A little announcement
Okay, I hadn't mentioned it, but I am about three months and some change pregnant again. This makes baby number four, and I am equipped to handle exactly none of any of these children. The pregnancy is not the failure of NFP but rather is result of the failure of my husband to respect my pleading to please abstain.
I am comforted, though, by the knowledge that I share this condition of life-- to be eternally pregnant with children I can't care for--with the vast, overwhelming majority of the world's women. And it is for just that reason that I am pro-life, and will not be having an abortion. People often mistakenly think that being pro-life means thinking women should be about the eternal business of being baby factories, but that isn't it at all (at least it shouldn't be). This unwanted pregnancy only strengthens my opposition to abortion, for this reason:
The fact is that women are not being respected when it is so very often our permanent lot to have babies we aren't prepared for--and all abortion does is put a band-aid over that fact. I should know. If I have an abortion, then I am saying to my husband, "You can continue to be irresponsible and disrespect me, and I will carry all the burden of suffering without requesting that you have any of the responsibility." I'm just not going to do that.
Labels: pro-life, struggles
I am nearly there
The best way to start off one's career as a Catholic is to be still boiling with resentment from a fight. Against that I am struggling and on guard and hoping to have cooled off by tonight. People both Catholic and Protestant upon finding out I am converting to Catholicism have asked me why on earth I would want to do that, when Catholicism has so many "rules." My response is that Catholicism does not invent new rules, but makes one aware of the natural laws already in place for the better existence of mankind. What I mean is, if I were not about to become Catholic, I would more than likely be nurturing my anger and resentment, would go on to church tomorrow and as per my former religious tradition, take the Lord's Supper as always, even with anger in my heart. I would perceive no danger in doing so. But as a Catholic I recognize the danger of nurturing that anger and taking the Sacrament with such an anger in my heart, and thus make the effort to put it down. It's not that as a non-Catholic it would be all right to do so; it's that as a non-Catholic the spiritual danger of doing so is not stressed, not emphasized, and thus not guarded against.
Anyway, I had a Perfectly Exciting Book Idea yesterday while wasting time watching a History Channel program on the Holy Grail. I am disappointed to contemplate all the research that would go into the idea, however. And as alwasy I feel as if I'm not operating as creatively as I should be, since it is not a novel but a quasi-theological work I'm thinking of, and somehow, to me, only fiction is creativity.
So here is hoping that I am able to be received into the Church with my heart as it should be. It is really incomprehensible that after thirteen years of secretly wishing to be Catholic, I have finally been shown that it is what God wants me to be. And I'm sure if I can be disciplined, it will yield all the spiritual fruit I alwasy suspected it would. That's if I can be disciplined--the idea of saying prayers at certain times, of fasting, abstinence, and self-sacrifice, those are things I grew up believing were contrary to God's will for his Church, and even though I always suspected that that wasn't right, they still don't come easily.
Labels: conversion
Easter Vigil
I am finally what I have always wanted to be: a Roman Catholic.
It was kind of like a wedding ceremony in that I wasn't sure at what point I actually transformed into a Catholic. When the priest said "The Lord receives you into the Catholic Church," or when he anointed my forehead with the holy oil? I kept trying it out in my head:
I am a Catholic. How strange to say, yet I had been thinking of myself as Catholic for months now. Yet only afterwards did it come from an organic truth about my spirit: I had been initiated, I had been received, I had been sealed, I
was Catholic.
And taking the Sacrament! For a full year I've sat on the back pew, watching, believing that I was seeing the body of Christ raised before me, yet disbelieving because of my distance, my separateness from the Sacrament. Last night, I sat nervously, terrified and thrilled, went forward and looked at the Body of Christ offered to me--and held it in my hands, and magically
did believe, in an awed and thrilled way, and took it into my mouth with both horror and amazement that it was finally permitted me, that such an intimacy was permitted me--I went to take the cup and did not realise until I stretched out my hands that they were sweating, that i was nervous, and it was an eternity holding it, putting it to my lips, the pungent scent of fermentation in my nostrils, an eternity before it finally flooded my mouth, and eternity of fear lest I drop it. I went back to my seat with a mind struck clean of thought, knelt and reflected on what had happened, unsure and afraid lest I failed to appreciate the event.
After some time I opened my eyes, not hearing the song, and gradually became aware of the sound of weeping: Lily, next to me, was weeping. Then it was that I heard the words of the song:
In the breaking of the bread our eyes are opened, and it suddenly became just so, just exactly that. The mystery of faith was real. It had been real all this time that I had waited on the back row, waiting to be part of this mystery, waiting to claim my heart. And now I was invited in.
And do I feel different? Yes, but not without the knowledge that that will fade, I will still be given to despair and tempers and hatred, and that saddens me, the permanently disordered state of my appetites, being only human after all, and yet now is open to me the sacrament of restoring that disorder, the sacrament that has the full power to restore me to rights, if I only let it do so.
Labels: converts, sacraments
First Confession
So, I had a total collapse into weeping and despair. The next day I headed over to the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament and prayed for an hour. It helped, and I have felt better since.
On Saturday Renee and I went to Confession. (It's supposed to be called "Reconciliation" now, but I pooh-pooh that.) This was actually my second Confession--the first was this informal, face-to-face awkwardness with the priest of our parish, and I didn't feel good about it for a variety of reasons, so I decided to go again, only this time at a different parish, and in the more conventional setting of behind the screen (though not, alas, in the old-fashioned boxes, which would have pleased me more). Before going in we hurried up and gossiped all our gossip so we could confess it and be done with it, ha ha.
I had a list written down of abstract nouns pretty much covering all the seven deadly sins and some accessorizing sins, and when it was my turn I headed in and knelt on the kneeler behind the screen, then realized I wasn't sure how to begin. So I reverted to the old-fashioned formula you hear in movies: "Father, forgive me, for I have sinned," etc. Then I rattled off my impressive list of sins and ended with, "And anything else I can't remember, I'd throw in here, too."
I wish that I could describe the way it felt when he pronounced absolution: it was a genuinely physical sensation of dissolution, certainly nothing felt at my quasi-confession of a few weeks ago. More, I was certain of the absolution, and felt . . . can I say it without sounding bizarre? clean. (Of course, I've already messed it up with a few choice venial sins, blah.)
Then Sunday was Palm Sunday, the first Palm Sunday I have ever seen celebrated. Very, very long, too, but worth it. Now things get difficult: tonight is rehearsal for Confirmation and the children's baptism, undoubtedly an event designed to cause me a panic attack, and tomorrow is Holy Thursday, and Friday is Good Friday, and Saturday is the Easter Vigil, which I both look forward to and dread. Of course I look forward to I because I wil finally be the one thing I have always wanted to be: a Catholic--but I dread it because it will start at SEVEN in the evening and last until nine o'clock and the kids will be with us the whole time, oivay. Wiggling, squirming, whining, crawling on us, while we're trying to focus on the proceedings. Urgh. Then they will be baptised, too, so I anticipate the shriekings of "There's water in my eyes!!"
Nevertheless, I guess I'm finally almost there.
Labels: confession, conversion, sacraments
