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january tuesday
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| Joined: | Fri Apr 4th, 2008 |
| Location: | Minneapolis, MN |
| Posts: | 41 |
| First Name: | Karli | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | Evangelical Free, Baptist, Roman Catholic (2008) |
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Posted: Fri Jun 27th, 2008 09:03 pm |
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Hi! My dad and I have been discussing my conversion to Catholicism lately, and I finally sat down and wrote out a story of it. It was really cool to reflect back and realize how everything came into place! Anyway, I remembered a moment from a few years back that had been very moving and significant for me, and now reminds me so much of the Eucharist! At that time in my life, I didn't even know what the Eucharist was.
I was in my sophomore year of college and I had been attending a Baptist church that was also Calvinist, and had been struggling with the doctrines of Calvinism for some time. My roommate was an ex-Catholic and very Calvinist, and was always trying to convince me of it. I always hated it, it made God sound like a monster to me, but after awhile I started to accept it, because I didn't know how to explain the passage in Romans that Calvinism is built on. So the ideas of double predestination started to creep into my head.
I had had a bad week, I felt a lot of doubts, and altogether distant from God, and I was sitting in church one sunday thinking awful things to myself like, "God doesn't love you, He doesn't want you. If He had chosen you, you wouldn't struggle with doubt. He would help you feel close to Him." This sunday also happened to be communion sunday. I was sitting in my pew thinking all these things, and then I took the cracker and grape juice and thought, "I shouldn't even be taking this". Then I heard the pastor say, "This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me." And it was like I knew at that moment that it was all lies. I knew how much God loved me. I felt so loved as I ate the cracker and drank the grape juice that I began to cry. I'm sort of a reserved person, and so for me it was mortifying to be crying in front of other people, lol, and I tried to stop but I absolutely couldn't and I had to sneak off to the bathroom to compose myself. And after that I felt so loved, and everytime I doubted it for quite awhile after that, I thought about grape juice, and I felt loved again. I laughed at myself for it, I thought it was a bit quirky, in my denomination growing up communion wasn't really emphasized. But now I see it was like this pre-Catholic experience of the Eucharist, which I only learned about a year or two later. Granted it wasn't a full experience, I didn't feel as if Jesus was in the bread, but I felt His love in it.
I wrote about this the same day it happened back in 2005 in my blog on myspace, I'll paste it in here:
Sunday, October 02, 2005
 my emotions know nothing of appropriate contexts
Yeah, not sure exactly how it happened. I felt really crappy this morning about a variety of things, and then at church we had communion and I was praying but not really believing that God cared and then we drank the grape juice and I just realized how wrong I was and knew that He wants to take this crap from me and it made me start to cry. And I hate to cry in front of people and this is like an older church where people don't cry and it was a really normal sermon so the emotional outpouring was totally uncalled for, but all this logic I tried to explain to myself didn't work and I ended up having to slip off to the bathroom. Yeah, I felt pretty lame so I don't know why I am now writing it on the internet, lol, but I guess. Anyway, I want to just say that if you ever start to feel like God doesn't really love you or hear you and that people just say that to feel good, drink some grape juice, think about what that means and try not to cry. It's really hard.
Anyway, I thought it would be fun to hear if anyone else had a similar experience before they became Catholic??
Last edited on Fri Jun 27th, 2008 09:17 pm by january tuesday
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"Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God." 1 John 4:7
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MitchyMitch
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| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Snellville, Georgia USA |
| Posts: | 86 |
| First Name: | Mitch | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Independent Baptist and Southern Baptist...Now Catholic |
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Posted: Fri Jun 27th, 2008 11:55 pm |
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As a Baptist child, I experienced something that just makes plain ol' Catholic sense.
My father died when I was 6. In the weeks after, I found myself praying to him and telling him I missed him. I told my mom and pastor, and of course, they kinda wigged out, telling me that they understood, but that we weren't supposed to pray to dead people. I found the loophole - I prayed to God to let me speak to my father - and it was just my little secret.
For me now, praying to Mary and the Saints makes so much sense, a child can understand it. It was probably the easiest part of my becoming Catholic.
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Pax,
Mitch
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tedjenczewski
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| Joined: | Thu May 10th, 2007 |
| Location: | Richmond, Virginia USA |
| Posts: | 262 |
| First Name: | Ted | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Catholic, Presbyterian, revert Catholic |
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Posted: Sat Jun 28th, 2008 02:29 am |
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| The Holy Spirit called you to receive the "real" body and blood of our risen Lord, which is the "the true bread from heaven" and which "gives life to the world". This is what is missing from ALL protestant wordhip and the main reason why many of us reverts returned to the catholic church ---a longing for the sacraments, a hunger for the bread of life and the cup of salvation. Many of us have experienced strong feelings when receiving our Lord, --- the overwelming love of God, the peace that surpasses all understanding. God bless you.
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"...the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth." 1Tim 3, 15
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january tuesday
Member
| Joined: | Fri Apr 4th, 2008 |
| Location: | Minneapolis, MN |
| Posts: | 41 |
| First Name: | Karli | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | Evangelical Free, Baptist, Roman Catholic (2008) |
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Posted: Sat Jun 28th, 2008 05:23 am |
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Mitch,
that's cool. when I was a freshman, a guy in my dorm that I didn't know committed suicide, and my ex-Catholic roommate told me that we should pray for his family. she also felt it necessary to specify that we should not pray for him, only his family. I was like "yeah, yeah, of course". I had never even thought to pray for a dead person before. but when she said it, I thought to myself for the first time, "it's kinda too bad that we can't pray for him".
Last edited on Sat Jun 28th, 2008 05:25 am by january tuesday
____________________
"Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God." 1 John 4:7
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cyanheaven
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| Joined: | Tue Apr 8th, 2008 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 71 |
| First Name: | Callie | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | Baptist/ Bapticostal/ Baptist/ "BaptoCatholic" |
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Posted: Tue Jul 1st, 2008 06:54 pm |
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pre-Catholic Catholic experiences?
I tend to see these events as glimpses of a tangible calling of God to follow him, and in this case to "come home". Even if these glimpses don't make sense at the time, they fall into place completely when His plans are revealed. We are called first to be His children and to follow Him, regardless whether the denomination's schema fits where He is leading. Softly He calls, gently He leads, and great are His mercies.
An example for me is also surrounding a death:
In 2001, my older cousin died of an overdose. I didn't know him very well. Reegardless, though I 'knew' it made absolutely no theological sense I would pray for his soul and salvation. I didn't believe in purgatory, and hadn't even really thought about it, though I did know he was dead. I was just overcome with a need to pray for him, and even felt that the Holy Spirit was praying for him in my groaning. Therefore, I felt that to deny my prayers for him would be going against the will of God as I understood it.
I still don't know much about his life, especially his spiritual history. I still pray for him, especially on August 4th, when he died. And you know what, for not being a terribly emotional person and for not being terribly close to him, it still brings me to tears.
I do pray that someday I may see Him in heaven. He was Episcopalian so he might have had a solid christian education when he was younger, we just dont talk religion with that side of the family. (The whole family knows of my vocational leanings but they keep their faith pretty private. Last time my Aunt brought up religion it was to talk about how she helped spear head a green movement within her church, well at least she is active.  ) Regardless, this is my hope that I offer up to God. I can only trust in Him in all things.
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