as my reading and soul-searching drew me closer to God and the Church, I began to see it all so differently. What I used to think of as rules of oppression created by power-hungry people, I now saw as a prescription for healing given by the perfect Doctor. And when I actually followed the prescription and took the Doctor's advice, I knew that this was something rooted in divine goodness.

I was reminded of all this during my confession last night. As I described for the priest all the "fun" that I had, my old life of decadence and selfishness, I was overcome with sorrow. In part because I'd offended God, the source of all goodness, but also in part because I felt sad for me. It was sickening to think of all the years I threw away in pursuit of a fragile happiness, the kind of surface-level contentment that goes away pretty quickly when things like money or looks or health start to fade. My life without meaning, without purpose, without a belief in objective truth, seemed like a desolate wasteland when I looked back on it. I cried that night in confession because I was sorry to God, and also because I was sorry to me.

And now, as with so many other things that used to seem hypocritical or restrictive, I finally get it. Those of us who come to faith late in life are not getting a better deal than those who believed all along. We're getting a far worse deal. When you finally experience the peace of Christ, you realize that every day without it is a day to be regretted.

[Comments closed until Easter]

A first confession, part I

Last night I made my first confession. For those of you who are interested, here was my experience (complete with pictures of our church that I took a few months ago):


I tried to go on Tuesday night but by the time I got there they'd closed the line since 500 people had already shown up. I was delighted to be turned away because too many people wanted to participate in the sacrament of confession. Last night I got there a half hour before confessions were scheduled to start and there were already about 40 people waiting. I'm sure the priests saw at least 600 people last night, probably more.

As I stood in the entry hall, waiting for confessions to start, I watched the priests arrive one by one, walking through the grand doors with a calm confidence as if they were walking into their own homes. There was a noticeable change in the feeling of the room when each priest arrived, dressed all in black and carrying his white robe. Each had that air of quiet authority you have when you're about to do something very important.

I got in the line to have my confession heard by our pastor, for whom I have the utmost respect. His intelligent, thought-provoking homilies and dedication to orthodoxy were a big part in my final decision to become Catholic. (I should note that I found him and our parish church thanks to commentor Steve G., after taking him up on his kind offer to help me find an orthodox parish in this comment back in '05).

Because of overcrowding, many of the priests were set up behind temporary canvass walls in the main part of the church. The lights were dimmed and glorious, ethereal chant music played over the speakers. It was very easy to fall into a prayerful mindset in that environment.

I wasn't apprehensive at all as I stood in line and did some final reflecting on my sins. I wasn't embarrassed to tell the priest since I know how seriously he takes his role as confessor and, besides, I'm sure he's heard it all before. I simply reviewed my list to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything.

When my turn came I walked behind the black canvass divider to see that it was a very small space, barely enough room for both of us to sit, and this would be a face-to-face confession. I took my confession booklet out of my purse to use as a memory aid, and I started. And as soon as I said the first syllable of "Bless me father for I have sinned," I started crying. Hard. It just came out of nowhere, this sense of profound sorrow and regret.

At one point he interrupted to ask me some questions about my past actions, kindly probing to understand what may have motivated me to lead this kind of life. I had expected to hear disappointment, judgment and chastisement in his voice; instead I heard only empathy, kindness and wisdom. I was caught off guard when he suggested a possible contributing factor to how far away from God I'd fallen. In all my years of soul-searching and introspecting and rambling to girlfriends on the phone, I had never considered this. It was a piercing insight that cut right to the core of who I am.

I would like to say that when Father absolved me of my sins I felt immediate relief and joy. But, honestly, I felt nervous and guilty (though grateful). Now that the weight of what I'd done had finally hit me, it felt like there's just no way that I could really be all right with God. I actually think it'll take a while longer before I *feel* the relief of being absolved of my sins.


Now that I've done it, I don't see how people live without the sacrament of confession. It's so cathartic, so healing. As I drove home I kept thinking, "I can't believe this is free!" My ten minutes in the confessional were worth ten years of sessions with the best psychotherapist in town. And though it's hard for me to internalize the fact that I'm truly forgiven, I feel I've been through a physical and mental detoxification. As I lay in bed last night I felt close to God. I felt peace.

Click here for Part II

[Comments closed until Easter]

The funeral of John Paul II

Almost two years ago today I was tidying my living room and had CNN on the television for background noise. I'd heard a few days before that the Pope had died, and evidently this day was his funeral. I was mildly curious about him and the process for finding the next Pope after his death. My rock-solid atheism had started to erode, and for the first time in my life I was curious to hear more about religion and people who believed in God. Something about it all was nagging at me. For the first time, I felt like maybe it was I who was missing something.

I happened to glance up as CNN rolled a video montage they'd put together of one dignitary after another arriving at the Vatican. Back-to-back two-second clips showed Bill Clinton walking up to shake a Vatican official's hand; then Tony Blair; then King Abdullah; then Nelson Mandela; then Prince Charles; then George H. W. Bush; then Jacques Chirac; then Kofi Annan; then Vicente Fox; and on and on. I called my husband and told him to turn on the television, "You've got to see this," I said. "I've never seen anything like it." I found out later it was the largest gathering of statesman in world history, exceeding even the funeral of Winston Churchill (see this link for a full list of the heads of state who attended).

As I watched clip after clip of dignitaries of various races dressed in a wide variety of clothing walk confidently up to greet the cardinal, I was fascinated. "What's going on here?" I thought. It was just amazing to me that this religious institution that had existed for two thousand years, that had lasted even as empire after empire collapsed around it, was still able to draw the full attention of the world when its leader died. As my husband and I sat on the couch and watched the live coverage from the Vatican later that evening, I mused out loud, "The Catholic Church really has something going on there, I just can't figure out what it is." I could have never guessed that I was on the brink of finding out just how much the Catholic Church has "going on".

[Comments closed until Easter]

Best wishes

Prayers and best wishes to Amber of Rutabaga Dreams, who also enters the Church this weekend after a spiritual journey that started about two years ago.

One week

A week from today, I will be in full communion with the Catholic Church (assuming that a week is a long enough stretch of time for me to get through my first confession, that is).

Though I'm moving this week and will be mostly without an internet connection, I hope to find a way to post about some of my thoughts as I head toward this momentous occasion.

I've blogged much of my spiritual journey, and you can see from reading my first post that I've come a long, long way. (I was also reminded of this today when I recalled that exactly one year ago my husband and I showed up at Mass and as we walked up I commented with surprise that everyone was carrying leaves for some reason). The progress I've made is in large part due to my absolutely wonderful commentors, whom I want to thank more extensively in a longer post later this week. Right now I just wanted to take a quick break from packing to ask for prayers that I am able to stay spiritually focused this week amidst the chaos of moving, and to say thanks for reading.

[Comments closed for Lent]