Evangelicals and Catholics Together
I’ve been reading the document Evangelicals and Catholics Together and have loved every word of it! It is amazing to me, after witnessing so much bitter animosity on the Sonlight Lifelong Learner Forum between Catholics and Protestants, to see a group of these same people come together, explore and accept their differences and recognize that there’s a way around them. We don’t HAVE to be at one another’s throats. We can live in peace and harmony. We can accept one another as brothers and sisters in Christ and work together to spread the Good News of the Kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of God is at hand!
Now this doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that the Catholic Church has the “fullness of the Truth”. I do. But it also means that I believe that my separated brothers and sisters are as full as God would have them be AT THIS MOMENT.
This really came home to me one day about eighteen months ago in a conversation I had with a very special friend. Her story started nearly twenty years ago when she wanted to be married in the beautiful Catholic Church that her husband grew up in. She fell in love with the grandeur, the stained glass, the oak and marble and she thought this would be the perfect setting for the Grand Event.
She was raised as a heathen – her Father is atheist and her Mother was a weak-kneed former “something” – so she grew up with no faith affiliation. She had no problem converting to the Catholic Church when the Priest asked, since it meant that she could add Holy Communion to the ceremony. But she really didn’t know what it meant. She had “private instruction” from the Priest for six months before the ceremony and somehow, she was Confirmed without knowing what it really meant.
After the wedding, she and her husband left the Church in a white stretch limo, never to darken the doors again. Eight years later, right after the birth of her first child, she and her husband were “saved” at a Billy Graham Crusade and they promptly began attending a Nazarene church. Thanks be to God, she and her husband have had a total conversion of their hearts with no turning back, and have lived as faithful to God’s calling as they understand it.
We became friends many years after these happenings and especially got close when she was pregnant with her fourth child. Occasionally, we would get into serious discussions about the Catholic Church and she would snap out reasons for why she could NEVER be Catholic (I refrained from telling her that she carried an Indelible Mark from her Confirmation and she already WAS Catholic). I told her that because of the Eucharist, I could be nothing else.
How could I believe that, she wanted to know? And so I proceeded to walk her through John 6, and Exodus 12 and 1 Corinthians and in my mind, I built a very compelling case. At least I presented the Church Teaching to the best of my ability!
The next day she called me and said she had thought and prayed and pondered on my words all night long. “Yes?” I said, with great anticipation. “Great! She believes!” I thought in my heart.
But the next words out of her mouth were, “I don’t believe it!” She went on to say, “I don’t believe that God will perform a miracle like that on command.” So much for my armchair apologetics!
Rather than getting frustrated and going head to head with her about how wrong she was, and lamenting the fact that she didn’t have the “fullness of the Truth”, the Holy Spirit spoke to me: “She is full.” And I realized that she is as full as she can be at this point in her life. For whatever reason, God has kept the scales on her eyes regarding the Eucharist and while it’s beyond me to know why that is, I accept it. I accept that God is working in her life (I see so much evidence of it) and that He loves her just where she is and that it’s just possible that her first taste of the Eucharist will be at the Banquet Feast of Our Lord in Heaven, and not on this earth. I have to remember just how long God kept the scales on my own eyes.
As said in the document, Evangelicals and Catholics Together, we have a responsibility for presenting our side of the case. But then we move on and trust. We trust that God, who knows all things, is always calling us closer to Himself. I have a lot to learn from my Evangelical brothers and sisters in Christ.
I think this is where we, who are evangelists (which should be all of us), must have peace. And we must move on and put ourselves in positions to be able to witness to those who have no peace
No Jesus, no peace.
Know Jesus, know peace.
The Kingdom of God is at hand! Have you ever heard anything so exciting in your life?
We’ve got a lot of work to do.
The Kingdom of God is at hand!
Now this doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that the Catholic Church has the “fullness of the Truth”. I do. But it also means that I believe that my separated brothers and sisters are as full as God would have them be AT THIS MOMENT.
This really came home to me one day about eighteen months ago in a conversation I had with a very special friend. Her story started nearly twenty years ago when she wanted to be married in the beautiful Catholic Church that her husband grew up in. She fell in love with the grandeur, the stained glass, the oak and marble and she thought this would be the perfect setting for the Grand Event.
She was raised as a heathen – her Father is atheist and her Mother was a weak-kneed former “something” – so she grew up with no faith affiliation. She had no problem converting to the Catholic Church when the Priest asked, since it meant that she could add Holy Communion to the ceremony. But she really didn’t know what it meant. She had “private instruction” from the Priest for six months before the ceremony and somehow, she was Confirmed without knowing what it really meant.
After the wedding, she and her husband left the Church in a white stretch limo, never to darken the doors again. Eight years later, right after the birth of her first child, she and her husband were “saved” at a Billy Graham Crusade and they promptly began attending a Nazarene church. Thanks be to God, she and her husband have had a total conversion of their hearts with no turning back, and have lived as faithful to God’s calling as they understand it.
We became friends many years after these happenings and especially got close when she was pregnant with her fourth child. Occasionally, we would get into serious discussions about the Catholic Church and she would snap out reasons for why she could NEVER be Catholic (I refrained from telling her that she carried an Indelible Mark from her Confirmation and she already WAS Catholic). I told her that because of the Eucharist, I could be nothing else.
How could I believe that, she wanted to know? And so I proceeded to walk her through John 6, and Exodus 12 and 1 Corinthians and in my mind, I built a very compelling case. At least I presented the Church Teaching to the best of my ability!
The next day she called me and said she had thought and prayed and pondered on my words all night long. “Yes?” I said, with great anticipation. “Great! She believes!” I thought in my heart.
But the next words out of her mouth were, “I don’t believe it!” She went on to say, “I don’t believe that God will perform a miracle like that on command.” So much for my armchair apologetics!
Rather than getting frustrated and going head to head with her about how wrong she was, and lamenting the fact that she didn’t have the “fullness of the Truth”, the Holy Spirit spoke to me: “She is full.” And I realized that she is as full as she can be at this point in her life. For whatever reason, God has kept the scales on her eyes regarding the Eucharist and while it’s beyond me to know why that is, I accept it. I accept that God is working in her life (I see so much evidence of it) and that He loves her just where she is and that it’s just possible that her first taste of the Eucharist will be at the Banquet Feast of Our Lord in Heaven, and not on this earth. I have to remember just how long God kept the scales on my own eyes.
As said in the document, Evangelicals and Catholics Together, we have a responsibility for presenting our side of the case. But then we move on and trust. We trust that God, who knows all things, is always calling us closer to Himself. I have a lot to learn from my Evangelical brothers and sisters in Christ.
I think this is where we, who are evangelists (which should be all of us), must have peace. And we must move on and put ourselves in positions to be able to witness to those who have no peace
No Jesus, no peace.
Know Jesus, know peace.
The Kingdom of God is at hand! Have you ever heard anything so exciting in your life?
We’ve got a lot of work to do.
posted by Dixie @ 9:44 AM
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