My Faith Journey*

September 27, 2023

If you've perused some of my other web pages before landing on this one, you may have noticed that I have (finally) willingly accepted the gift of faith from God, a gift He offers to everyone, faith in the one, true, triune God - three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Blessed and Most Holy Trinity.  This gift is freely offered, never forced.  God is love and love cannot be forced on anyone.  I am also a cradle Catholic, baptized into the Roman Catholic Church as an infant but this fact, in and of itself, is not what makes me a man of deep faith, nor does it compel me to believe what I have come to know is truth.

Before I recount the story of my journey, I want to say that I am openly proud to be a Catholic and nothing can, or ever will, change that.  You may have heard it said that the Catholic Church is 'the last, great, acceptable prejudice' and it's true, She is constantly under attack.  Unfortunately, a lot of folks engage in this type of behavior because of some questionable things that have occurred within the Church itself and I understand that.  I personally have been ostracized many times for standing up against those who would hurl evil and crass epithets at Her.  However, none of these things change the Word that God Himself, through Jesus Christ, gave us when He was with the Apostles.  

“The church is composed of a human element yes, but a Divine element as well.  The Divine element is impervious to the human element so no matter how corrupt the human element gets, it never touches the Divine foundation of the church.” ~George Neumayr (2020)

Like most children, my mind was impressionable but I remember that even at a young age, the whole idea of God, of Jesus and 'going to church' being more of a burden than something I looked forward to.  To establish some background to this story, our dad, as a young man who would later marry our mother and participate in the conception and subsequent raising of eight children graduated from high school, he entered seminary at the Jesuit Spirituality Center in Grand Coteau, Louisiana, majoring in education.  After almost twelve years of studies, and only a few weeks from being ordained a priest, he made the monumental decision to walk away.  His upbringing and education had shaped a man with strong moral convictions and a resolute faith in God.  Both he and our mom were devout Catholics and they did their best to raise us in the Christian faith of the Roman Catholic church.  

During my rebellious teenage years or maybe even earlier, I basically began tuning out anything to do with religion.  I didn't pay attention to God at all during the week, except for saying grace at mealtime with my family, and on Sundays during Mass, my thoughts were on anything except what was going on around me in the church.  Even though I spent some time as an altar server, I'm not sure if I ever truly participated in the Mass as a young boy or as an adolescent.  At some point, I essentially stopped thinking about religion altogether, and as time went by, I wandered further and further away from the 'church', my faith and from God.

I met Judy, also a cradle Catholic, through mutual friends while we were both attending our local high school.  We dated, got married, started our family and at some point, I think when our oldest son was about seven or eight years old, we were discussing 'church' one day and decided that as responsible parents we should at least give our children a foundation upon which they could build their own belief system.  We joined a nearby Catholic parish and started going to Mass every Sunday.  I speak only for myself here when I say, that although I was going to Mass again, I still wasn't really participating in the liturgy in any meaningful way.

Our three sons were all going to public school because we couldn't afford to send them to a private Catholic school.  So once a week, they went to what was once called CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) before the name was eventually changed to PREP (Parish Religious Education Program).  We were blessed with another child (our daughter) a couple of years later.  They were all baptized as infants, received their First Holy Communion and First Reconciliation and the sacrament of Confirmation.  However, just before our daughter was to be confirmed, around 1989—1990, guess what?  We stopped going to Mass again and basically gave up on the whole idea.  Because our faith hadn't been that strong to begin with, our kids just weren't into it and to be honest, neither were we. 

God never gave up on us though. 

Sometime towards the end of 1999, Judy and I were chatting one evening and what we would later describe as a miracle took place right in our living room as we sat there talking.  At practically the exact same moment, we both looked at each other and Judy said exactly what I was thinking, "I feel that God wants us to start going to Mass again", or words to that effect.  I said, "Yes, I was just thinking the same thing", but I could also feel it in my heart!  So, we continued to discuss it some more over the next few days and weeks and after a bit of soul searching, we made a commitment to each other and to God that we would start going to Mass again as a couple.  Because 1999 was almost over, we decided to start going at the beginning of January 2000, and so in a way, it became our new year's resolution.

It's difficult to describe in words the experience of returning to Mass with an open mind and a hungry soul.  It was overwhelming!  The Mass itself literally came alive as the Holy Spirit poured out His blessings on both of us!  We found ourselves singing the hymns, listening intently to the Word of God and every word of every prayer that the priest said, and actually joining in with the congregation when appropriate.  What a difference it made as we truly felt God's love welling up within us.  There were many times over the next few years when I found myself overcome with emotion during Mass, but it was with tears of joy, not sadness.  It continues to happen to me even today.  It's just such a beautiful and important part of our lives now that rare has been the time when we have missed a Sunday Mass in the last twenty plus years.

It's like we finally arrived home.  Home within the embrace of our mother church, the church that was started by God Himself, when the second person of the Holy Trinity, our Lord Jesus Christ said, "And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18, NAB¹)

Soon after this homecoming, actually later that same year, we were attending Mass at our parish in North Vancouver, Holy Trinity, and at the end of Mass a couple from our parish gave a talk that seemed at the time as if it was being directed to us and no one else in the congregation.  We kind of looked at each other and Judy whispered, "We should check this out!".  The talk was an introduction to the Alpha Course and I have to say that after we enrolled and participated in it, it changed our lives in a very profound way.  Even though the course was not Catholic, it was Christian and theologically correct.

"I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.

I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,

(bow) and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.

I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come.

Amen."

There's one line in the last part of the Creed that sums it up for me; "I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church."  To explain how important this is, I am using the writings of Fr. Harrison Ayre², a priest of the Diocese of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

"The Creed, having spent the majority of its time reflecting on the substance of our life — the Trinity — turns to focus on God’s relationship with the world. This is done by specifically looking to the Church as the place where Christ continues his ministry on the earth. The Creed gives us what we call the four characteristics, or “marks,” of the Church: one, holy, catholic and apostolic.

The Church is one. Christ comes to establish one Church, one body through which to continue His ministry on earth. Jesus does not establish different churches, but one Church, with apostolic succession and sacraments as the guarantee of the Church’s unity. This is the fulfillment of Jesus’ explicit prayer and desire in His high priestly prayer from John's gospel: “So that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you.” (John 17:21).

The Church is holy. This does not mean all her members are sinless saints!  Rather, to be holy is to be “set apart.” Her mission is to be “salt and light,” a communion of Christian love that points to the reality of Jesus as the savior of the world. Her members, then, are called to be saints to help this mission become a reality. 

The Church is catholic. The word catholic means 'universal'. This is closely tied to her unity and oneness: the Church exists for the whole of humanity. This universality, furthermore, allows for her to have a multitude of liturgical expressions and traditions united around the one faith. To be catholic means to be for the whole of humanity.

The Church is apostolic. The Church’s existence is rooted in the apostles, upon whom Jesus established his Church. These apostles ensure what Christ hands on to them is handed on continuously through apostolic succession in the ministry of the bishops. The unity of these bishops is further guaranteed by their union with Rome, where the Pope is the principle of unity for the whole Church." —Fr. Harrison Ayre

The church of Jesus Christ is His Mystical Body.  Therefore, the church is holy, even if the human beings who comprise it have not always been or are not now holy.  Human beings are fallible and therefore fallen, sinful and not always righteous.  In 2020, George Neumayr (b.1972—d.2023), described it thus when he said, “The church is composed of a human element yes, but a Divine element as well.  The Divine element is impervious to the human element so no matter how corrupt the human element gets, it never touches the Divine foundation of the church.”  These words only serve to strengthen my faith in God through the Roman Catholic Church that Jesus Christ established while He was here on Earth over 2000 years ago.

Another layer of holiness we can say the church has, perhaps the most important layer, is that the church is guided by the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Holy Trinity.  Let's be honest here, although a portion of the other 40,000+ Christian denominations around the world will claim otherwise, the Holy Spirit cannot possibly be guiding all of them since most of them disagree with each other and they especially disagree with the Roman Catholic Church!  I'm not sure how anyone can truly believe otherwise. 

The Holy Spirit will not lead God's church into error.  If you pray to the Holy Spirit and if you honestly seek the church that the Holy Spirit is guiding, seek it honestly within your heart, where will He lead you?  Will He lead you to the church that was started by Jesus Christ, or will it be a church that was started by a human being?  Everyone should think about that.

Jesus placed enormous responsibility on the shoulders of His church when He ascended to heaven, but He did not hand out copies of the bible to His followers.  While the Old Testament books had been written, the New Testament books were many years away and the bible in its present form didn't even exist.  So, what did Jesus leave behind?  He left His church.  A church that was made up of the apostles but also importantly, a church that contained Sacred Tradition which has been handed down through the centuries.  Sacred Tradition, together with Holy Scripture, the Magisterium³, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church includes those beliefs and practices that are most important to the church because they have been revealed by God and because they have been affirmed by the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church.

Sacred Tradition is the oral teaching of Jesus Christ handed down to his apostles, who in turn handed it down to their disciples (the early Church Fathers), then through all subsequent generations, and finally to us.  How do we know this?  Well, for almost 400 years there was no written New Testament to fall back on.  All of the apostles and disciples taught orally for the first 400 years.  Yes, you might say, but didn't Paul, Peter, John, Luke, etc., write everything down in their epistles and gospels?  Yes, they did, but none of it was widely available to geographically dispersed disciples and it wasn't part of 'The Bible' until the Councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage put the 27 books of the New Testament together in 382 AD, 393 AD, and 397 AD.  At that time, it took on the mantle of infallible scripture together with the Old Testament. 

One of the things that attracts me the most to the Roman Catholic Church is her unwillingness to change with the times.  No created being has the right to change the word of the creator and it breaks my heart when I think of the dissent amongst Christians the world over. 

Jesus' own prayer to His Father in John's gospel reminds us all of what God Himself wanted for His children and that was one church, “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me.  And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me."  (John 17:20-23)

Since the sixteenth century, this verse has been called the 'high priestly prayer' of Jesus. He speaks as intercessor, with words addressed directly to the Father and not to the disciples, who supposedly only overhear. Yet the prayer is one of petition, for immediate and future disciples.

No other form of prayer can equal the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  'At the Last Supper, on the night He was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice of His Body and Blood.  He did this in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the centuries until He should come again, and so to entrust to His beloved spouse, the Church, a memorial of His death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a paschal banquet in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us' (Sacrosanctum Concilium⁴, 47).  Christ only died once, but in the Mass, His Sacrifice is presented again in an unbloody manner.

On the night he was betrayed, He took bread and giving You thanks and praise, He broke the bread, gave it to his disciples and said,

"Take this, all of you, and eat of it,

for this is my Body,

which will be given up for you."

When supper was ended, He took the cup. Again, He gave You thanks and praise, gave the cup to his disciples, and said,

"Take this, all of you, and drink from it,

for this is the chalice of my Blood,

the Blood of the new and eternal covenant,

which will be poured out for you and for many,

for the forgiveness of sins.

Do this in memory of me."

Note that when Jesus referred to His Body and Blood, He said, "is", and not 'represents' or 'depicts'.  It is so important for us to understand that Jesus, being God, is telling us that during the Mass, the substance of the bread and wine have been miraculously changed into His Body and Blood while still maintaining the physical appearance of bread and wine.  This is called 'transubstantiation' and it is a tenet of our faith that, as Catholics, we believe that the Holy Eucharist is the Body & Blood of Christ.  Why? Because Jesus told us so and as God, He is incapable of leading us into error.

His words, "Do this in memory of Me", weren't meant to be a suggestion.  Coming from our Lord, our God, and our King they can only be construed for what they are, a command.  The Catholic Mass is the result of the Church obeying that command.

If there's any advice I can give to those who are reading this, it's this: Once you admit you're ignorant in matters of faith, you will start acquiring true knowledge.  If you are honestly seeking the truth within your own heart, The Holy Spirit will guide you to the truth held within the Catholic faith.  

In other words, once you admit that you know little to absolutely nothing about what the Catholic Church teaches, instead of just repeating those same misconceptions over and over again, your attitude towards Catholics and Catholicism will begin to change.  This is why many Protestants end up converting to Catholicism.  Once they let go of their pride and their ego, and begin to acknowledge their ignorance, they will be open to the truth.  

As St. Cardinal Henry Newman once said, "To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant."

This year (2023) at the Easter Vigil in France, 5,463 adults were baptized into the Catholic Church and 164 of those were from a Muslim background.  In the diocese of Ft. Worth, Texas, alone, 749 people were welcomed into the Church and thousands more around the world did the same in an unprecedented influx of people who have discovered the 'Genius of Catholicism' —Matthew Kelly.  

¹The New American Bible (from the USCCB)

²Father Harrison Ayre was born in Pitt Meadows, BC, the son of two loving parents and has two younger siblings.  He moved to Victoria to attend UVic after high school and began his long journey of post-secondary education in studying computer science.  While at University, he had a profound conversion and began to practice his Catholic faith.  He eventually graduated from UVic with a degree in Philosophy with a minor in Medieval Studies.  He also completed his Master of Theology (MTh) from Newman Theological College in 2018 and is now a PhD Candidate in Systematic Theology at the Maryvale Institute in Birmingham, UK. His research is around Joseph Ratzinger’s theology of the human person and how we can understand that through a sacramental lens.  After graduation, he worked at St Andrew’s Cathedral, first as the office assistant, then as office manager.  During this time, he began to take seriously the call to priesthood.  After attending a seminar in Poland on John Paul II’s theology and philosophy of the human person, he decided he had to go to seminary, and entered St Joseph’s seminary in 2008.  While in seminary, he went on a mission year and spent a year working with Mother Theresa’s Missionaries of Charity in Gallup, NM, and San Francisco.  He was ordained a Deacon in 2013 and a priest on February 7th, 2015. He has served at St Patrick’s Parish, St Andrew’s Cathedral, Holy Family/Notre Dame, and now as pastor of St Peter’s in Nanaimo, BC.

³In simple terms, the magisterium is the official teaching office — in the sense of role or authority, not a bureaucratic center — of the Church, which consists of the pope and the bishops in union with him.  They are given the task of interpreting scripture and making judgments on “tradition” within the Church, making official statements as to the authenticity of such traditions.  Here is how the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines the magisterium.  “The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone.  Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.”  This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome. (CCC 85)

⁴Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, is one of the constitutions of the Second Vatican Council.  It was approved by the assembled bishops by a vote of 2,147 to 4 and promulgated by Pope Paul VI on 4 December 1963.  The main aim was to revise the traditional liturgical texts and rituals to reflect more fully fundamental principles and be more pastorally effective in the changed conditions of the times, clarifying not only the role of ordained ministers but the modalities of appropriate participation of lay faithful in the Catholic Church's liturgy, especially that of the Roman Rite.  The title is taken from the opening lines of the document and means 'this Sacred Council'.

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