Road to Emmaus – Part I
My wife has asked me to write a “guest post” several months ago. I dragged my feet for two reasons. First, I have struggled, and on some level still struggle, with whether joining the Catholic Church is the correct decision. Second, the thought of trying to summarize the last decade generally, and the last two years in particular, is daunting. I don’t know where to begin.
Unfortunately, the ostrich can’t keep its head in the ground forever. I need to accept reality. I plan to walk with my family as evangelical Protestants into the Catholic Church for the last time on April 20, 2014. Lord willing, we will walk out as evangelical Catholics. Nothing will change, yet everything will change.
Nothing will change because Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. (Hebrews 13:8.) We want nothing more than to follow him. At the same time, everything will change. If the Church’s audacious claim is correct – that She is the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church” [http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/] established by our Lord – then full communion with the Church is life-altering.
Someday I will look back on this post when the kids ask why we are Catholic even though many of our close friends and family are faithful Protestants. Hopefully this will help me remember why. Or someday we will pull this out of the “remember when we almost became Catholic?!” file, just for a good laugh. Either way, it’s worth writing these things down.
When I think of my path to the Catholic Church, I think of Luke 24. The Road to Emmaus. Like those early disciples, Jesus walked beside me. I could not see him fully in the Catholic Church, but my heart burned when I encountered Him through the Scriptures. Over the last decade, he opened my eyes to see Him fully in the Eucharist.
The Road to Emmaus
On the first Easter Sunday, two disciples traveled from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Jesus appeared alongside them, but “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” (Luke 24:16.) Jesus asked what they were talking about, and the disciples explained that Jesus had been crucified. They had hoped he would redeem Israel, but now he was gone. Jesus proceeded to chastise them (“O foolish men”) and outline the prophecies concerning himself from Moses and the prophets. (v. 27.) When they arrived at the village, the disciples asked Jesus to stay with them. He agreed.
When [Jesus] was at the table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight. They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (vv 30-32.)
Immediately they returned to Jerusalem to tell the Eleven: “[T]hey told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.” (v 35.)
Jesus’ interaction with his disciples on the Emmaus Road has at least four distinct components. First, he appeared beside the disciples and walked with them. Second, “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” They knew Jesus, but could not see him fully. Third, their hearts “burned” when Jesus opened the Scriptures. They could not see Jesus with their eyes, but they encountered the eternal Word of God (Jn. 1:12) in the written Word of God. Fourth, their eyes were opened in “the breaking of the bread.”
Jesus walked me through a similar path to the Catholic Church.
Jesus walked beside me
My experience during the first two decades of life was similar to that of many other evangelical Protestants. I knew I was a sinner. I knew I needed a Savior. I knew I couldn’t do anything to earn God’s favor. My thoughts, my words, my actions all bore witness to this fact.
I embraced the gift he offered to me and to the whole world on the cross. I tried to love because he first loved me. Even though I fell short again and again and again, I asked Him to pick me up again and again and again (Ps. 40:2.) I also believed in His promise that He who began a good work in me would carry it on to completion. (Phil. 1:6.)
I had no delusions of self-sufficiency or that I could somehow please God by working harder. I needed Christ. And like the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, I encountered him in a real way.
I could not see Jesus in the Catholic Church
As the disciples “were kept from recognizing” Jesus on the Road to Emmaus, I could not see Christ in the Catholic Church for decades. Rome’s claims were not even plausible in my view. They interpreted Scripture incorrectly: among other things, Jesus built his Church on Peter’s confession (“petra”), not on Peter himself (“Petros”). They added man-made traditions to Scripture: faith-plus-works justification, purgatory, etc. With few exceptions, it appeared that the lives of Catholics magnified these errors. For a group of people that wanted to work their way to Heaven, it never looked like they were trying very hard!
I believed that Catholics could be Christians in spite of their Catholicism, not because of it.
Brennan Manning once said that “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” This may be overstated, but it’s worthy of reflection. In the same vein, one could say that the greatest single cause of division in Christ’s Church is Catholics, who attend Mass on Sundays and walk out the door an hour later and deny Jesus by their lifestyle (or Catholics who don’t even bother attending Mass at all). That is what Christ-believing, evangelical Protestants simply find unbelievable.
That’s what many of my friends and family find unbelievable. That’s what I found unbelievable for years.
Many Catholics don’t understand this point. They ask why Protestants want to build their own churches. They ask why Protestants won’t “come home to the Catholic Church.” Many evangelical Protestants are ex-Catholics or have encountered numerous individuals who are Catholic in name only. In case after case, we can encounter people who never encountered Jesus in a deep, personal way until they left the Catholic Church.
These are not anecdotal stories. These are facts confirmed by Catholics. 42% of Americans raised Catholic are still practicing Catholics today. 63% of Americans raised Catholic are now Protestants. For Catholics, Mass attendance drops generation by generation, from 45% of those 65 and older to 10% of Millenials (ages 18-25). Sherry Weddell’s book, Forming Intentional Disciples [http://www.amazon.com/Forming-Intentional-Disciples-Knowing-Following/dp/1612785905/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386432901&sr=8-1&keywords=forming+intentional+disciples], analyzes these statistics and many others to conclude: “In the early twenty-first century, among Americans raised Catholic, becoming Protestant is the best guarantee of church attendance as an adult.”
I always knew I needed Jesus. I simply could not understand why I would need the Catholic Church
