As the opening line of the Rule of St. Benedict states, “Listen carefully, my son, to the master’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart.” I’m writing this on the Memorial of St. Benedict, a fitting time to reflect and be thankful. So get ready for “lift-off” as my journey home into the fullness of the faith and service in the Catholic Church takes flight.

The Early Years

I was born in 1957, at the dawn of the “space-age,” when the Russian satellite Sputnik set the Space Race in motion between the United States and the Soviet Union. Just south of Seattle, WA, where my brother, sister, and I were born, my father was employed as a Boeing engineer working in Space and Defense. This meant he worked on many projects related to Cold War issues and directly on the Saturn V main stage rocket, which eventually sent Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins to the moon and safely home. Because of my father’s work, we moved wherever Boeing sent us — from Seattle to Huntsville, back to Seattle, down to Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach, and then back to Seattle for good. My childhood was shaped by NASA and Boeing, interest in beauty and the arts, and the great outdoors. This background would help shape an unexpected pilgrimage into a strange, yet beautiful, world of grace, love, and wonder for me as an ex-Evangelical Protestant pastor, for my wife Diane, and our two teenage girls.

My memories of church life during my early childhood, mostly at a small Missouri Synod Lutheran Church in Huntsville, AL, are vague but important memories of loving people who treated both my siblings and my mother with kindness. (My father rarely attended.) My mother did a good job giving us a knowledge of God’s existence and basic Christian morality formed from the Ten Commandments. Flannel graphics were a favorite of mine, especially before Sunday school classes began depicting rocket launches and safe re-entry instead of religious principles. One significant event from this time occurred on a Sunday after church, as I was watching a weekly program on a Christian television station. I remember this episode had to do with a family tragedy, and as I watched the program, the thought ran through my mind that, as an adult, I would like to be helping families with hardships and challenges. This experience still guides me.

As I grew older and began high school, my family’s involvement in church waned. I became enthralled with the NFL and Sunday football. In short, we soon became “Christmas and Easter Christians” and neglected church life in general. If I had to describe where I was in my spiritual life at that time, I would say that I was a believer in God but didn’t see how God could be interested in my life. I did believe Jesus was the Son of God, but I had no concept of what that meant or why it mattered. As for the Holy Spirit, somehow, He was part of this, but how, I had no clue. In fact, my life after high school was rather confused and unguided. I had no idea where I was going or how to formulate a plan to get anywhere. Boeing and engineering didn’t interest me; working at Boeing in any capacity didn’t interest me; a career in business didn’t interest me either.

For the first time in my life, I began to search for a purpose, a deeper meaning in life, and goals to pursue. College sounded like it could help provide an answer to these questions, so I effectively rolled the dice and wound up at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. I had no idea what I was going to study, but I was drawn to psychology and sociology.

Ora et Labora — Prayer and Work

In 1978, I arrived at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA, just south of the Canadian border and north of Seattle, in the afterglow of the “Jesus Movement” of the late 60s and early 70s. I quickly became involved in campus ministry, previously unaware that such a thing even existed on college campuses. In the dormitories were numerous posters recruiting students to any number of secular and religious group meetings. One of those was for Campus Crusade for Christ, which I visited and became involved in for a short time with a friend I met on the crew team. Here I was introduced to the Four Spiritual Laws, and even helped my teammate lead people to Christ. One day, this same friend asked if I had ever visited a monastery. I had not, so he invited me to visit a Benedictine Abbey, just across the border in Mission, British Columbia, Canada, named Westminster Abbey. Here, I was introduced to a new world of beauty, peace, and prayer which would begin my long journey deeper into Jesus’ heart and eventually into the Catholic Church.

The beauty of the monastery was stunning. Overlooking the Fraser River, with a north side view of Mt. Baker in Washington State, bald eagles flying overhead, and big timber all around, the impact of this first visit still remains with me many years later.

In fact, I have visited this monastery many times over the years and have brought groups up for retreats and study. Yet it was the beauty and artistry of one of the monks’ works displayed in the chapel and around the monastery that focused my attention on God’s creativity through human genius. The monk’s name was Father Dunstan Massey, OSB, and he was quite well known as an artist around the Fraser River Valley. He specialized in concrete reliefs and frescos, and his artistry speaks to me of God’s wonder. Indeed, his work was his prayer.

Father Dunstan, the grandeur of creation, and other encounters with God through beauty became a gentle path deeper into His love and compassion, which would prove to be of immense consolation in the storms of life to come. The Benedictine Rule would become a huge influence on my life. St. Benedict’s 12 Steps of Humility and their impact on the shaping of the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous became patterns within the development of my ministry over the years. The Benedictine motto, “Ora et Labora” (prayer and work), is a simple and profound way to live and learn a life of prayer and devotion “one day at a time.”

I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and learned that, while I had become a good listener and loved to minister on the streets, in jails, and occasionally on campus, this was not the most employable degree. As a result, I spent a year doing carpentry with a friend. After this time, I was invited to intern with an Assemblies of God campus ministry (Chi Alpha) with the hope of being equipped enough to pioneer a campus group on a college campus that had a supporting church nearby desiring a new chapter. We studied from well-known works of Protestant Evangelical theologians, occasionally mixed with an Anglican and, very rarely, a Catholic spiritual perspective. We conducted street dramas, traveled to different parts of the western United States to help other campus ministries, led small groups, raised our own funds, and generally became confident that we could pioneer a campus group anywhere we were called. Soon, I would indeed be called upon to begin a new campus ministry, but I needed a partner to go on this adventure with me. Diane would become that partner.

Diane and I met when we were both college students. I didn’t know her well in those years, but during this year of internship, our relationship began to flower. I admired her faith in Jesus, her prayer life, and her willingness to step out of her comfort zone in teaching, street ministry/drama, and planning outreach. Of course, I also thought she was cute.

At the end of our internship year, we were teamed up to start a campus group in Kearney, Nebraska at what was then known as Kearney State College. We set out on a cross-country adventure to another culture amidst the cornfields and hog farms of south-central Nebraska, right along the Platte River. Here, our relationship would be tried in the difficult circumstances of a new culture, an unfamiliar land with intense winters and springs, and of a longing for the big timber, mountains, and flowing water of the Pacific Northwest. Despite the difficulties, our two years spent in Nebraska were fruitful. The campus ministry grew, and Diane and I grew closer. We were engaged in Kearney. Then we said good-bye to our Nebraska friends and headed back to the Evergreen State to start our new life as a married couple.

During our time in Nebraska, we had become acquainted with many campus pastors from different denominations, all of whom were very helpful to us. What Diane and I quickly discovered, however, was that our internship in campus ministry fell short in equipping us to converse with them in matters of church history, theology, and much of pastoral ministry. As a result, I desired to go to seminary and learn about these different subjects. We needed to earn money for that to happen, though, so off we went to Alaska and Yukon to drive tour buses in the Great White North for two seasons before I took the plunge into seminary.

I began my studies at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, an interdenominational seminary begun by two Anglican Professors from England — J.I. Packer and James Houston. This was a marvelous place to learn (and I must say that many themes introduced to us here eventually found their fulfillment in the Catholic Church). Over a four-year period, we learned about Church History, Christian Spirituality, Systematic Theology, Preaching, Pastoral Care, Greek, Hebrew, and most important to our journey, the Early Church Fathers and beauty. The Early Church Fathers introduced to us an intriguing world of commitment to the Eucharist, prayer, and tradition, aspects of the Church we would later come to understand in a truly Catholic perspective instead of a curious, but still Protestant, worldview. All this we received as God’s gifts in our lives. It was a wonderful time of reception — a time of filling.

Memento Mori — Remember that You Will Die

As I worked toward the completion of my Master’s Degree in Theological Studies, I concentrated on Pastoral Care and Family Ministries. At this time, I was working in an addiction recovery center for adults and teens, helping families deal with recovery issues and treatment plans. Diane was working at a local nursing home and caring for a neglected population of elderly people. After graduation from seminary, I was eventually hired as an associate pastor with a large, local Assemblies of God church which functioned more like an Evangelical community church. This was the same church that sponsored the college campus group where Diane and I had interned. It was quite familiar to us and was an honor to serve on staff. My duties included running counseling services and recovery groups, developing internships in pastoral care, expanding our local food pantry into a food bank, and partnering with community services in the county to help families. I enjoyed this work and felt called to care for people in distress. However, during the 16 years I worked at the church, there were three experiences, all having to do with personal trauma and loss, which drew us into a search for consolation and care which only the Catholic Church was able to provide.

The first of these experiences was the discovery of our infertility as a couple. Anyone who has been part of this journey knows what a loss and burden it can be for a couple totally open to children and wanting to raise a family. In this struggle, we found there really was nowhere we could turn to find comfort or solace. We knew of no groups, no people to talk with, and no support. We were alone, and our church had no resources to help us. Diane and I spent five years praying for God’s direction amid this suffering. Were we to have children? Should we utilize artificial means to conceive? Is adoption for us? Where and how do we proceed with adoption? How are children to be part of our lives? These questions drove us deeper into prayer and into intense listening for God’s guidance.

The Lord did indeed guide us and grant us comfort during these difficult years. We came to the firm conviction that the Lord wanted us to pursue adoption overseas in China. We were in the early wave of North Americans adopting Chinese orphans. Due to the one-child policy instituted by the Communist government, many “unwanted” female babies were either aborted, victims of infanticide, or sent to crowded orphanages where they were cared for as well as they could be by the staff. Describing the adventures of this adoption experience would require an additional story; suffice it to say we traveled to China without a child and two weeks later came back with our eight-month-old daughter, Amy. Two years later, we would head to Vladivostok, Russia, to adopt our youngest daughter, Anna, also eight months old. As we settled into life as a new family of four, we were surprised that the pain of infertility was overwhelmed by the joy of adopting our children. Every family is a miracle; ours is no exception.

As the years passed, we nurtured our family and our ministry, building a community of care and outreach in the church. In time, the mission of the church became obscured, and growing a church in numbers became the top priority. In the midst of this change, the second of three losses occurred in our lives — the sudden death of my mother due to cancer. She was the hub of the family, and her death brought about profound changes in my extended family. This was a time of confusion and deep grief. Coupled with the changes in the church, we found ourselves longing once again for solace and community, but found none. We were searching intently for a deeper meaning and purpose of the people of God and church worship.

This search steered me into a doctoral program in urban leadership and spiritual formation at Bakke Graduate University (based in Seattle at the time, now based in Dallas). In this program, we learned more about the spirituality and leadership of serving the needs of the poor in urban settings, of creating communities of care and outreach, and of diving into the mystery and majesty of human interaction in the act of ministering care in God’s compassion. I would often pray in the St. Ignatius chapel at Seattle University and found this space compelling, drawing me toward beauty and prayer. Here, I discovered many more contemporary Catholic authors and people who became heroes to me. Diane and I were also drawn to Celtic Catholic spirituality and the “thin places” of the world, those places where heaven and earth are thinly veiled to one another. We had no idea that this would be the perfect description of the Catholic Mass, but the journey was beginning to take on new dimensions for us. It was also here that I came across a wonderful quote from G.K. Chesterton in his masterpiece, Orthodoxy, giving us insight to the Christian life.

“Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man’s ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small.… Joy, which is the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.” (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1996. p. 239.)

In 2007, I graduated with a Doctor of Ministry in Transformation Leadership and Spiritual Formation and soon after discerned that my time at the Assemblies of God church was coming to an end. Through a series of many staff changes and circumstances, Diane and I knew that our hearts were being pulled somewhere else, though where that would be, we did not know. We knew our view of the Communion service was changing, that the Lord was somehow present in ways we couldn’t articulate.

Our view of Mary was changing also. We knew that Protestants didn’t understand her or her role in salvation history. They could not help us answer the question of what her role was, and what our relationship with her ought to be. We knew it had to be more than a casual appreciation for her at Christmas.

One final issue that we could not resolve was the issue of authority. With so many opinions about Holy Scripture, what or whom were we to trust, and why should we trust them?

I resigned my position, which for a career pastor can be devastating, with the loss of income, an uncertain future, the disappearance of community and friends, and vanishing support networks. This was the third of the losses that would send us into a “desert wandering” for five years, until one Christmas Eve when our world was turned upside down.

My family loves Christmas. As part of our Christmas tradition, we would attend a Christmas Eve service somewhere in the county. Diane thought we needed a new experience of Christmas Eve as a family, so in her wisdom and attentiveness to the Holy Spirit, she suggested we attend Children’s Mass at Sacred Heart Parish, just up the hill from the church where I used to be employed. This sounded like a good idea to me, since I had been in the parish church occasionally to pray and look at the beauty of the sanctuary, statues, and candles. So, off we went to Children’s Mass. We had no idea what to expect, but knew the kids would be cute, Christmas carols would be sung, and hopefully English (and very little Latin) would be spoken. We were right! The kids were cute, Christmas carols that we knew were sung, everything in the church was decorated beautifully, and very little Latin was used. We were stunned!

We left that Mass wondering what the Lord was doing. While there, my eyes became fixed on the crucifix in the front of the church. It seemed that Jesus was speaking directly to me, saying that He knew the pains and sorrows of humanity, and more than that, the pains and sorrows my family and I had endured. He was saying that here, in the Mass, in the Catholic Church, our search for deeper meaning and purpose would find its answers. Here, Mary would be our Blessed Mother. Here, living water would finally quench our thirst.

We stayed away from the church, and from Mass, for two weeks trying to sort it out. We were a bit numb, but Diane and I were convinced that God was ushering us into full communion with the Catholic Church. We asked the girls if they desired to attend with us, and even if they desired to explore the possibility of becoming Catholic; they were game to try. So that we could become better prepared for this further adventure, we felt the need to find out more about the Church, if we could. We went to our local Barnes & Noble and found a book which became incredibly helpful to us, Catholicism for Dummies. We still refer to this book from time to time! Eventually, we were introduced to the parish priest. We invited him over to our house to pepper him with questions, attended RCIA, and prepared to enter the Church at the Easter Vigil in 2012.

Entering into full communion with the Church has been an oasis for us. Our journey has not been so much a wrestling with doctrine and tradition as it has been discovering where consolation, beauty, and joy manifest Jesus’ love on earth in the most deeply personal and authentic way. We have been overwhelmed by Jesus’ Real Presence in the Eucharist, the love of our Triune God and our Blessed Mother, and the wonder and beauty of the Church unfolding before us.

Why enter the Church in this time of trial and scandal? Perhaps it was precisely because of these wounds that the Lord led us here, to help tend to a Church that needs renewal, strength, and care.

A few years after our entrance into the Church, I started inquiring into the Diaconate upon the encouragement of our parish staff, not knowing what that entailed. It was a whole new world of potential pastoral involvement, and I wasn’t quite sure if I was up to the challenge. I told Diane, my wife, that unless someone approached me at coffee and donuts after Mass, I would forgo the honor. As I sat enjoying my donut and coffee after Mass, our parish priest made a beeline to me, telling me I needed to apply. I felt this was the Lord’s prompting! So I applied, was interviewed, along with Diane, and entered the formation process, which was quite challenging on every level.

In the second year of formation, we were graced with attending a Coming Home Network retreat at the Archbishop Brunett Retreat Center in Federal Way, WA, which was our home for formation throughout the years. The retreat was wonderful and life-giving, thanks to Jim Anderson, Ken Hensley, and Monsignor Steenson! On December 19, 2020, in the middle of the COVID pandemic, I was ordained a permanent deacon of the Catholic Church. It had been quite a journey!

In the years since my ordination, I have been impressed with the immense prayerfulness of God’s people and gained a growing love of the saints, especially St. Joseph and our Blessed Mother. I am filled with wonder as I serve the Mass and am thankful for the Divine Office, praying for the profound needs of the Church worldwide. I have also become a regular follower of On the Journey with Matt, Ken, and Kenny on the CHNetwork website, finding their insights helpful in the challenges of the diaconate.

Greater than those challenges, though, the diaconate has brought me fulfillment. Along with preparing and preaching homilies at Mass, it is one of my joys to pray for those who have died and to help those who struggle with loss to find a way home. My current role offers many opportunities to minister to bereaved families and pray for the souls of the dead as they are committed to God’s good earth, one of the corporal acts of mercy. This work brings me back to St. Benedict. One of the disciplines of the Benedictine Rule is to remember that we all will die, Memento Mori. It is not a morbid preoccupation with death, but a daily discipline to remind ourselves that our lives are short and need to be filled by the Holy Spirit with virtue, humility, and fortitude — the love of God.

Blessings to you on your own journey home! Kyrie Eleison!

The post Kyrie Eleison – Lord Have Mercy appeared first on The Coming Home Network.

From Birth Through High School

I was born Lawrence Michael Alderson to George W. Alderson and Audrey Ann Alderson (née Morin). My mother was in nurse’s training at the beginning of 1948. In those days, the trainees were expected to train in every aspect of nursing, including the operating theater. This turned out to be too much for her to handle. She needed to get away from it all to take stock of her life. (Years later, however, she became an LPN.)

She and my father “went away” for a couple of weeks. When my grandfather found out about it, he insisted that they get married. His oldest daughter was a Sister of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and his oldest son was a Jesuit who had been a POW in a Japanese prison camp. Both were highly regarded in the community. The embarrassment my mother’s situation presented was more than he could handle.

They married in late January of that year. I was born a couple of weeks early, a breech birth, in late November of the same year. The doctor who assisted in the delivery was shocked to discover this. In those days, there were no instant anesthetics, which made for a tricky delivery.

My father, who had been born in 1925, was a former Marine, having served in World War II. I imagine the war experience was a bit much for him, because later he had difficulty holding down a job. In order to make ends meet, my mother also worked.

My brother, Robert, was born in late December of 1952. I have a memory of living with my paternal grandparents during the weeks that my mother was in recovery. There was one day, when I was alone with my brother, and I noticed that he needed his diaper changed. When my mother came home, she was shocked to discover the situation, because I had tried to handle the dilemma, but I was too young to do it correctly. I’m guessing this was the last straw for my overworked and unsupported mother, and my parents separated. Shortly after that incident, my mother, brother, and I moved in with my maternal grandparents.

I was enrolled in kindergarten at St. Eulalia in Maywood, Illinois. In the middle of my fifth year, my mother’s younger sister, Joan, separated from her husband. At that point, my mother and her sister decided (perhaps with some urging from my grandparents) to get an apartment together.

Growing up, I loved to investigate things. One year, around the 4th of July, I bought a road flare. Out of curiosity, I ignited it in the apartment. I wasn’t wise enough to figure out how to put it out in a safe manner, and I ended up burning a hole in the living room rug. The apartment owner was, of course, upset, and we found ourselves moving again.

I remember living in an apartment in Franklin Park, where we lived next door to my future cousins. They told my mother about Elmer John Gearhart, who was shy and unmarried. My mother took it to heart, and shortly after that, the two were married. In 1961, Elmer adopted Bob and me. This is how I came to have the last name of Gearhart. From that point on, we lived in his house in Elmwood Park. At first, I went to St. Cyprian School in River Grove. But after juggling expenses, I was transferred to Elmwood School in the middle of seventh grade. It was there that I began to show unusual ability in mathematics.

The July after our move, my brother John Elmer was born. Around that time, I took entrance exams for Holy Cross High School and Elmwood Park High School. In the latter, I tried to figure out the formula for the volume of a sphere. I ended up also doing well in English and science.

I joined the wrestling team in my freshman year, as well as the freshman boys’ chorus. In a school of about 900 students, I was only 5 feet 2 inches in height and third string in wrestling. In my sophomore year, my voice was changing, so I was not accepted into sophomore chorus. In place of that, I decided to take a typing class. I also set aside wrestling for chess club.

Around this time, my parents’ marriage was failing. My father had a drinking problem, and I was asked by my mother’s lawyer to testify in court. I said I could not say he was an alcoholic, which I understood to mean that he had an addiction. I couldn’t go so far as to say that. Anyway, they divorced in the middle of my junior year.

My mother, brothers, and I moved to Northlake, and I was transferred to Proviso West High School in Hillside, a larger school of about 3,600 students. Around that time, I experienced a growth spurt, and by my senior year I was 6 feet 2 inches tall.

While attending this new school, our college prep English class read Milton’s Paradise Lost. That book challenged me to think about free will. I had taken classes in chemistry and physics, and I could find no reason to believe that free will was a reality, since my understanding seemed to imply that all motion was either determined or random. Life so far seemed to concur, and I could not see how a soul would be an exception, much less a body-soul combination.

From Junior College to Ph.D. and Assistant Professorship

I attended Triton Jr. College, where I studied English Rhetoric, Hans Morgenthau’s Politics Among Nations, Humanities, and Calculus. I financed it all by working summers at the National Tea Potato Packing Plant.

Meanwhile, I decided to stop attending Mass.

At the end of those two years at Triton, I was surprised to receive a tuition scholarship to study math education. I decided to attend the University of Illinois at Chicago (then referred to as the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle). In the last quarter of my senior year, I did student teaching. There, I became frustrated that I could not motivate seniors (who were afflicted with senioritis) to pay attention in calculus class. I was so upset that I didn’t bother to attend graduation ceremonies. I got my B.S. degree but did not apply for certification.

When I graduated, our country was at war. But I drew a high lottery number, and thus avoided being drafted into the Army. Instead, I got a job working for UPS while I tried to sort things out. I have a highly technical background and have had an abiding interest in physics, psychology, philosophy, major literature, and history ever since high school. Later in life, I developed a practical interest in biology, especially as it relates to human welfare, both physical and moral.

As a sort of “renaissance man,” I had developed a great interest in many things, including literature and philosophy. During this time, I became fascinated by Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy and Why I Am Not a Christian.

Then, in 1971, I took the GRE (Graduate Record Exam) and scored in the 98th percentile in mathematics. In my first year, I was one of the top students. The following year, I became a teaching assistant in the math department, and thanks to that, I was able to finance the remainder of my education through the doctorate level.

I investigated several options for connecting with a thesis advisor, including inquiries about their areas of specialization. I finally settled on working with Prof. James Moeller. (Jim was a Lutheran who decided not to challenge my free-will theory. As it happens, he later happily wrote a letter of commendation to Mt. St. Mary’s Seminary, where I applied for entry in 1997.) While working with Jim, I was given the problem of determining the relationship of the spectrum of a unilateral shift operator (also referred to as a translation semigroup) of infinite multiplicity to that of its infinitesimal generator. I derived that result somewhat late in the academic year, yet earlier than had been anticipated, so that I was given a job as a visiting lecturer (the bottom rung of professional titles) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. During that year, I was able to use a theory of harmonic analysis of operators on Hilbert space to discover and prove an important version of what came to be called (at least initially) Gearhart’s spectral mapping theorem.

My first job elsewhere was as a visiting professor at Wright State University in Fairborn, Ohio. There, I was able to submit my first major publication to the Transactions of the American Mathematical Society. That paper has been cited more than 200 times in the mathematical and physical sciences (especially chemistry and physics) literature.

My Conversion Process

It was during that three-year period at Wright State University when I connected with Center Stage in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and participated in a few Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. In 1979, after my three-year term was up, I began working for defense industry contractors. My involvement with Center Stage continued. After one of these productions, I dated a fan who was a few months older than me, and with whom I had an affair lasting several months. She had a teenage son. I proposed marriage to her, but she declined it. After that rejection, I became seriously depressed and attempted to deal with it by using pornography.

Finally, in 1987, the year my maternal grandmother died, I had a major conversion experience one night while I slept. I believe my grandmother’s prayers played a major role in my being given that gift. In the dream, God showed me where my life was headed, the consequences to many souls who would have been adversely affected, and a taste of the result—my separation from God for all eternity. That experience shook me up so much that, when I woke up, I got down on my knees and begged God for forgiveness. The only consolation I got was that I was not yet damned, and recognized that I needed to change.

My first change was to get rid of all the pornography in my possession. I began thinking more responsibly about my life and my job. But I still didn’t have a sense of the truth of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

It was a confusing time, and I tried marriage—which ultimately ended after about seven months. My wife was from Illinois as well, so I applied to Bell Labs in Naperville, a job from which 2,000 engineers, including me, were eventually laid off.

In the months after this fiasco, I sought employment and connected with a lady who was a parishioner at a Catholic church in St. Charles, Illinois. She was in their choir, and I was interested in participating. I heard the pastor speak about the Christ Renews His Parish program (colloquially referred to as “CHiRP”), which was sponsoring a weekend retreat. I consulted him about joining that retreat, and he referred me to Fr. Steve, the pastor at Holy Cross in Batavia, where I lived. I talked to Fr. Steve, who was very busy, but I had an impulse to ask him to hear my confession anyway.

That weekend blew me away. Another retreatant that weekend was a guy my age, whom I knew, who had also attended St. Eulalia’s and lived on the same block as I did in Maywood back in the 50s. At that meeting, I spoke about my recent return to the sacraments, and my newfound conversion. (Another coincidence: I sat at the St. Paul table.) The guys there were all impressed, including one fellow at our table who was entering the seminary the next year. That retreat was an important part of my journey back to the Catholic Church, and ultimately to my vocation.

In the summer of 1992, I moved back to my old home in Elmwood Park and spent the next three years under spiritual direction. Thanks to some local contacts, I managed to find work as an adjunct professor at colleges in the area.

My mother insisted we go to St. Vincent Ferrer parish for Mass, even though we had been going to St. Cyprian years before. After a couple of months there, I heard that Fr. Benjamin Russell, the pastor, was available to provide spiritual direction. It was only later that I recognized the significance of consulting with a man whose first name was the same as that of my maternal grandfather and my Jesuit uncle, and whose last name was the same as my previous intellectual hero, Bertrand Russell.

Fr. Russell helped me to put things into perspective. I had some wild questions to ask him, like: “What if there is intelligent life on other planets?” More importantly, we explored the question of what God was calling me to do. I kept praying about this, and even met with a vocation director at the local priory. The night before I got the news that I wasn’t accepted, I had a dream that I was on a train. The conductor came to me and asked me for my tickets. I only had one. I simply had to figure out what vocation the “ticket” was for.

That three-year period of discernment ended in 1995. I was running out of options to support myself. Out of the blue, I got a call from an old employer in the Dayton area, asking if I was available for work.

Mary, Help of Even This Christian!

I moved back to Fairborn and discovered that I was within the Mary, Help of Christians parish boundaries. I registered as a parishioner and soon joined the Stephen Ministry, which works with people going through difficult times in their lives. I had some hard cases and learned a lot from the experience. When I inquired about whom I might seek as a spiritual director, I was sent to Fr. Joseph Goetz, the pastor of St. Paul Church in Yellow Springs. He suggested I begin to pray the Liturgy of the Hours. He was surprised how determined I was to keep praying the Liturgy of the Hours, as well as consistently receiving spiritual direction.

In my second year there, I served on the parish council. Management was never my strong suit, so I was not involved beyond that. I was, however, knowledgeable in psychology, and I was learning a lot of history and theology. Coming from the Chicago area, I had visited the Cathedral there a few times to pray, and I learned that Joseph Bernardin was the Cardinal Archbishop, and that he had previously been the Archbishop of Cincinnati. I volunteered to give a presentation on him, and when I completed it, the lady who directed the ministry asked me, “When are you going to become a priest?” She urged me to meet with the pastor, Fr. Joe Raudabaugh.

When I met with him, I said I was interested in becoming a deacon. He asked me, “Is there any reason you would not study to become a priest?” I had no answer. Was this the “one ticket” that God had for me?

I attended a ministry weekend at Mount St. Mary’s in Cincinnati. The rector at that time was Fr. Jerry Haemmerle. He found me gazing at a painting outside of the chapel. It’s a picture painted by Benjamin Robert Haydon, entitled “Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem.” Fr. Jerry explained that two of the figures in it were modeled on Isaac Newton (a mathematician and physicist) and Voltaire (an atheist). It seemed like I was being given a life-line by Sir Isaac Newton, mathematician: choose faith over no faith. That clinched my decision to enter the seminary in the fall of 1997.

When I told my brother, Bob, about my decision, he responded, “Whatever floats your boat!” I entered the seminary at Mt. St. Mary’s in Cincinnati in 1997 and was ordained as a priest in 2003.

I was 48 years old, the oldest in my seminary class. The next oldest was John Daniel Schuh (Dan). When people asked me how old I was, I would answer that I was two years older than Grandpa (a humorous reference to Dan). When we were ordained (May 24, 2003, the feast of Mary, Help of Christians), as we were leaving the Cathedral (now a minor basilica), one of his grandchildren spotted him and yelled out “Grandpa!” That’s how he got his nickname.

My mother, brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins attended the ordination. At the dinner following the ceremony, two of my uncles roasted each other. Everyone had a great time.

The next day, I celebrated Mass at Mary, Help of Christians. A week later, I said Mass at St. Eulalia’s in Maywood. Two ordinands a year ahead of me eventually went on further than I did. One is the current rector of the Seminary, Fr. Anthony Brausch, and the other now leads the diocese of Columbus, Bishop Earl Fernandez.

Prior to my serving as parochial vicar for the Springfield Deanery (beginning in July of 2017), I was the pastor of the four small Catholic parishes in Champaign County, Ohio: St. Michael in Mechanicsburg and Immaculate Conception in North Lewisburg (since July 1, 2006) and, more recently (since July 1, 2013), St. Mary in Urbana and Sacred Heart in St. Paris. St. Mary’s is small by U.S. Catholic standards, and each of the other three parishes is small enough to be considered “small faith communities” by biblical standards. Accordingly, they have been able to live something close to the ideal of small faith communities. Everyone knows everyone else and feels comfortable engaging in serious conversation.

Since November of 2020, I have been a priest living in retirement. Today, I am a retired priest in residence at St. Teresa of the Child Jesus parish in Springfield, Ohio. My duties include daily Mass, hearing confessions, responding to sick calls (anointings, hearing confessions and general pastoral care), and presiding at baptisms, weddings, and funerals. As previously, I remain a “circuit rider” in the sense that I may be called upon to substitute for a priest on vacation or some other form of leave. I have come to realize that God is more loving, forgiving, and (as Einstein said) subtle than I ever imagined. His grace is often like a soft flute, leading the soul onward. That subtlety certainly played out in surprising ways in my own journey home and into the priesthood. Indeed, it led me all the way back home, to where my vocation and Jesus Christ were waiting.

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More about Fr. Sean’s work can be found at deafcatholicphilly.org.

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Find Marc’s work at christcenteredcapital.com.

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Read more about LoriAnn’s story

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Find more about Dr. Murphy’s work: drianmurphy.com.

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Find out more about the Society of Catholic Scientists at catholicscientists.org.

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Holy Name Catholic Church and school was kitty-corner from our house. I don’t remember much from Catholic grade school other than that we had to go to Mass once a week in the adjacent church. If we girls forgot our chapel veils, we had to bobby pin a Kleenex to our hair. After Vatican II, I missed the old Latin Mass with its chanting. But one of our teachers, a nun who wore the new short habit, played the guitar and taught us the new folk hymns: “Joy is Like the Rain” and “Sons of God.”

At age 13, not long after Confirmation, I decided that God did not exist. At least there was no way to prove He exists, so I guess that made me an agnostic. I was sick of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and also felt women were unfairly treated. I decided, however, to give God one last chance. So I walked across the street to the church and knelt down in one of the pews. “OK, God, if you’re there, give me a sign!” There was no sign. (The assistant priest walked in and asked me if there was anything he could do for me, but that wasn’t the kind of sign I was looking for!)

I stopped going to church, which broke my mother’s heart. I also wanted to transfer to the local public schools, but my parents wouldn’t let me. They thought the public schools in our neighborhood were too dangerous. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this decision on my parents’ part was the beginning of God’s stratagem that would eventually bring me home to Him.

In the meantime, two of our neighbors, Helen and Mary, who were Catholic, told me they were praying for me. They knew my mother was suffering because of my defection. I forgot about them for years — until quite recently, in fact. But now I know that their faithful prayers fueled my return home to the Church.

I went to the Academy of the Holy Angels from 9th-12th grade. It turned out I loved the school. But I resisted the religion classes. First of all, the principal, a priest, promised me I wouldn’t have to take religion classes. But when I arrived on the first day of school, there was “religion” on my schedule! I stormed into his office to complain, but he just said, “Everybody has to take religion classes.” So much for my opinion of priests!

My big rebellion took the form of sloughing off the true-false tests they gave us. I would just go down the left-hand column and write T, F, T, F, etc., without reading the questions. The teachers took me aside and said that if I failed religion, my GPA would be affected and I wouldn’t be able to get into college. So I started reading the questions on the tests — but I didn’t study.

I did get into college, anyway. The one that offered the best financial aid was the College of St. Catherine, across the river in St. Paul. So Holly the agnostic continued to be surrounded by Catholics! I could choose to take either religion or philosophy, so I plumped for philosophy. That was fun! I never went to Mass on campus. I majored in music (piano) and sang in a wonderful group called the Chamber Singers. That group gave me some of the best memories of my life: sitting around the fireplace in someone’s living room singing folk songs with guitar, travelling to Europe to sing in cathedrals, and even getting the chance to conduct the group from time to time. God was still working: in a late- night argument about God, two of my friends said, “Some day, Holly, you are going to believe in God more than the rest of us!”

After college graduation in 1978, I joined the Peace Corps. I was assigned to teach music at a girls’ high school at Kaimosi, Kenya. I’m pretty sure my Catholic school background was the reason they assigned me to a former mission compound. The mission was about three miles from the Equator, but also a mile above sea-level, so it was not intolerably hot.

Though the mission was Quaker, I guess any religion would have sufficed in the eyes of the Peace Corps. (God no doubt had a hand in this, too!) The compound comprised a primary school, high school, teacher training college, Bible school, and hospital. Though most of the institutions were now government-run, there were several Quakers still on staff. I learned that there are two kinds of Quaker: the “silent” ones and the evangelistic ones. I made friends with the “silent” ones, since one didn’t seem to have to espouse any particular creed in order to participate. I attended silent meetings on Sundays. It was a good time just to ponder and meditate. This may seem strange to most Christians, but it was the best religion I knew at the time.

When I returned home to Minnesota in 1980, I entered a promiscuous stage in my life. I became pregnant out of wedlock. The father was not good marriage material. I moved to Arizona to live with some friends of a friend, in order to sort out my life. Abortion never entered my mind. My quandary was either to keep the baby or to put her up for adoption. When I was about five months pregnant and felt the baby move, I knew I had to keep her and love her.

Near the beginning of my pregnancy, I attended a meeting for unwed mothers run by Catholic nuns. Practically the first thing out of their mouths was that we had sinned. Well, in my eyes, sex outside of marriage was not sinning. I never went back.

Eventually, as with many young parents, I saw the need to bring up my daughter in some type of faith. There was a Unitarian church near me, which was acceptable to me because one didn’t really need to believe anything in particular. (This has been a repeated theme for me!) I joined the choir and taught my daughter’s Sunday school class. It was interesting to listen to the pastor’s sermons, since over time he became more and more interested in God. That, of course, was not required of a Unitarian preacher.

It was in this church that two seminal moments happened. First, I was up in the choir loft one Sunday during Christmas season while the children were putting on a pageant. (There was a procession with Mary and Joseph, but no baby — and, officially, no God.) At any rate, as I was looking down on the procession, a question came into my mind: “what if it’s all true?” I never forgot that question in subsequent years.

The second moment involved music. I was in church singing a folk song by Carolyn McDade. As I sang this very moving song, the thought came to me: “This is what I should be doing with my life.” Again, I never forgot that moment.

Because my voice was not developed enough for me to enter a graduate program in voice, I enrolled in the Master of Music program in choral conducting at the University of Minnesota. Here, we were exposed to much of the great church choral music. Again, God placed His hand on me in a way I was not aware of. The head of our department encouraged us to look for church jobs and be willing to move in order to take a job.

After graduation, my daughter and I moved to Wisconsin for me to take a part-time choir director job at a local junior college. While there, I met an excellent clarinet player, who was the wife of the local Presbyterian pastor. She invited me to her church, and soon my daughter was enrolled there in Sunday school. I liked the church because — once again — one didn’t really need to believe anything in particular to attend. But my new friends encouraged me to join. The pastor said that in order to join, I would have to affirm that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. I didn’t believe that, so I told him I couldn’t say it. Then he went into a long rigamarole about how it could mean many things to many people, so I agreed. With that, I was accepted into membership!

God was at work again. Not long after joining, I was invited to accept the position of Director of Christian Education at that Presbyterian church. All this on the strength of my having taught kindergarten Sunday school at a Unitarian church. I shudder to think of the way I filled this position. I didn’t know the Bible and I didn’t see why it had to be the backbone of our curriculum. Once I told the junior high teacher, who was teaching the journeys of Paul at the time, that I thought Paul’s journeys were boring! He was astonished, and I’m sure, dismayed.

But God led me over time to delve more and more into the Bible and to cultivate a relationship with Jesus. I became a full- time employee at the church: Director of Music and Christian Education. I count these among the happiest years of my life. My daughter and I attended a yearly church camp in northern Wisconsin called Moon Beach that has contributed to many happy memories for us.

Unfortunately, the good times ended in 1994 when there was a scandal in the church. I was the whistle-blower, which brought two years of misery. During this time of trial, I joined a “spirituality” group that exposed me to spiritual disciplines and brought me closer to Christ. It was probably the only thing that kept me going through the crisis.

As these two years progressed, some members of the church and also the pastor planted seeds in my mind of becoming a pastor. I considered it, but didn’t move on it until I had a dramatic conversion experience. About a year into the church crisis, I met and started “dating” (meaning “sleeping with”) a man who I thought would eventually become my husband and a father to my daughter. He was a wonderful guy. It never occurred to me that this was ungodly behavior. We belonged to a singles group which invited a nearby Presbyterian pastor to talk about the ethics of sexual behavior. He said that as long as there was true love involved, we were mature adults and could make the decision to have sex.

Then the church crisis came to a head. I was asked to attend a Session (church council) meeting. At the meeting, I was told that I was fired for spreading rumors about the people involved in the crisis. The meeting took place on a Sunday evening. I had to clear out all my belongings on Monday morning. I was devastated.

Wednesday was Valentine’s Day. My boyfriend dumped me that day. So in one week, I had lost my whole future: a rewarding career in church and a future husband.

That night, February 14, 1996, I threw myself face-down on the floor and cried out to Jesus. I had lost everything but Him. I told Him I was His and would do whatever He desired. I gave myself to Him completely. In the night I had a vivid dream. In it, Mary Rentmeester, owner of a local variety store, offered me a job in her offices. I’m sure that dream would mean nothing to most people, but it was the first of my “Marian” dreams — dreams in which someone in my life named Mary appears to offer me help or guidance or reassurance. This first Mary was offering me a job in her “offices,” which I believed meant the church. To my mind it was also significant that “Rentmeester” is the Dutch word for “land agent” or “steward.” (Coincidentally, the Presbyterian church hired me back a week later, when some elders who knew the truth of the situation but who had been out of town during the meeting, came back and exonerated me.) At this point, I decided to pursue a course leading to ordination. I researched Presbyterian seminaries and chose Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Another move for my poor daughter.

Seminary was wonderful, even though I was reeling from my recent rejections. Being academically minded, I thrived on theology and Bible study. My professors encouraged me to continue for my Ph.D. with the aim of coming back to teach in seminary. I thought, however, a person shouldn’t teach in a seminary without having practical experience as a pastor first.

After graduation, I had trouble finding a “call” to a congregation. I was a conservative woman, so I didn’t fit into either liberal or conservative churches. I ended up serving in two churches within two years. It was a disaster. I just was not strong enough to stand up for my ideals on issues which were tearing the denomination apart at the time. Near the end of my time at the second church, I kept getting the spiritual message: “Leave now!” I didn’t understand it, but the thought came into my mind that I was to leave before the next eucharist was to be celebrated. At the time, I didn’t know why that was, but now I wonder if it was because as a woman, I should not be celebrating the eucharist.

After crashing and burning as a pastor, I joined a wonderful, large Episcopal church and stayed there for eight years. I was not in any leadership position; that was an essential aspect of my healing. I learned during this time that I am bipolar, or manic depressive. I could write a whole paper about how that condition is a disease mixed with a blessing. Among other things, I believe that the condition has led to my composing many songs to, for, and about God. On the other hand, I am firmly convinced that manic depressives should not be pastors.

I eventually felt confident enough to leave the Episcopal church and take a choir conducting job. There was also a period of visiting many different denominations: conservative Baptist, liberal Mennonite, Black Pentecostal, and a Hebrew Roots house church.

But God was not finished with me and kept sending me Mary dreams! In one, the Episcopal church I was attending made a decision to sell their Mary chapel. If Mary is so important in my life, I thought, why was I being involved with churches that do not pay attention to her? The only place I could think of finding her again was either the Catholic or Eastern Orthodox churches. But I had had some bad experiences with a Catholic parish regarding my mother’s final illness. Her pastor would not give her last rites and did not conduct her funeral. (One good thing, though: while Mother was dying, I told her all about Jesus, and you should have seen the gleam in her eyes! Thank you again, long-ago neighbors Helen and Mary for your prayers.)

If Mary is so important in my life, I thought, why was I being involved with churches that do not pay attention to her? The only place I could think of finding her again was either the Catholic or Eastern Orthodox churches.
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In about 2017, I wandered into the library in my Jewish neighborhood looking for books on religion. It certainly was not the first place I would look for Catholic literature, but what did I find on the shelf but a book about Mary entitled Hail, Holy Queen! Reading it cracked open a door to a wonderful world.

After moving to Saxonburg, PA to take up a position at the Lutheran church (2018), I continued reading and then began watching EWTN’s Journey Home program.

In 2020, I made an appointment to meet with Father Ward Stakem at the nearest Catholic church, St. Joseph in Cabot, PA. He listened carefully to my story and turned me over to the Adult Formation Coordinator, Angie. Angie has a doctorate in theology from Duquesne University. She was the ideal person to do RCIA with me, as I kept shooting her all sorts of questions. At one point, she said she felt like she was back in oral defense of her dissertation! I was won over to the Catholic Church completely.

In this process, though, I did struggle with some teachings of the Catholic Faith. One of the issues I had a difficult time with was papal authority. By nature, I am fiercely independent and don’t like to have to answer to authority figures. But as a pastor, I struggled with issues of authority. I had asked a seminary professor once, “How do you get authority”? His answer, I believe, was something like, “experience.” Which was good as far as it went. But later, I discovered a small book by Watchman Nee titled Spiritual Authority. It was a revelation to me. Like the centurion in Matthew 8:9, Nee emphasized that we must be under authority in order to effectively exercise authority.

As a pastor in the PCUSA, whom was I under? Jesus Christ, of course. But what earthly authority? It took me years to realize (and not until RCIA) that Jesus gave Peter and Peter only the keys of the Kingdom, and that is where the line of earthly authority begins.

The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist was another teaching I had to come to accept. I had never actually paid much attention to the meaning of the Eucharist. In seminary, we were taught that Jesus is spiritually present in the elements, but not physically. As I went through RCIA, Angie introduced me to a helpful instructional video on the Eucharist. It made so much sense to me. Then, I attended my first Mass in years and found myself bursting into tears as the people went up to receive Jesus in the Eucharist. My belief that Jesus is truly bodily present in the Eucharist was cemented when I read Peter Kreeft’s Symbol or Substance, where he explores what C.S. Lewis, Billy Graham, and J.R.R. Tolkien would have discussed about the Eucharist. My favorite was Tolkien — the Catholic!

Then, I attended my first Mass in years and found myself bursting into tears as the people went up to receive Jesus in the Eucharist. My belief that Jesus is truly bodily present in the Eucharist was cemented when I read Peter Kreeft’s…
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As I mentioned above, Mary has been present in my dream life. Reading Hail, Holy Queen made me fall in love with Mary. After reading the book, I wrote a song about Mary as the woman in Revelation 12. It is a good song, but the ending is ambivalent because at the time I had no conception of Mary’s Assumption. One of the arguments for the Assumption is that no relics of Mary’s body have been found. To me, that is a convincing argument, since there are relics of most saints and surely hers would have been the most popular if her body was still on earth.

One of the arguments for the Assumption is that no relics of Mary’s body have been found. To me, that is a convincing argument, since there are relics of most saints and surely hers would have been the most popular if her body was still…
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I have been pro-life since my pregnancy in 1982, and I realized that the Catholic Church is the only Church that has been consistently pro-life through all the abortion debate. I have also come to believe in the Church’s stance on contraception. The Bible is clear that sex is meant not only for pleasure but also to bring about children. I once heard a doctor defending birth control pills as a remedy for bad menstrual cramps. As she spoke about how women now have control over their bodies instead of being baby factories, the thought dropped into my mind: “this is witchcraft.”

Divorce and remarriage is another area where I believe the Catholic Church has the most consistent views. During seminary, I researched sexuality, divorce, and remarriage extensively. I was convinced that Scripture is clear: God hates divorce and remarriage is adultery. The Church takes these truths seriously while maintaining a compassionate and merciful attitude.

After exploring all these areas and more, I made my confession in the summer of 2020. It was such a freeing experience! I felt the burdens just roll off my back. What joy! I then was welcomed back into the Catholic Church and received my first communion in 50 years! Praise God!

But how do I view my role in the Church given my background as a Presbyterian pastor? First of all, I have an admission to make: subconsciously, I never wanted to be a pastor; I wanted to be a pastor’s wife! I wanted to serve as musician and Sunday school teacher, as I did when I worked in Wisconsin. Though I did not go to seminary to search for a husband, as I truly love scholarship and devoted myself to studies, it was at the back of my mind all the time. I don’t claim that all women have this desire, but it was mine. I have no desire to be a pastor again.

I am currently music director at the Lutheran church and piano teacher at a music studio in an area north of Pittsburgh. The Lutheran pastor and I agreed that it would be permissible for me to continue in music, but I should not teach, as I have accepted new doctrine. However, I long to be free to celebrate at St. Joseph’s on Sundays and holy days. I attend the 5:30 pm Saturday Mass, but I prefer the larger congregation on Sunday mornings. I would love to sing in the choir and hopefully to cantor. I trust that God will eventually make a way for me to participate more fully in His Church — probably in some way I have never guessed. My daughter is grown and has lost interest in the Church, which is a great grief to me. But I remember my relationship with my own mother, and I have hope that the Holy Spirit will eventually bring my daughter back home.

Meanwhile, God has given me the gift of songwriting. I am living out my dream of sharing with the Lutheran congregation the songs that God has sent me. I believe they are being used by God to lift and lighten people’s hearts. I am also working on a CD that I hope to have finished soon. So God is using me, which is all I can ask.

The post Finding Faith appeared first on The Coming Home Network.

She shares how the birth of her first child, and the questions that raised about love, morality, and our dependence upon one another got her to start rethinking what she believed about matters of faith.

Watch Christine’s episode of The Journey Home here, and read her written conversion story here.

The post From “Spiritual but not Religious” to Catholic – Christine Flynn appeared first on The Coming Home Network.