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“Wooed by the Blessed Sacrament “ – My Journey Home.
by Peter Andersen

My journey home to the Catholic Church was a long and circuitous one, leading through many ecclesial communities and experiences.

Sent resentfully to Methodist Sunday School by non-churched parents, I disliked everything about religion. In the late 1950s, after my parents’ conversion to the Christian faith in a small Episcopal Church on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, I began attending church with them. It disrupted my otherwise peaceful Sunday mornings, but I began to like it in spite of myself. I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church in the spring of 1959. In the summer of 1960 I had my first real personal experience of God and His Son Jesus Christ. I was fourteen years old. A few months later, after a Holy Communion service, I felt God calling me to become an Episcopal Priest.

While attending Trinity College, Hartford, in preparation for seminary, my faith and vocation were severely challenged. Life in my conservative but extremely troubled Christian home led me to question the faith that had blessed me so deeply. One bright spot in this were the frequent visits to our home by the late Dutch evangelist Corrie ten Boom, a friend of my mother. Corrie’s testimony of courage and love for Jesus touched me deeply. Corrie was friends with a Lutheran religious Order in Darmstadt, Germany, called the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary.

I had become interested in the religious life since my last year in high school, and I began to read all the books available in English at the time by Mother Basilea Schlink. I spent the summer of 1966 on “Kanaan,” and considered joining the then incipient Brotherhood there. I eventually did join the Brotherhood, in the summer of 1967, albeit unwillingly. During my seventeen years there, which were characterized by much inner struggle, I was able to visit many Catholic holy places. I went into Roman Catholic churches to pray. I was so touched by the sense of peace and the Presence I felt there. My favorite was the chapel of Brother Klaus von der Flue in Switzerland. At the time, I didn’t understand what made these Catholic churches and chapels so different. Except perhaps at times when the community came together for worship, our chapel in Darmstadt didn’t have this same sense of His Presence.

I left the Brotherhood in 1984 and returned to the United States. For years, I was uncomfortable with attending any church. Then, at Christmas of 1990, I visited Medjugorie. It was a very moving experience. After three days, the longer I stayed, the more I wanted to leave, and the more I wanted to stay. I left after four days. There were no lights in the sky, no Rosary turning gold or other miraculous experiences, but I had definitely been touched. Shortly thereafter, I bought a Rosary and was able to pray the Rosary for the first time in my life. I was still not attending church.

August 1993 - 1994 I was living and working in North Carolina, and attending church with a Catholic friend. It was hard for me not to be able to receive Communion on Sundays. I longed for the Eucharist. In February1994, I attended a Medjugorie conference. One of the young visionaries gave a talk. I knew while driving home from this conference that God wanted me to become Catholic. There was an RCIA program near where I was staying, which I was able to enter that late in the year, and I was confirmed on Pentecost 1994.

In the fall of 1994, I enrolled at a liberal Catholic theological school on the West Coast, with the intent of becoming a pastoral associate. I was simultaneously training for hospital chaplaincy in an intensive program of Clinical Pastoral Education. It was during this time that I began to make contact with some former members from the Order in Germany, including my future wife, Charlene. We were miles apart spiritually at the time, with me studying at a liberal-feminist Catholic University theological program, and she attending a conservative evangelical Christian and Missionary Alliance Church.

Our common and conflicted experience in Darmstadt, however, gave us much to talk and share about. We felt as if we had grown up in the same spiritual family. We were married in March of 1996 in Edmonton, Alberta. Charlene was very uncomfortable with Catholic worship and doctrine. We determined to attend both churches once married, but that became increasingly difficult as the years went on. I knew I couldn’t pressure Charlene into becoming Catholic. She always told me, “You know, I can never become Catholic.” I began to attend Mass less and less and to look for a church in which we both felt at home. We tried Anglican, Presbyterian, Independent Episcopal, Old Catholic, and Missouri Synod Lutheran churches, to mention just a few. I felt at home in none of them and was drifting further away from our Lord and His Church.

In the early part of the year 2002, during a deep personal crisis triggered by a situation at work, I began to attend daily Mass. As I did so, the healing power of the Eucharist began to lift me out of the depression I was in. The Lord was there in His mercy and forgiveness waiting for me to return to Him. Within a brief time I was offered a position as Roman Catholic pastoral care associate at a local Catholic hospital. It was the job of my dreams, and was as if the position was just there waiting for me. During the first months of my employment, I was introduced to our now pastor Father John Horgan of Sts. Peter and Paul Parish in Vancouver. Father John was quite familiar with the Order in Germany of which we were members. He then became instrumental in pastoring my dear wife Charlene into understanding the teachings of the Church in a way that she could understand and accept them.

Now that both of us have become Catholic, God has blessed our marriage in a way we never dreamed. We have since been able to visit the sites of St. Therese in Lisieux (August 2003) and then to spend two weeks in Rome this past summer. We are able to deepen our understanding of the faith together through attendance at Sts. Peter and Paul Church.

When I look back over the years and my journey, the one thing that stands out for me is how our Lord’s Presence in the Blessed Sacrament drew me to Himself, even before I understood all the reasons behind it. I have since read how this Eucharistic Presence emanates through the Tabernacle itself to permeate the sanctuary and bring us to Himself. When I look back on my years as a Protestant Franciscan Brother, I see how this longing was there. Today I can only marvel at God’s grace and forgiveness that brought me through so many years to His Holy Table again.