May 10, 2016. This is a day that I have been looking forward to for the past month. It is the one month anniversary of when I was received, communed and confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church. April 10 was a great day for me, but it was filled with great pomp and circumstance, immense happiness and overwhelming love. Because of this, when I look back on the day it all started, it is hard to remember everything that I was feeling, to remember all the little details on one of the most important days in my life. That is why I am eager for May 10.
Being a month removed from the day allows me to look back, not just on what I was thinking and what was happening on that day, but also to see the consequences, good and bad, of becoming Catholic. I have gone to Mass and been able to receive communion, found a parish at college and finished mystagogy (a period of reflection and debriefing after the RCIA Mass). I am just now beginning to see all that God has in store for me as a Catholic.
People always describe college as a place with a new and grand amount of responsibility. It very much is. For the first time in many students’ lives, they have the ability to decide when they eat, when they sleep, when they study, what classes they take, what they want to study, what you do with their free time and how they practice their religion. On this final one, I wish to elaborate.
If people (much like myself) who grew up in a religious household and practiced their faith on a weekly basis, who let their faith be part of their identity, college is a sink or swim time for their faith. They no longer have a safety net in place to ensure that they practice. Their parents are not at college taking them to church — true, they can call and remind them to go, but they cannot drag them to church — so if a student wishes to keep the faith, the duty falls on them and them alone. Like I said, college is a place of grand responsibility.
When I arrived at King’s I spent the first semester "church shopping” in Wilkes-Barre, it never occurred to me that I would not go to church. I visited the Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists (of whom I was a practicing member). Around Halloween I started going to the Presbyterian church on a regular basis, considering it my college church. It was a five-minute walk from campus, had great music, a warm and opening congregation and made me feel at home on Sunday mornings. Around the same time, though, I began going to the King’s campus ministry’s RCIA class. I figured that if I am going to a Catholic school, and picking up theology as a second major, then I might as well learn about the Catholic church. I also started singing at the 8 p.m. Sunday Masses since our choir director said that I could use a little extra practice. This continued until Palm Sunday.
I had not gone to the Presbyterian church for about a month at that time because I was in a production of "Macbeth" at school. Between homework and Sunday rehearsals I was lucky if I got to the 8 p.m. Mass. On Palm Sunday, "Macbeth" was over and I went church, and a strong feeling of emptiness in worship came over me—a realization that what I was doing was not filling me up. I was not meeting God there. At the same time, I realized that every Mass I had gone to this year I felt as if I met God face-to-face every time. I felt filled every Mass. I knew then and there that I had to join the Catholic Church. Fortunately, since I had been going to RCIA all this time (even without the intention of converting) I was still allowed to go through with everyone.
I have learned many things in the month since, on which I could elaborate for many hours and fill many pages. I will not do that here, though, I will simply say that the feeling of meeting God in the Mass has not gone away. I still see the same God I first saw in my childhood, but I am getting closer and closer to understanding why I first saw Him. I will probably never get to the answer, but I will never cease to look for it.
I have been Catholic for one month, and I know that this is where I need to be.
