This summer I have been carrying out phone-answering duties as the part-time secretary in a miniscule parish in northern Kansas City. Normally this only means fielding requests for monetary assistance, but aside from fulfilling that basic need this telephone has afforded me two very beautiful opportunities.
The first call came a couple of weeks ago.
The young woman on the other end of the line informed me that she was a young Catholic engaged to be married to a non-Catholic. Her fiance had expressed a desire to convert to the faith, and she was searching for an R.C.I.A. program which would do more than "meet to talk about their feelings once a week for four months". She said that she saw a unity in faith as very important to happiness in their relationship and their marriage, so she wanted to find a program which would give her fiance knowledge of the faith in a very real way.
Upon continuing the discussion, we discovered we were the same age, and later we also found that we were classmates way back in Catholic gradeschool. Heaven only knows that her experiences in that school did not render her so conscientious about her faith as she had shown herself to be, and I seriously doubt that her highschool education had anything to do with that, either. Nevertheless, keeping this little observation to myself I silently rejoiced that the grace necessary for such a deep appreciation for her Faith had come to her. I wholeheartedly supported her, gave her a list of good Catholic online resources, and told her the number of the parish catechist.
I don't know if the parish I work for has a good program or not. I doubt it, somehow. Nevertheless, I told her to please keep in touch with me if she had any more questions, and to contact the Catholic Faith and Reason Association of Kansas City if she needed questions answered or any need addressed.
I hope I was the right person at the right time. All in the grace of God.
The second phone call came this afternoon.
The woman introduced herself by her first name only. She said she was raised a Catholic, but had converted to Lutheranism a long, long time ago. She told me she had become uncomfortable with some of the things the Lutheran church had been doing lately, and was wondering if she needed permission to come to a mass here at this parish?
I told her absolutely not and she was welcome to return anytime she pleased. She expressed some concern over not being able to follow the service anymore. I asked her when she had left the Church, and she said it was the early to mid sixties. I told her that a lot had changed since then, and that the mass was no longer in Latin like that. I advised her to look up a missal for the Novus Ordo online so that she could follow along more easily, but also assured her that overall it would be much easier for her to understand than it was before.
'Yes, I seem to remember that non-Catholics weren't really encouraged to come to mass when I was young, and even if they did everything was so complicated, and in another language.'
I answered that this was part of the reason for the change that occurred, and that the new mass was much easier for protestant America to understand, since throughout it's structure it is made undeniably evident how much of the mass is Scriptural. She said this was wonderful.
She said that, when she was young, you were always supposed to go to confession before receiving communion. She asked if this were still the case (I was very glad she mentioned this - I was just about to bring it up). I told her that yes, it was, and that one of the reasons for that was so that everyone was well-prepared and fully aware of how beautiful and important it was to receive Christ in Holy Communion. She agreed that this was a very good thing to do, and asked at what times confessions were heard. I informed her of the standard time Father had set aside, and told her she could also call to make an appointment at any time.
As a parting remark, I made sure to tell her that she could call anytime she liked with questions, and pointed her to an online resource where her questions could also be addressed. She said she would love to find somewhere to associate with the Italian Catholics she knew in her youth, and that she would definitely pay a visit here soon.
Thank God for Little Graces.
Pax Christi,
Em
3 comments:
I'm glad you got the job at the parish, and that it seems to be working out well for you. And apparently for other people too.
I ought to point out that your comment that the new mass is easier for Protestants to understand reinforces my opinion of the very, very close connection between the two.
OBTW, I've finally gotten around to reading Matthew's thesis. I haven't gotten beyond the first few pages yet. I applaud his clear and concise writing style. I don't think it's difficult to read at all...it's just not a storybook.
Campus is crawling with highschoolers. My boss is gone for two weeks, so I have to do his job. Several projects are going on at once, so please pray that I continue to be careful with knives.
God bless!
Evan, we've been through this.
Have you ever heard Scott Hahn's conversion story? As an anti-Catholic protestant wandering into a Catholic mass by accident, he was not struck by the similarity of the mass to protestant services (quite the contrary, I believe), but rather by the sheer volume of scripture that met him throughout the eucharistic prayer (more scripture than he had seen in any protestant branch, I might add). He was struck by the intense scriptural nature of the mass, and was truly met head-on by the Catholic intimacy with the Word of God which he never thought existed.
THAT'S what I was referring to when I was speaking to the woman on the phone. Latin masses, although undeniably beautiful, look like utter hocus-pocus to the protestant community (the people of whom are not without great Christian merit and potential - this in itself is a concept that many people from your schism do not accept.) If the Novus Ordo has a major point going for it, that's it. Evidence for this fact: my mother, in the positive, and Obsession #2's father, in the negative.
If you expected me to pass over that without a word you really don't know me very well, tall man.
No, Matt's thesis is not a storybook. Glad to hear you've gotten to reading it. The Boyer said something to me that appalled me just before we left school - some vicious rumor had reached his ears about that thesis. He said he'd heard that Matt was going to write his thesis against Bishop Lefebre and that Mr. O'Reilley told him to write it against Martin Luther because (slyly implied) the good Archbishop didn't actually HAVE such problems. To set the record straight: Mr. O'Reilley had Matthew write his thesis against someone with a better argument for the opposition. This is not meant to imply that the Archbishop was not afflicted with the same error. If anything, it implies that Martin Luther was a better intellectual than he.
I'll pray for you, and the knives. ;)
Pax,
Em
Cool. Thanks for the record-setting-straight. I'd heard the vicious rumor too. Didn't believe it.
I had to do something absolutely miserable today. I had to sign a piece of paper authorizing Reba's euthanization in my presence. She was sick, suffering massive internal bleeding and was not going to recover. Amy and I were stayed with her till the end.
Then I had to do something even more miserable: I had to leave a message on Dave Gaston's phone telling him I had to kill his dog because it was sick.
Oh, I am not going to have a happy time next week when he gets back, even though he knew it was coming, knew Reba was sick, and told me "no extraordinary means"....
...so yeah, I feel like my dog just died....
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