[music] Marcus: Grodi Good evening and welcome to
'The Journey Home'. I'm Marcus Grodi, your host for this program. Our guest tonight and I were in the same
part of the world at the same time, years ago, though we didn't
meet each other. I was at the seminary. She was at the college
at the same time. And it's a great pleasure to have Sarah Christmyer
on the program, former Evangelical Protestant. Sarah, welcome to
'The Journey Home.' Sarah Christmyer:
Thank you for having me. And you've been involved
with lots of things. They may come up
in our conversation. You were a founding editor of 'The Great Adventure
Bible Study'. And some of our
audience are, I'm sure, familiar
with that. And you now teach at St Charles
Borromeo Seminary. Is that right? Yes, Philadelphia. Okay, very good. And a new book
coming out, right? Is it <i>already out?</i> <i>Came out last summer.
Yep.</i> Okay. 'Becoming Women
of The Word'. I didn't read that book. You maybe should. [laughter] Well, it's good
to have you here, Sarah. Let me back off
and invite you to begin us on the journey,
if you will. Okay. So, I was raised in a very
wonderful, warm, evangelical household. I have pastors,
evangelists, missionaries going back
four or five generations, all directions, aunts,
uncles, cousins, everybody
are missionaries. <i>Any particular
strand </i>of Evangelicalism that most represented
in all that group? Well, my mother's
family came out of the Angelus
Temple revival, I guess,
back in California, back in the '20s or '30s
or whatever, with Aimee Semple
McPherson. <i>Oh, really?</i> <i>Oh, wow.</i> And they went
on to help to start things like
Youth for Christ, Open Bible denomination. They were missionaries, evangelists, just all
over the world. My grandfather
worked with Billy Graham. He actually gave
him his first job. [chuckles] They were good friends until the day
that he died. Preached together. So, that's kind of the ilk
on that side. And then, on my dad's side,
they were Quakers, and my grandparents
left that and went over to Europe to Belgium to be
missionaries over there. So, that side of the family
is all in Europe; so, missionaries
all over the place. <i>To me, that</i> just screams
"the work of grace." Absolutely, yeah. Just grew up
in the early years, just knowing
God's love, absolutely positively. My particular family was
a little bit different, because for the years
when I was in middle school, my parents left
the faith pretty much, left the church, left going to church. I guess we prayed. There was one experience in particular I remember. I had struggled a lot
with nightmares, and I remember the Lord
coming to me in my dreams, just reassuring me that He was bigger than
anything that could get me, and so, watching over me
during those years. Well, that's fascinating. Were your parents kind of
PKs, you know? Absolutely. My mother grew up in Sumatra
and in Shanghai, and her brothers
in Japan and Hong Kong, all over Asia; and my dad
grew up in Belgium. And then they
were missionaries. I went to a mission school in Hong Kong
for a couple of years. And then,
for health reasons we had to come back
to the States. <i>With</i> all that
spiritual background, like you said,
pastor's kids can sometimes, as you read
in the Old Testament in the Books
of Kings, you know, that sometimes the children
of the parents don't really follow
in the footsteps. I mean, I'm not being
critical of your parents, but spiritually, you said
they left for a while. They left, and then,
when they came back, we moved to,
across the country. So, I'm in a new
high school, and they reverted back and became on-fire,
charismatic Christians, just as I'm entering
high school, so that was kind of
tough for me. And, you know,
you can think you, that you're a Christian, because your parents are,
because your family are, you were raised
with the Bible, you're raised with
all these good things, but you have to
take it on personally
for yourself. And I struggled a bit
in high school and was going kind of
down a rather a bad path. And I'll never forget
one day, kind of halfway
through high school, I'd gotten myself
into a bit of trouble and I looked at
the way I was headed and I knew that
I wasn't headed in the way
my parents are, and I thought I'd much
rather be like them. And I prayed,
and I asked the Lord, I said, "Lord,
I need help with my life. You know, will you
please fix my life? And if you fix my life,
I will follow you." It was very conditional, but I told Him, I said, "You know, just
so you know I'm serious, I'll start reading
the Bible," because I hadn't
been doing that. I had heard a lot
of the Bible. My parents read
the Bible all the time. So, I started reading
the Bible every night, and the Lord started speaking
to me in the Bible, and He grabbed
hold of me in places that I needed
to be grabbed ahold of, and turned my life around, and that started
me off on, on a personal
relationship with Him that just, you know,
grew from that point. Now, too, I want
to pause here a bit. Yep. I guess to jump
ahead a little bit, but you've been involved with the 'Great
Adventure Bible Study'. You're teaching
at Charles Borromeo. You've written a book, 'Becoming Women
of the Word'. And so, that bespeaks
the fact that your whole life, in terms of inspiration
to serve the Lord; in many ways,
the seeds were in the fact that
that's how the Lord came to you
and awakened you. Absolutely. As you just said,
spoke to you. Tell the audience
what you mean by the fact that the Lord
spoke to you. <i>I'd love to</i>. Because a lot of people with backgrounds like me
grew up memorizing, you know, you have
the sword drills, and you memorize
every little bit. I was never good
with the chapter and verse, but in my;
in our household, and in my
extended family, the Bible wasn't
something to memorize. It was a place to live, and it was a place
where you get into and you meet
God there, and He speaks to you, and you hear Him
speaking to your life, and it stimulates prayer. And I guess it was
the closest thing that we had
to a sacrament. I think it was
our sacrament, because God's grace
poured out to us through His Word. And I can't tell you
how delighted I was, as a Catholic,
to read 'Dei Verbum' where it says that
in the sacred Scriptures that the Father,
who is in Heaven, comes down with great love
to meet His children and speak with them, and that's been
my experience. In Matthew 6,
Sermon on the Mount, when our Lord is
talking about prayer and He says, "But when you pray,
go into your room, and shut the door and pray
to your Father, who is in secret, your Father
who sees you in secret, will reward you." This is the room. Absolutely, yes. That's how I've
always understood it. This is the room. And from experiential
standpoint, that has become very real
for me all my life. This is the room. Yep, I disappear
into that, and, I mean,
not every time, it's not always, but I remember coming
downstairs, if I'd get up early. My dad was
always up earlier, and he's sitting
in his chair with his, you know,
a rug over his lap and his Bible in his hand and just lost to the world,
talking to God. And, yeah,
once you know the Lord through the Word
like that, there's no going back. And you,
so there's talking to the Lord through that? Hearing him. Yeah. So, there's that, too. You're talking
about the fact that you said
that as a young girl, you, in your
promise to God, "If you bring me back..." Mm-hmm. All right. And to do that,
"I'll read your Word." So, you're kind of
in the footsteps of seeing your dad there
in his chair with the blanket over, but God
spoke to you there. Again, go in more detail about how does God
speak to us when we open the Word and we read through it? You know,
when I was 15, he was speaking to me by, kind of in two ways; one, sort of catching me on things I was doing
that I shouldn't be doing. It was sort of
instruction and maybe a little
reprimanding, and so on; but also
very encouraging. And I just heard it
spoken to me, but He did. I mean that dream that
I had when I was nine or whenever it was, He came up behind me, wrapped His arms
around me, and the devil was down there
trying to get me, and I just knew, I mean, He spoke to me. So I never heard
a voice. When I tell you later,
though, about my conversion,
you'll hear... Okay. ... more about Him
speaking to me. The reason I'm
emphasizing this, and we'll move on now, is because we really want
people to read the Word. Mm-hmm. And recognize, as St Francis
de Sales says, to recognize that God
is trying to speak to us. It's just that we don't
pay attention. We don't anticipate it. And when, in John 6, when there's this,
you know, Jesus talks about, "Unless you eat My body
and drink My blood, you have no life
within you," and most of
the people leave, and He turns to Peter
and the little group; 'Well, what about
you guys?' And Peter says, "Lord,
to whom shall we go? You have the words
of eternal life, and we believed,
and have come to know." That 'coming to know' is hard to put a finger
on what we mean by that, but, to me, that's
one of the ways that God speaks
in Scripture. You're reading along,
and it hits you, and you know that
the Lord is saying, 'Listen to what I'm
telling you right now,' in that verse. It's a coming to realize, to know that God
is speaking to you through this Scripture. Yeah, the other
thing that really had a big impact on me, I think, is growing up
hearing jungle stories. Hearing
missionary stories. You know, my grandparents were in wartime
in Asia and in Europe, and a lot of upset
in difficult times, also being
literally in the jungles with various things
that happened. And so, the stories
that they had of God's work
on their behalf and on the behalf
of others on the mission field were just remarkable,
miraculous; and they were
very, very like the stories of
the Old Testament. So, I would read
the Old Testament, and I'd hear these stories
from my family, and God is the same today
as He was then. And I knew, I just knew
that God could be trusted, that He loved me, because of those stories, because of what He's done. So, He speaks to us
through those stories, as well as just
through the words. Our guest
is Sarah Christmyer. So there you are in
high school, right? This is when
you're; you've... Started to come on fire. My dad introduced me to doing word study
of the Bible. I love words;
I love word study, really got into it. I always said I was going
to go to study medicine in Philadelphia
or something, and a friend of my dad's, we were actually up
in Boston for a wedding, and Tom Howard
was my dad's oldest, dearest friend, and their parents were
missionaries together in... <i>Tom Howard,
the first guest</i> on 'The Journey Home'
program. Yep, yep. Very instrumental for me. But he said to me, "Why don't you stay
for a weekend at Gordon?" I was like,
"Well, okay, I guess." <i>Because at that time,
Tom was still</i> Episcopalian. He was, he was,
and he was at Gordon; and I stayed the weekend, and I just felt
so at home there, I thought,
'You know what I'm going to go here,
change my life.' So I went there, threw myself into learning
more about the faith. They were all about
the integration of faith and learning, so any class
you took, you know; so, learning,
studying the Bible, studying a little bit
of Theology, Philosophy, and so on. But it was a class by Marv Wilson, who was a wonderful
Old Testament professor, took OT Theology
from him. And that's where I first became familiar
with this idea of the biblical narrative, the Bible story
that, of course, we've done in Jeff's
Bible timeline. But as I read
that story of God, I think we read
Abraham Heschel, 'God in Search of Man'. And I read, in order, the story of God
seeking His people, even when they turned away
from Him and so on. And I got wrapped up
in that story, and then I realized, 'God loves me, too.' I knew that. I'd always known that, but it just hit me
that I was part of this
greater story. It was just a revolutionizing
thing for me. <i>Yeah,</i> it's amazing
how we can read it over and over and over again
and not see the flow. Yeah. And, of course, part of the problem
is that, on Sundays, we get snippets. You get just
little chunks of it. Little chunks. Now, the Church
encourages priests and religious,
in the Office of Readings, to get a bigger
chunk of it over a period of time, but most Catholics
don't get that bigger chunk, so. Which is why I teach it. That's right. Do you teach
Scripture there? Is that what you're
teaching at St Borromeo? Yes. Yep. I teach an overview
of the Scripture. All right,
so you're at college, you're still on fire
for your faith? Still on fire
for my faith, everything is going
wonderfully. I fell in love with
the liturgy at college, at the Episcopal
Church there, Christ Church in Wenham. And when I left
college, I wanted to find
that same kind of church, and I couldn't find it. Went into several years
of just looking for, 'Where do I belong?' And I think after leaving
my parents' home and going out on my own,
I started to realize, there's a lot of doctrinal
differences out there, and I have to decide
which one, which group of
doctrines are true, so that I can make
my church home there. But I felt this
incredible pressure that I had to decide. And I would look
to my family, and they're in many, many different
denominations, and you see they
sort of agree to disagree
on certain things, but some of them
are pretty important. <i>And their</i> subtle
assumption, I'm assuming,
would have been that what church
you belong to is not really important. Exactly. What matters is that you have a personal relationship
with Jesus Christ - even a Catholic
can have that, you know. Yeah, right. But things like
speaking in tongues; I knew people
who thought, unless you were born again
and spoke in tongues, you're not a Christian, and there were people
who thought if you speak in tongues,
you're going to hell. So, okay? Salvation, baptism, these things are big. And I just started to have
a lot of questions about this sort of thing. And the kind of, well, it wasn't really
a turning point. I took a job where I started to get
to know a young man who was cradle Catholic,
lapsed Catholic, practicing nothing
when I met him. So, I would not
date him. I said, 'You're not
a Christian.' He goes, 'What do you mean?
I'm Catholic.' [laughs] And I got to know him
better and better. Eventually, he actually had an experience
with the Lord, came back on fire
for his faith. I had no more excuses.
[laughs] We ended up
getting married. <i>Did he return to </i>the Catholic
Church at that point? No, no, no. No, no. Okay. My grandfather married us in a lovely backyard.
[chuckles] So we got married, and after;
so, we had a child, and we went to a family
reunion of mine when she was about
four months old. And my family reunions
on my mother's side are actually missions
conferences. There's like 200 people, and we have timed sessions
during the day, the church in India,
the church in Afghanistan, the church in whatever. I think my husband was
a little bit overwhelmed. But at one point, I think there were seven of us cousins
who had new babies, and so my grandfather
dedicated them all. They had a lovely service, and he anointed them
with oil, and he dedicated them. And afterwards, Mark,
my husband, was like, "He just baptized
those babies." I said, "There was no water,
he didn't baptize them." He said, "I'm pretty sure
he just baptized them." I said, "No, he did
not baptize them." But this got him
started to think. <i>Well, let me</i>
clarify there. From your perspective,
baptism wasn't necessary, wasn't a sacrament? So, I had been
baptized as an infant, but then, I guess
my parents changed; all my brothers
were dedicated. And then, as teenagers,
we were all baptized in a lake
by my grandfather. <i>[Marcus laughs]</i> But a believer's baptism. So, to me, as we were
having children, my brothers and I were kind of
arguing that question. Do you baptize infants?
Do you wait? You know, what is
the right thing to do? So, I thought,
'You have to wait until she can make
a declaration for herself that she's going
to follow Jesus, then she can be baptized.' So, Mark's mother, though, thought the baby
was going to go to hell if she wasn't baptized.
[chuckles] So, finally, I was
like, 'Okay,' you know, I didn't want... I thought, 'It's not
gonna hurt her. She can always
do it again.' And so,
she was baptized. The painful thing to me was that she was
baptized Catholic. And, um... <i>So, you </i>didn't
count that thing with your grandfather
doing the anointing? It wasn't a baptism. It wasn't a baptism? No, I convinced
my husband of that. And he's like, "Well, she's going to be
baptized Catholic." I was like, "Where did this
even come from? You know, this was not
in our prenup that you would
ever be able to look at a Catholic
Church again in your life." Um... But he started really
getting back into it. And the baptism, I came out of
that saying, "Whoa, that was beautiful. You know, I've never
heard of that. The liturgy was amazing." But Mark got
more and more; he's set,
he's Catholic again. And he wanted to go
to a Catholic Church, and I said, "I'm not going
to a Catholic Church." He's like, "Well, please. Just go with me one time." So we went, and this is, you know, 30 years ago,
whatever it was. The church was... people came in late,
they left early, there was terrible music, I couldn't understand
the priest. I didn't know
what was going on. And we walked out
and I was like, "Whew, we will never ever
have to go back again." <i>Oh, you weren't</i>;
you didn't see angels that inspired? Oh no. Maybe devils.
I don't know. I was so glad
to get out of there, and Mark looked at me
and he said, "I feel like I've just
gone to church for the first time
in 20 years." "What?" It was just,
it was devastating, because where did that
even come from? And he didn't know enough to talk about
the Eucharist. He didn't know that was
what was drawing him back. He just knew
that he was home. Uh, that was tough. So, how did you
respond to that? Did you start going
to both churches, or did you...? So we found,
we found a church. It was actually
a Norbertine abbey that was not too far
from us that; it was quite
a modern church. Actually, there
was no crucifix hanging in the front,
which was surprising. No statues, no Mary, and they had
a charismatic group on Wednesday nights, the charismatic
prayer group. I felt very much
at home there. It had beautiful music. The homilies
were scriptural. You know,
it was such a contrast to what I had seen
in a few other churches. So, I thought,
'You know what, this is kinda like
Christ Church Episcopal. You know, I like the liturgy,
it's beautiful, the music is beautiful. You know, I can go here,' but I knew I couldn't
take communion, even though one of
the priests told me I could, but I knew
that I couldn't. So, we went there
for a while, and then, our life kind of
changed quite a bit. My husband took a job
out in Chicago. We moved to Wheaton,
Illinois, which I had a lot
of family. <i>Evangelical center
of the world.</i> Yep.
And he took a job, but the job did not
turn out well at all. And not too much longer,
we found ourselves; the job was awful,
we were losing; we had never sold
our house back at home. We were losing money left,
right, and center, could hardly pay
our bills. My grandfather died,
my mother got cancer. And in the middle
of this all, I'm trying to cope
with the fact that my husband
is more and more Catholic by the day. I have no friends, because I'm going
to a Catholic church. [chuckles]
And it was just awful. Had you advanced at all with the idea
that your husband being Catholic
is still Christian? No. You're still...? No. No. Okay. On top of everything,
you're still..? I don't think
I really thought of it. And the reason I'm saying
no is that; so he was raised going to
Catholic school and all, but he never really know how to articulate
anything about his faith. And I would ask
him questions. He didn't know anything. He couldn't answer
my questions. And I found, there were
some really kind priests back in Pennsylvania
who had talked to me, but I don't think
they really understood my questions. Our language
was different. I didn't understand
their answers. It was very difficult. And, you know, all these
wonderful Catholic writers; converts weren't writing yet,
so it was pretty hard. So we get to Illinois, and our world is falling
apart, and I need help. So, I heard about RCIA
and I said, "Okay, I'm going here, so I can get all
the answers and prove to Mark
why we can't be Catholic. [laughs] That worked
out really well. <i>[laughs] </i>Okay. Did you have
a good RCIA program? Well, um... Because they're
not always; in those days particularly, they weren't always
the best. I understand that. Yeah, so, my
recollection is the first couple
of times I went, I came back
and I said, "Mark, I had my list of all,
you know, the Pope and Mary
and indulgences and all these things
that I wanted to ask about. They didn't wanna talk
about any of them. It's like; Who's God?
Who's Jesus? You know, why do
we need a Savior? I said, "Mark,
they're Christian." [laughter] He's like, "Duh,"
you know. So, I kept going. And the next thing that was really
meaningful to me, was when they talked about the sacraments
of initiation. And by this time, we were
having a second child, trying to decide, "Are we gonna baptize
this one Catholic or not?" And when they
explained them, I thought, 'This is the most beautiful
thing I've ever heard. This is what I have
always believed.' It just struck
a chord in my heart that this is true, and I was;
as I explained earlier. <i>Because it
was all about grace.</i> And I was; well, and also, just the way you enter
into God's family; it doesn't matter if you're
saying yes or no yet. You know, the family
is bringing you in, and then what
Confirmation is. And it was just,
it was true. I knew it was true. And just the thought that, "Oh, maybe I don't
have to decide all this stuff by myself. You know, maybe there's some kind of
authority there." These were very
half-formed thoughts, but that was a turning point
at where I thought, "Oh, maybe I'll find out
more about this for myself, not just to prove
that it's wrong." So, I went there
for a while. And then it kind
of backfired because we had
a time when, um.., open mic, you know,
you can come and ask any questions
that you want. And most of the class
was there, because they were
getting married. And so, they had all
these questions about contraception, which I didn't even
know was an issue. I thought I was
on the wrong night, you know, wrong class. But the priest explained
'Humanae Vitae,' I guess, he was reading from. And then he sat down,
and he said, "But you know, that's how
they do things in Rome, and here in America, we do
things a little differently. And this is
a very private thing between you
and your spouse, and the Holy Spirit, and you need to just
pray about it. And, you know, the
Holy Spirit will show you." And I was floored, because how is that
not Protestant? I mean, I raised my hand,
I was like, "Excuse me. I am a Christian. I love Jesus Christ
with all my heart. I am here to find out whether I should
be Catholic, and as far as
I can tell, one of the differences is that you've
got some authority in matters of faith
and morals." I'm sure I didn't
say it like that. "And now you're telling me that I can just ask
the Holy Spirit what's right
and follow that." I said,
"I do that already. You know, this sounds
very Protestant to me." And I just, I was so upset,
I was shaking, I was so upset,
and I just walked out. I said, "I'm done.
I am not going back." So, our life situation continued to deteriorate, and we ended up
moving back home and living
with my parents, because things
were so bad. And, but between then, so I just, this was
all consuming to me. It was so distressing, and I felt like I had nowhere
to stand anymore. I used to feel like I was
on really solid ground and it was all
falling away. And here, there was the
beauty of the, you know, the thing, some things
I was learning, but then, what is this Church
that, you know? I was very confused
and I had nowhere to turn. You know, sorry, I think
we'll pause there, because, I mean,
to me it's fascinating, because I hear stories
all the time, of course, but it's what you;
what was happening is... when you realize
the significance of the Church as the pillar
and bulwark of the truth, as Scripture says
in 1st Timothy; that when you're confronted with the aberration of it, when a priest
who should be defending that very thing
says, 'Nah'. Yeah. What do you do
with that? What do you do,
because... And you can't
just go back, in other words,
you can't just... Okay, well,
then that's wrong. I'll go back
to what I was, because you already
discovered there's something wrong
with where you were. You already discovered that personal interpretation
has a flaw in it. Yep. So, you just
can't go back. And where are you
going to go? And then the ground's
falling out under you, and how do you stand? And then, on top of that,
my marriage. So, here's my husband,
who's, every day, he's a more solid Catholic, and he doesn't
care what I do. I mean, he's like,
'You go over to the Presbyterian church or whatever
you wanna do. This is what I'm doing.' So, he wasn't putting
any pressure on me. He also wasn't answering
any questions. But I thought, "How can I be
in a marriage where my husband
is doing this, and I'm doing that?" And it was terrifying. And, to me,
I could certainly see that another, the reason why it was a problem is because you took
this seriously. Yes. You took
this seriously. It's not enough
for you to say, 'Well, that didn't work,
and I can't go back, so, I just won't be
involved at all.' Oh, it wouldn't
have occurred to me. It wouldn't
have occurred to you, because this, the Word,
the reality of God, the reality
of our Lord Jesus, it was just too serious. And that ain't
a quali..., you know, an option to say that. Okay, let's
pause there then. And we'll come
back in a moment. Our guest is
Sarah Christmyer. And we'll continue
with her story in just a moment. [music] [music] Welcome back
to 'The Journey Home.' I'm your host, Marcus Grodi. Our guest is
Sarah Christmyer. And before we go back
to the story, I just want to remind you about my work
with the Coming Home Network and our website, chnetwork.org. You just heard
Sarah talk about what we call in our work
the 'No Man's Land,' and that's when somebody, who has come from another
Christian tradition, discovers the Catholic Church, but gets stuck, if you will. They really can no longer
just go back, but they can't yet go forward. And so we call it,
'No Man's Land.' And if by chance,
you're one of those that has seen the beauty
of the Church, but you're just not,
for whatever reason, ready to move forward,
we'd love to hear from you. If you go to chnetwork.org, you'll see lots
of conversion stories, but we'd love to help you discern your next step
of the journey. That's chnetwork.org. All right, Sarah, let me allow you
to return to your journey. So there you are. And you say it's even had a difficult impact
on your marriage, during that time. Yeah, I was very
concerned about that. And ... in my family, being the way it was, Mark was really a fish
out of water there. He could not
hold his own, he couldn't
talk Scripture, which is what
we all talked about. He was just
a fish out of water. And I thought
in our family, I always ended up being the one
who would lead. And I thought, 'Here
we're having children and am I going to be, like, the spiritual
head of the family? I can't do that. You know, my husband
needs to do that.' So, I was just in a really, a very
awkward place, in a difficult place
about that, and I spent a lot
of time in prayer. I was also in prayer
because we had no money, and as I said,
my grandfather had died, and my mom had cancer,
and we're in this... I had no friends
and nowhere to go. So, my dad's very good
friend, Tom Howard, who you know was a guest on this show
many years ago, he, I started calling him and asking him
some questions. And one day,
he sent me a tape. It was actually
an audiocassette tape, if you remember those
back in the day, and it was Kimberly Hahn's
conversion story. I think she had just
become Catholic, and he said, "You know, I think you might want
to listen to this. So, I listened to it, and Kimberly had a very similar
background to mine, and she talked about
the fear that she had. [clears throat]
Excuse me. She talked about
the incredible fear, and that's all
I remember, frankly, about her story is her
talking about the fear. And I thought, 'Somebody
else out there is like me. I am not the only person,
you know, in the universe, who is having
this problem.' And I called her, and she very
graciously talked to me for hours on
several occasions. And I think she got kind
of frustrated with me, actually, with the
questions that I had. But I'll never forget,
at one point, she said, "Sarah, you know, did you
have everything figured out, all your theological
questions answered as a Protestant?" Like "No". She just kind of let that sink in for a little bit. She's like, "How are you going to have
everything answered, you know,
to decide if you should be Catholic
or not?" And I remember, I don't remember
if I said this to her, but I definitely
thought it, wrote it in my journals. "If only I could be sure that it was really
a Christian Church, then I could
become Catholic, and then my husband and I would be on the same path. And then God could
turn us around, [chuckles] maybe
if He wanted to." So, one night, I was just in a great deal of anxiety, and I was praying
and praying, and I felt the Lord
speak to me. I was not reading
the Bible, but He spoke to me, and He said, "Sarah,
who brought you here?" And I just suddenly
realized that, 'Oh, might it be possible that God
brought me here?' And that was, I was
really upset with that, because why would God bring me to
this terrible place? So, I railed at Him
for a while, got it all out
of my system. I was quiet,
and then it was like I was in this green field, and His hand
stretched out to me, and He said,
"I'm going this way. Are you coming?" And it just was such love, and not like,
'If you don't, you're gonna go to hell,'
or anything like that. Just, you know, 'Maybe
there's a greater plan here that you don't
know about.' And if there was anything
that I was taught, it was that if God asked
you to do something, you do it. And my great fear,
actually, and my prayer
growing up was that, 'God, please
don't send me to Africa to be a missionary. You know, I don't want
to be in the jungles like my parents
and grandparents were. I would not do very well
in the jungles.' So, He sent me to a very different
kind of jungle. That reminded me,
when I was in seminary, we used to joke
that verse, and I think it's Isaiah where, "Who
will go for me?" And we used to say,
"Here I am, send Fred." <i>That's right.
That's right.</i> <i>Because I knew</i> what you
could get into, you know, on the mission field, and it had not
occurred to me that God would
actually send me into the Catholic Church. But I felt that
as a call. I felt that as a call, and I thought that I should be obedient
to that call, but I was not
excited about it. Um... it was
awful actually. So, about this time, we moved back
to the East Coast, and I was living
with my parents, because my mother was ill, and I went
to an RCIA group there, and I don't really
remember much about that group. I suppose I had a sponsor;
I don't know who it was. We had to get remarried,
which was another thing, because my grandfather
had married us, and, "Oh, what?
That didn't count?" But the deacon who led us
through that process, he did it; we were
speeding things up to make it
by the Easter vigil, so he met with us,
just the two of us, and it was wonderful. And then, but the time
at the Easter vigil, when I became Catholic, it's a very black
picture in my mind, because, emotionally, I felt like I was
jumping off a cliff. I remember my poor mother was in bed with a migraine
for a few days. It was, it was, I wasn't
excited about it, and I was doing it
out of obedience. "God, do you want
me here? Okay." So, after that,
we moved again, and I didn't really
have friends that I could talk to. I didn't have my family, I couldn't really
talk to anymore, and they were
my close confidantes and spiritual support,
and that was gone. Tom Howard,
bless his soul. You know, he sent book
after book after book, and I started reading everything I can get
my hands on, you know, Frank Sheed
and Thomas Aquinas. And the Catechism
had just come out, read that cover to cover. And very gradually, lights started
to come on for me, because I thought,
'If I'm going to be Catholic, I got to understand this. You know, I need to know
what is it that I believe now, you know, what does
the Church teach?' And that was exhilarating, as I; and that feeling that I had over
and over again that, maybe not so much this is what I've
already believed, but it just felt so right. And then, the most
astonishing thing was reading Scripture
came alive in a new way. I always thought
it was alive, and the connections
were deeper, they were more powerful. I explained it,
like I've, for years, I still refuse
to wear glasses unless I have to; but I got a pair
of glasses, and I put them on,
and I said to my husband, 'The trees have
leaves on them.' And that's how I felt. It was like - the Bible, I can see it in
such greater depth and richness of color, which opened up such a deeper, richer
aspect of my faith that was really wonderful. And I was part of
a Bible study at the time, Community Bible Study, which is
a really wonderful women's Bible study, and I started; you know, it's Community Bible Study, so you're supposed to look at a lot of
different denominations, and, you know, you should
at least consider them all. Well, apparently, Catholic isn't really
included in that [chuckles] and as I would try
to bring up different things, because I was a leader
in the Bible study, it just got really
uncomfortable for them and for me. And so, one day, I went
to my pastor and I said, 'You know, I really want to study the Bible
with Catholics. I want to share with them
what I want, what I know, and I want to show how
glorious the Bible is.' Because the part
I didn't say was, when I became Catholic, the cultural difference,
first of all, being in Philadelphia, all Irish
and Italian Catholics, and I'm as WASP
as they come, they're very kind,
you know, nice, but I didn't fit in. I didn't go to
the right schools. I didn't go to the.., I didn't root
for the right teams, you know, I didn't have
the right parish or whatever. I didn't fit, and they didn't
understand me, and the only way I knew
to practice my faith with other people
was to open the Bible. And they weren't
opening the Bible. And I was like, "Well,
a rosary, what's that? You know, how do I...?" It was just so lonely
and isolating and such a culture shock. I remember sitting
at Mass and being just mesmerized by the liturgy
of the Word and the beauty
of the way the Scripture connects through it. And 'Oh, so powerful.' And I'd look around
and I'd be like, 'Why isn't
anybody else excited? You know, why,
why are you guys not just eating
this all up?' And then, about
the time the liturgy of the Eucharist
would come up, which I didn't
quite understand yet, I would sort of sit back
and, you know, try to be interested, and everybody else
would perk up, and, you know; it was just,
it was a very, it was very lonely,
very difficult. So, "Can I start
a Bible study, please?" And beautiful, my pastor
let me do it. and he said,
"You know what, I bet you'll get
a half a dozen people. That ought to be
enough, won't it?" So, I put out the word - 80 people signed up
for that Bible study, 80 people. So, I started this, and I thought, "Well, if there's 80 people, we have to
have small groups." So, I picked
a handful of people who were faithful people, and I met with them
on a different day, because we'd have to go through the whole
lesson ahead of time. I had to teach them how to
facilitate a small group, how to answer
tough questions. We prayed for our groups. I had to teach them
all the background of the Scripture
that we were studying, but it was a wonderful,
wonderful group of people that
I worked with. And then, I could only find very little Catholic
Bible study material. So, I had started
with Matthew and let you know that
this just isn't gonna work, because I wanna really
get into Scripture, and this Bible study
is read a commentary and talk about how
it impacts your life. So, I just started writing my own Bible
study material, which I can't believe
my priest let me do that, but there actually was
a priest who came along who was there
every week and helped me with my
teaching ability when to... Anyway, teaching skills. I was really nervous to
get up in front of people, but I wrote
questions every week. People had to do their
homework, they'd come in, we'd have the small group, and then I'd give a talk every week,
week after week. I did that for,
I don't know, eight or 10 years
or something, but all the time
just studying every Catholic thing that
I could get a hold of, because I knew; I remember my dad actually
said to me one time, he goes,
"You know, make sure you just don't turn
them into Protestants. You know,
you've got to read. You're Catholic." You know, he was wonderful in encouraging me
on my journey. But trying to
figure out, 'Okay, so what does Catholic
Bible study look like? How is it different from
Protestant Bible study?' It's going to be
different, you know, just
exploring all of that. And then, at that point, I reconnected with somebody
who you know. She's actually been
on this show, Gayle Somers, I had known
through the Howards when I was at Gordon. And Howard
said to me one time, "You should connect
with Gayle Somers, 'cause she's doing exactly what you're doing
out in Phoenix." So, I called her. We talked for hours, decided to pool
our resources, because it's a lot of work
doing all of that. And we began working on writing Bible
studies together, and we were trying
to make sure that it was truly
Catholic Bible study and worked very hard
just getting it right. And then, we wanted
to get it published, and she took it around to a lot of
publishers who said, Catholic publishers
who said, "There's no need,
there's no market. We got a couple of
Bible studies out there, you know, that's it." So, we heard that
Scott Hahn and Jeff Cavins and Mark Shea, and I forget
who else were involved. They were doing
something called, 'At Home with the Word,' and it was an
Internet Bible study, just material out there, and I think it might have been
mostly for pastors who were
converting or for, you know,
real Scripture nerds, the few that were there
among Catholics who wanted to know, what does the Bible teach
about, you know... How does the Bible and Catholic teaching fit
together, and so on? But it was
wonderful stuff, but way over the head of
the average parishioner. So, we approached them, we went to Steubenville
one year and met with them. And, you know,
between us, we have X number of years of teaching Bible
study experience. Can we work together and do something
for parishioners? And so, started working
with them, and it actually ended up becoming Catholic
Scripture Study, now, International, which Gail Buckley
has taken it to that. But a little ways
into that, I was involved in my.., I was on Parish Council, and we had these
clusters of parishes, and we needed a speaker, and I wanted to
bring in somebody who would be
really wonderful, and preferably
biblically-based. And I said to Jeff Cavins
one day, "You know, you speak,
don't you? You sure you would
have something that you could say
[laughs] this?" And he says,
"I got this thing that's called
the Bible Timeline." You know, "Sounds good to me.
Why don't you come?" And so, we had Jeff come, and there's like
four parishes there, and I brought
30 or 40 people from my Bible study
to that one-day seminar, Bible Timeline Seminar. And I was just
dumbfounded. I was like, "Jeff, this is the missing link
for Catholic Bible study." He's like, "Why do you
think I do it?" But what I saw with
my group was that they, having seen that
big picture; if you don't know what
the Bible timeline is, it gives you
the big picture of salvation history, and how the Bible
tells that story, so that
you can understand the bits and pieces
that you get, you know, while you're
at Mass or whatever. When they heard
that story, they got so excited, but they came back
and they were like, "We can't
remember all this. Teach it to us again." So, the next week,
we got together, and I just,
I knew it all; just the way he put it
together was very novel. And so, I did that
and taught it to them. And then, I went to Jeff,
and I was like, "Can we, like, build; the Bible study program
should be built on this," and so on. We were very much thinking along
the same lines, which was wonderful. And he had just
switched over to work with
Ascension Press; they were in my backyard. So, I said, "Could I please
work with you on this?" So, we both kind of left the Catholic
Scripture study and started working
with Ascension to bring the Bible Timeline to the Catholic world, which was very,
very exciting. Called the 'Great
Adventure Bible Study'. Yeah, it wasn't
a Bible study yet. It was a seminar. All right. So, we built the Bible
studies based on that. It was a real whirlwind. But it has given me such a privileged
position from which to watch how getting to know
the Lord and Scripture has just set people, Catholics on fire
for their faith, in a really wonderful way. <i>Appreciating</i> the great gift
we've always had. Mm-hmm. And hear snippets of it. I mean, often
converts say, who didn't think Catholics
were Scriptural before, realize it in the Mass. Catholics hear
more Scripture than any Protestant
worship service... <i>Yep.</i> ..over a long
period of time. But because they
hear it in snippets, they do have the life
of Christ over the year as the guide for
the liturgical selections of readings, but they don't often catch the bigger picture, as you and Jeff
have portrayed it, have demonstrated
in 'The Great Adventure'. Um...talk
about your new book, 'Becoming Women
of the Word.' I mean it's one thing
to get<i> </i>Catholics excited about the;
it's important, but not as
specifically women. Yeah. So I always have wanted to help people
to understand the love that God
has for them, and also to know
that God could be trusted. And one of the things
in the Bible Timeline, you know,
that comes across, if you study the Bible
from the beginning, and you start looking at, "So, how did God
reveal Himself through time to people?" And you watch
those steps of faith, you know, how did
Abraham grow in faith through his life? And how did God
reveal Himself, you know, deeper and deeper
through the years? There's a lot that we can
learn from those stories. And I had been toying
with the idea of writing a book
about women of the Bible, of the Old Testament,
for some time, because in, as we walk
our way through, especially when you're
focusing on the covenants, you're focusing
on Abraham and Moses and David
and pretty much the men. Well, there's women
in those stories, and they have a role, but we kind of
bypass them a little bit. But the fact is,
you know, God started with a couple, and His plan
is worked out in a rather complementary
way, you might say. We've got the woman
and her seed, you know, in Genesis, and we've got Mary
and Jesus. And there are all these
women in the Old Testament who kind of paved
the way for Mary, and who paved the way for the woman
and her seed, and for conquering
the devil, and all of that. So, I wanted to
bring out that. And they also have
wonderful stories, and they're told
in great detail, and we can learn
a great deal about what it means
to walk in faith. And who we are
as Christians, whether we are male
or female, we come from
not just Abraham, but also from Sarah. And there's aspects
that we can learn from their stories as to what it means
to be people of God and people of faith,
and so on. So, I started
with the idea of just writing about
these women of the Bible, and then I thought,
"You know what, what made me... What made these
come alive to me? And the reason
that I can trust that God is
still like that is that I saw that
in my own life, and in my family's life." So, I took each woman,
as I go through, I paired with a woman from who had been instrumental
in my faith life. So, my mom's in there and both
of my grandmothers and some aunts
and some others who are not related. But I would tell a story
from their life that would have
a similar theme to the theme that
I was drawing out about the woman. And it was all about, how do we learn what it means
to walk with God, what does it mean
to answer His call, what does it mean
to follow Him? So, that is my book. Hopefully a tribute, not only to those women
of the Old Testament, but also to those
in my family. All right,
that book is 'Becoming Women
of the Word'. You know,
to think about drawing our discussion
to a close, there's so much
we could talk about, but it's possible that there are people watching this program
who are now where you were. And specifically, I'm thinking
about the fact that you come
from a tradition where you have
a long line of people who truly loved
Jesus Christ, who were touched
by His grace, who knew God,
who loved the Scriptures. But yet, didn't seem
to have a sense about a need
to become Catholic, a lot of folk,
but they love Christ, they love Scripture. They love that. And so, sometimes
the question is, 'Well, if I have all that, why do I need
to be Catholic?' What would you
say to them? Why make the same
journey you've made? Boy. Because my;
I didn't make it on an intellectual
basis, but I'm so glad
to be Catholic. It has brought me
a stability. It also has
brought me... I love your name,
'The Journey Home', because I felt like
I came Home. You can go to Church
anywhere in the world and just feel part
of this Body. But the certainty
that you get with the Magisterium
is phenomenal. That has made a big
difference in my life. And then, knowing
that Jesus is present in the Eucharist, that's not something
that's easy to articulate, but being able
to be in His presence, and to see something, to eat it,
to have Him in you that way; how could you
ever go back after that? I don't know. But I don't feel like I have to
convert everybody. I'd like to show
them the beauty. <i>Yeah.</i> And which
is really what our, Pope Francis
has called us to do. He says, "Make sure that your witness
matches your life." Your words have got
to match your life. And that's
all we can do, is we can tell about
the beauty we've discovered, but what we've really
got to show it, too. And I think, for me,
one of the things of getting back to the study
of the Word, as a non-Catholic Christian,
I loved the Word. I loved my Lord Jesus. And I don't mean this
to sound critical of our non-Catholic Christians'
Scripture studies, but there was a sense
in which when I was; I realized
by looking back that my study of Scripture
was very thin and flat. You know,
I understood Scripture, but it was very thin
and flat. Becoming Catholic, especially through seeing
it through the catechism, the depth of it. Yeah, I imagine
that might offend people if you told them that,
though, but it is true. That's what we've come
to discover. Yes. I was
flabbergasted by that. Yeah, I remember
there's a great famous Protestant scholar, who used to say
when he studied Scripture, he'd have the Bible
in one hand and the newspaper
in the other, and that's the way
to understand the Word. Wow. You've got the Bible and the newspaper. So you interpret it
in your life. Especially
if it's Revelation that you're studying. Yeah, the Bible
and the newspaper. For Catholic,
it's the Bible and the Catechism. Mm-hmm. You know, you have
the tradition, the Church that helps you put it into
the right context. In the historical
context. A website:
comeintotheword.com. What would they find? What would they find? My blog, inviting
people into the Word, helping them do that, resources for
a Scripture study, and so on, as a Catholic. Um, yep. All right. Sarah,
thank you so much. Thank you very much. For sharing
your journey, and also,
all your work. I mean, you know, one of the struggles that sometimes converts have when they come
into the Church is; 'How do I use all
the gifts and spirits and training
that I had before, now that I'm
into the Church?' Well. There's plenty of room. We need a lot of workers. Yeah, the Lord
didn't let you skip a beat. So, thank you very much. And as I close, one more mention
about Coming Home Network. So many times, Sarah, you mentioned
that you felt very alone during that
transition time. Protestants,
you didn't have... You were losing friends, and you didn't know
any Catholics. Well, that's one
of the reasons we established
the Coming Home Network. Wish we could have been
there for you back in those days, so that you could
connect with others who've made the journey, going through
the same struggles, even the same loneliness. One of the reasons
we joke and we said about
The Coming Home Network, a lot of people
become Catholic realize, "Wow, instead of
coming individually, we could all come
on the same bus!" <i>[Sarah laughs]</i> That's the point
of the fellowship of the Coming Home Network. So, if there's a way
we can help you, please connect with us
at chnetwork.org. So, God bless you. Look forward to seeing
you again next week. [music]
