No in Between

Long ago, or perhaps only a handful of years at most, a friend of mine told me that she would never be a Protestant, that she had to be a Pagan or a Catholic, that there was no in between for her. At the time I did not truly understand, nor did I probably want to if I am to be honest. Years later in RCIA, I heard the story of a Monsignor who had once told my priest that if he were not Catholic, he would be a Jew.

When Christ calls someone to His church, He doesn't allow you to leave easily back to pale imitations of the liturgical worship that can be found and that of the Eucharist. I could never return to my Baptist ways, I could never again worship in a half empty way that I did for so many years without realizing it, and towards the end I think that I did.

You see, in Protestant worship, it's all about you. What can God do for you? What are you doing? What are you going to do? What do you want? It was always a race for relevance, a race to be more hip and more reaching out to young people, even if it meant shying away from the harder teachings that could be found in the Gospel.

In the Mass, you don't factor in as heavily. The Mass is about Christ. The Mass transcends time and space. The Mass is Heaven on Earth; it is bound in ancient rites and the prayers of our forefathers. The Lord's Prayer, known as the Our Father, stretches back to the first of the Apostles of the Christ Himself. The Creed stretches back almost seventeen hundred years! And then the Eucharist...we are in the physical presence of our King.

Once I received the Eucharist for the first time, I truly understood my friend's comment years before. I could not leave this to be a Baptist again, not if I tried. If I left this, if I left Him in physical form, then I would be unable to go back to the happy clappy stuff that I had left. If I left Him, I would have to truly leave Him by going away from the veneer of Christendom and embrace the pagan gods. If His flesh is true flesh and His blood is true blood, then Christianity is true; but if He has lied, then the Pagan gods are the truth.

I embrace Truth. I embrace Christ. And I will, for all my days.