That He Will Come Again

The road to Catholicism is not necessarily straight or smooth, and it may have been wiped out, for instance, by a mountain avalanche just when it was coming into view. In my case, even where there were no memorable avalanches, it took me half a century to get there, from my standing start in pre/post Protestantism.

For me, who had to convert even to become a secular Anglican, what kept me from Catholicism at the end was a combination of stubbornness (which I mistook for faith), and “family values,” i.e., the need to prevent a divorce (mine). But when I was finally thrown out of my home, I became a free man.

Just like that, I then betrayed the Archbishop of Canterbury, and “poped.”

This was a marvelous experience, for thanks to family law, I was also reduced to primitive poverty. This felt more authentic.

The Catholic Church herself seemed suddenly transformed. She no longer looked like a (rather flabby) sect. She actually began to detach herself from historical time, allowing me to wander freely and easily through her many periods, and to stand both inside and outside the centuries.

It just WAS, a complete THING, unlike any other thing or collection of things which I had ever seen. It no longer required an effort of imagination, for one could use one’s eyes.

And I didn’t need to judge, as I had been wont to do, and had been doing while keeping myself out. I realized the Church required prayer and not rebellion. She is not a “protest” against anything.

I thought it might restrain ME, for having been, as it were, white and English for too long (five centuries); yet I was freed from this anxiety, too, as well as lightened of goods. “My way is easy, and my burden is light.” The need, or obsession, with material progress had disappeared.

We live in a world of efficient cooks, with their chopping blades. You are on one side or the other of a sharp knife, or a dull one in the case of Episcopalianism.

Heresies may be necessary to define a church, and blackguards to enforce the rules, but I think we can say that Christ’s order is not the police order we see governing the world.

The question of what puts you in, or what takes you out, is like the other big questions. They may not be appealed to a “humane” court of law. If you have loved others as yourself, and put God atop your list of commandments, you are probably in.

And if you make peace, even in war, with the cause of justice, you may not survive, but have a chance of being right. Get rid of your modern prejudice against the free speech of Crusaders.

“We must have faith,” which is something we can’t check in immigration documents. But actually, one of the first things I learned, on the outside of worldliness, is that faith is not something one has. For that sort of thing cannot be mislaid, it can only be abandoned, to restore your faithlessness.

One could be “pro-” Catholic, and I certainly was, but what is a “pro-” unless edging towards membership in the divine body? And what is a genuine Catholic unless he is a bad Catholic? That’s why the essence of Catholicism is now found when one is going to Confession.

It requires heroism, and of such a serene kind, that non-Catholics are actually embarrassed by it.

Faith isn’t a physical thing, or we might claim to be faithful even to a set of antiquarian facts. Certainly, as a Protestant, I had this much “faith,” and wished to have more.

I would join enthusiastically into arguments over whether Christ had even existed, whether the list of disciples was real, whether the “B.V.M.” (the Anglican term for the Mother Mary) took part in the Dormition or Assumption, what was the third party of the Trinity. Or any other thing I now think plausible, but used to debate, usually from the atheist position in high school. But I found one could more easily stir things up by defending Humanae vitae.

That is what faith is not: gibberish. Nor is it “belief” in the facticity of anything at all, which we derive from history. It would not change anything if “scientists” or astrologers discovered that Christ was born on December 29th, rather than on Thursday. This numbered date is only a convention.

Which does not make Christmas the day on which the Advent fast is suddenly convulsed with joy, the astonishing joy in the heavenly child. Joy is not a statistical celebration of a date, or of a sales season.

Truth is celebrated. The thing I first belatedly understood, once a Catholic, was the day “when He will come again” – when He will come again to save us. This is faith.

We don’t believe it merely because it is true, but because Christ has told us to expect Him. Otherwise, we are just waiting for Godot. It is truer than anything we have watched falling into history.

And we can believe it with a certainty and hardness that does not appear on the Mohs Hardness Scale, for it cannot be scratched by human implements.

Modern, Western Man has lost familiarity with such things. A child might believe, we think, for a child can be conned by Santa Claus, and then we compare the child’s sweet naivety with our own sophistication, tested and weighted. We demand proof even for what a child believes, and formal disproof for what he doesn’t.

This is what Modern Man has become. He has the brain, the intellect, of a very small child, but without the innocence. He won’t likely know that Advent is a season of fasting, until fasting is explained to him.

Still, there are a few hours left when it won’t be “Jingle Bells,” except in supermarkets and drug stores.