Journey Home - 10-31-2011 - Former Episcopalian - Marcus Grodi with Caroline Rood

good evening and welcome to the journey home my name is Marcus Grodi your host for this program this is a special night in the calendar both of the church as well as our country our world in fact even as you're watching this program you may have little ghouls and goblins knocking at your front door because this is what the world calls Halloween that's what the church calls All Saints All Souls this is the time of year we remember those that are part of the the church that have gone before us and we pray for them we asked for their intercession for our lives to the end so it's it's an exciting time it's also again that time of the year which because of those days is a it's an anniversary also in Christendom because this is the anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation this was the it was on this particular time of the year when Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door that began the division and that's even as we have this program there are non Catholics celebrating Reformation weekend but the part of the journey home program is to hopefully get the word out about the fullness of this church that our Lord established in his apostles and so each week I have this privilege of introducing to you men and women who led by the Holy Spirit because of their love for our Lord Jesus Christ were opened up to the beauty of the church and such as the case tonight Caroline Ruud is our guest former Episcopalian Caroline Caroline welcome to the program and I did want to mention to the audience when I first heard your name your last name Ruud I said she must be Episcopalian because but in the sense that yes when I think of the the Rood screens right in the churches actually the Crusaders marched into battle with the cross in the name of the Holy Rood they would go into battles yeah is that where the name comes from yes the class so it has a wall that's I mean it's neat that you're very family has that as a part of your your a whole family heritage so that's exciting that's exciting maybe he tell us that whole history tonight on the program because I I love genealogical history especially when it's connected with the faith but but Caroline thank you for joining us on the program Lorien you've dressed appropriately for and I didn't think of it but here we are good as you know the journey home what I usually start is to fight the guests to take a big step backwards to help the audience know your spiritual upbringing your background before we start getting into how your heart was opened up to the church so if you would why don't you start us at the beginning all right I just like to begin by saying in the Lord's mystery he has always been everything to me everything from I was baptized when I was three and recently have been able to be given a gift of memory of that time yes and it was something that was buried for years but as I've been preparing for this program the Lord has brought it forth and I've been amazed that I actually remember being bathed I remember standing and looking up and all around being bathed and light and it was my daddy yo I knew this that this was my daddy and that the Holy Spirit loved me and I remember it can always be like this and can it never go away but I had a sense that of course it couldn't be but I was home this is who I was and that was my first identification really that I can remember of Who I am what was that knowledge of that fed to you courage to you by your parents do they have a deep faith in that no no and this is what one of the most remarkable parts of my stories that I'm actually the only person in my family yes I'm the only Catholic and I'm well let's go on yeah so I was always told that I was a gifted child and and I've been endowed with an inordinate number of gifts and one of them was that by the time I was four my mother came and told me that I would be starting kindergarten in the fall and I had already started church school in Episcopal and I was at madly in love with Jesus he's all I ever thought of was and I wanted to be a member of his family I didn't know anything about the Bride of Christ or that we are that he was actually my elder brother that we are children of Joseph and Mary knew nothing of that but I just knew I felt like a displaced soul in history so I told my mother that I needed to go to church instead of to school because the Lord had been down in the temple when he was a young boy and that I had to follow Jesus that I was going to become his disciple now I look back on that and it's quite remarkable at the time it was a matter of fact there was nothing else to do and I remember my mother kind of looking at me quietly for a moment and then saying that she thought it would be God's will if I were to go so I flew up to my bedroom and got down on my knees and asked God if I should be martyred right then and there I took the Lord very seriously and he said no in this case it would be obedience to honor my father and my mother so I said then will you please not on the language I'm using now of course but I did know the Holy Spirit and I said please take all my education and wrap it up in your mystery and when I'm done translate it so I never have to leave you and I felt confident that this was going to be done so that's how alive the Lord was to me he was he was everything and I was so you're saying that that was more of an infused knowledge of God as opposed to this being taught to you by your parents or the webserver she really was your experience of the reality of God girl perfect very profound my mother came from the background of Christian Science we know about Christian Science you know they they have a handle on a lot of things but the particular circumstances of her mother's Christian Science led to great tragedy and so she always has had difficulty with with the church my father my father's an actor so I grew up backstage and onstage from when I was very good and my mother had a beautiful natural operatic voice and I am a singer she wasn't trained and I have trained so I'm their experience of life really was around the performing arts and we would go to church as nominal Episcopalian so I was race in the Cathedral there's only one in Vermont and I remember absolutely adoring the Book of Common Prayer I that was the most beautiful why didn't people teach it in school that had such integrity to it you know and I would read it and study it and I love the altar and the cross the name rude kept me in line I just I was I don't know from early age I was dreaming of them yes I was told that rude meant the cross of Jesus I think probably by someone one of the priests or something and um I thought am I chosen and that was my am I chosen God has given me this name why and so those things were very important to me and church school was very important to me and choir was very important to me so my parents were good to bring us to church theirs was not a happy marriage honestly from the very start I have very few happy memories of my parents marriage which finally ended in doors but they both came from nothing they came from nothing and what they were tried to accomplish and were able to accomplish this is God's miracle in itself but a very strife-torn family my father and mother were both in the Passion Play which was put on by the Cathedral when I was six seven and my mother played Mary Magdalene she was much more about Mary than Mary Magdalene but she played Mary Magdalene and my father played Judas yes and it was terribly moving to me and I I just thought I have to grow up I wanted to be like Mary I I had to become like Mary and this was such a beautiful experience so moving and I and I had like an early premonition about my my father is very angry man and they're often tears around the dinner table because he is just not a happy happy man my you know they were married around just before my father went off to World War Two and then they just didn't know one another through the war and came back and they were both kids you know and and changed at least to some extent by the war itself Oh Toto come profoundly so speaking of the war one of my earliest ways that the Holy Spirit profoundly moved me also was that I my father had these great picture books of world war ii of the concentration camps the books are as big as I was and I'd balance them on my knees and turn each page and I was test I couldn't believe and I began to hear about man's inhumanity to man I had known about the cross and I asked the Lord I said these people are where we come from Jesus was a Jew I must not betray them early on I had such a sense that I had to be true to the Hebrew race and I picked any picture was a man who had survived at the camps and they had tortured him by putting a band around his head until it's squeezed he said into a permanent and I said Lord give me any one and let me covenant with you that I would never forsake you if you asked me to suffer like that and that picture came and so I asked the Lord to make me faithful to the memory of that person and to all of those people so I began to walk with with what's called the communion of saints really and I'm very aware of the people who came before us who shed their blood that this nation might be closer those are powerful pictures for a young girl to see - you know good and bad but I mean they did there you can see that the Holy Spirit was using those to open up in a good sense your care for the least of these as our Lord would say those that are cast aside by society which is what our Lord Himself was of course and and my parents were for always as well particularly my mother my mother when she was - had a sign put around her neck it was put on the train by her mother who ran away her father died when she was eight months old and her mother didn't know how to care for her children so she had her send her home to her parents you know and my father was raised in the children's home so you know it just so from and I heard those stories so deeply from when I was very young so it's so aware of the poor the outcasts and the poor and and those who didn't have and and that Jesus loved the outcasts in the poor and I knelt down and I I asked Jesus if I could become his disciple and through the Passion Play I learned about everyone who fled but Mary and the women so I said I have to be please make me Mary's daughter and I said please make me someone I will do anything put me through any suffering as long as I can be your true disciple this was my path that was my life it was just I had nothing else wanted nothing else and it obviously came from the Lord and and I said put me with the lowest and the last in the lace and I remember I would try to think of going inside of Jesus hot and I thought I couldn't I couldn't I felt too unworthy so I put myself with a leper colony and I said let me be with these and then I thought but they're innocent and I felt I'm I'm dirty and nothing I didn't even feel as good as the leper so that gave me an early sense of my my sense of my sinfulness and my unworthiness I mean I wasn't a child criminal but I had that that sense also around that time I I asked God if the devil was real is the devil real and if so could we please forgive him and then you could write a new Bible and he could come to heaven maybe he needs someone to love him like my father and then we could have a happy ending and so I prayed over this for quite wondering how much clout I had for the King you know and uh and even one day you know I I uh I had quite the battle over that really for many many years but becoming a Catholic has changed all that much so we come down to a a pivotal moment in my life I was about seven and I was sitting at the dinner table and as many many times there were tears and my mother was weeping and my father was very angry and I looked across at her and I just thought of the weeping Christ and I looked at my father and I asked the Lord police help me to find the good here at least we have a home at least I have parents think of all the children who are orphans like my father was an orphan please help me to understand why is he really angry his anger and his laughter when he was angry sounded more like a cry to me and I looked deep inside behind his eyes and was like I saw a little boy and I would pray for him and on that night difficult to talk about um all of a sudden it was like a a sword or a knife pierced to my heart and the Lord spoke to me that I needed to begin to pray for my enemies because there was going to come a time when someone was going to hurt me and I said Lord after dinner I ran up in my room which was might have it and I said um am i do I want so much to become a saint in a martyr that I've made this up or is this you and if I don't pray to this person they might lose their soul I was torn I'm I've been greatly comforted by Teresa of Avila and she and her brother running off to become martyrs so she I hope maybe oh this does happen to other people to me this was just part and parcel my everyday life and I had a vision of a little boy who's about my age and that I was to pray for him that's all I can tell you Marcus and I didn't dare not pray for him because I was fully aware that had a very lively imagination and that I wanted to be a martyr I wanted to be a saint so it always preface my prayers was if this is my imagination please remove it now but but I'd always pray for this person and I prayed all the way through my childhood from from every couple of months I would have a revisitation of the sense of things and I would go apart and I would pray with a very vivid sense that something was going to occur that I was praying for and always the Holy Spirit would remind me of Jesus for knowledge of things and that the Saints had had these things when he bestow them and I would say am I going to die and then I say no no don't tell me no not my will but thine be done you know and and I would just say always keep me of course I didn't use language that I'm using now but of a disposition so that I'll accept martyrdom whether I die of whether I live I will always be ready I will be yours I will love you and I would love everyone and I asked the Lord if he and Joseph and Mary would walk through school with me so I could they could be my family trusted no one in my family spoke to no one about any of this know what and so I literally dragged Joseph Mary and Jesus great school sitting with them you know it and all the way through high school when I went to the high school dances I would ask to use if he could be my partner I didn't like the sweaty palms and the young man with all the pomade smell and I said mother sing the love songs to anybody but Jesus and I must backtrack a little without knowing about the Bride of Christ I remember sitting up in my bedroom one day must have been eight nine and asking Jesus if he would marry me and I said we could go and be on a cloud I could leave the world and because you're the Lord I wouldn't fall through and where I could live up there and I could be angelic and I could help people and I just constantly was rather angry that I wasn't born in his time so this was this was my childhood I started piano I was on stage I used to wander around and put on the ladies makeup in the backstage when I was four or five years old my father was always the star he had trained at the American Academy with Colleen Dewhurst and the like and and so he was this star always in Perley he built up really the theater in Vermont and so I'd want around so I was known as you know Gillan Janet's daughter these were the happiest times for the family because he was on and my mother was on as his wife and she began to do a little with him they did oh man oh women together but he was the fabulous mr. Pennypacker and I was his little ballerina daughter and these were the happy times cuz no one could punish anyone so you were happy rusty yes yeah playing role yes absolutely and I had to develop a survival persona from when I was very young because I I learned very young that I could when I would try to talk to my mother and father about God it was mm-hmm but they didn't want Bible studies in prayer we'd say grace before dinner for the first few years well actually it lasted quite a bit yeah grace but mm-hmm yes now go play or you know I couldn't share it and I began to notice that other people around me were not like me my peers were not like me I was different and I would say Lord is everyone having this experience that I am inside and we just don't talk about it but it began to appear that no and I had this sense have you chosen me am I one of these in case you have I better be careful so I just I was always this way toward the Lord and no one knew no no I was very lonely child I was wondering the introversion that exchanges are all family although again the positive side of that is that you talk about a meditative relationship with our Lord that often we're called to and often many adults don't experience you described you know envisioning yourself within the story of our Lord Jesus you know to the lepers or whatever well that's meditation you're understanding where you are in the story right to get close to our Lord on that and it seems like the Holy Spirit was guiding you as a young girl to experience it as you said all the way into high school you still have this vision I do and when I started on the piano I was told that unto much who much was given much would be required by my mother she knew that Scripture little did that poor woman know how that hit me she had no idea how it was impacting me and so I thought okay I must be Joseph I had better and I was so sacrificial I could tell no one it had to be anonymous it had to be only the Lord I had to pray in secret my friends became Chopin Bach no sorry Liszt these were my these were my people and when I was at the piano or in my books I was reading and writing before I went to school which I recently found out because I found a documented letter to my grandmother when I was four oh I never would have known I was very hard for me too but it there it is for the dates on it so this was my life and my dog and my cat and nature the this was it I had very few friends and I had to always be very limited this was played to all time but I couldn't share any of this life I had an older sister I had a younger brother coming along I'm five children and so it was very very private now let us move to purity I was born with very bad vision Bria as an adult I've had surgery empathizing um but I had glasses and long pigtails and I was as plain as as a little piece of weed and no one looked at me and I was very content with that and then I reached 12 and I was one of those ugly duckling explosions into I took off the glasses something about puberty took away the glasses for a long long time and I just exploded into this young beauty that I had no tools no tools I was all of a sudden you know 13 going on 30 and and then when I was 15 I tried out for a show in West Side Story and I got the part of Anita and this was Burlington Vermont first big segue into becoming a bit of a city it is now and I was tormented before the Lord alone should I take this role this is about a prostitute should I just I'm 15 years old I'm a virgin I want to become a nun what do I do is this God's will or am I going for the fame and glory and so the Lord said look Mary Magdalene show Anita as Mary Magdalene show Maria as Mary let Jesus message come through about these poor children and about the Lord's love for all because here was Bernstein writing this show that was changing the world really it certainly changed the face of America it was it was amazing and here he was a Jew now this turn oh this is American Jew it's a chance for this can all shine so I decided to take it and my life was never the same I was a smash hit and I was a great great hit and I discovered not only could I play piano but sing and dance and it was in front of 2,000 people and in that small town I became a star overnight now enriches I think that if had my parents known better they would not have permitted this because because of the rule I became known as a prostitute when I was still a virgin I there was a young man who played Tony who was very taken with me and he was after me almost I realized now he's a bit of a stalker at the time I didn't know that kind of language but I began to have my first fans and the gossip and the slander either people love me or they hated me and and it's rumors started about me and this young boy and I mean to this day if I go back to Burlington thinking the fumes of that show of remarkably are still rounded about and all of these stories begin to circulate about me and the whole it spirits of that role taught me things about life it playing a prostitute in her 20s in the lower west side and being gang-raped and and Tony being shot and it just opened up a Vista to me of people that were real that we're living that Bernstein had wrote written about him he was a new sense of people to pray for people I wanted to meet what was this you know and then I I couldn't remain in high school I was too big for the town nobody knew what to do with me and so I would my mother had the psychiatrist I went to visit and we suggested I should be sent to a school for gifted children so they found the Interlochen school yet they're not gonna know well so I went there I went there from my last year of high school and once again I found myself wondering why this school was grooming me to be a performer but where was the Lord where was the sense of a mystery of the people who made this school possible why was everybody concentrated on getting to Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center or Curtiss or Europe where was the Lord why and I would try to talk about God you know I was brought in to the student counselor's office and I was told that I was more mature than the other students and I must not try to talk to them about these things I was gonna say they probably wasn't a lot of free talk about faith in that environment sadly and I was so taken aback and so it was just a strong sign to me okay we don't now one of the best friends I've ever had I met there she's since won an Oscar an act actress who I don't think I should probably mention her but what I learned there was that she did go in that direction and that I felt pulled by God not I I I could have played piano I started singing I also started ballet and I started a course in great books there that they let me do because I wanted this part I want to just kind of at least talk about philosophies faith and in history let's sit let's stand they did let me do that and I would go from one major to the next I didn't know what to do with myself because it seemed like I could do anything and I said both in Lord what what are you telling me I almost envy the people who have one thing they can do and that what do I do now we'd had to sign a paper in the beginning of that school saying I was not smoke cigarettes and if I do smoke a cigarette I give the school permission to expel me I was sacred to me I had begun picking up cigarettes when I was in high school experimenting and and it was for me the wonderful reason to be able to stop and never pick up a cigarette again and now that oh thank you God now somewhere around March or April I began to notice people smoking in the bathroom said that we're doing don't they take this seriously what's happening here and every day I go and you could smell and down the hall I'd hear the girls giggling and as well is this being like do I not take this seriously and I'll never forget the day I stood there and said lord I don't want to do this what are you telling me the Lord I'm gonna do this I can't stand myself and I walked in I said give me a cigarette there must have been 50 boys and girls smoke I can't Hudson three of us were caught and I expected people to come forth and everybody would sit down and wait can't give and no one came forth and three of us were expelled as an example to frighten the next there at the community well I went home I died and I went home and I closed my door unto the Lord and I felt like David I felt I have betrayed you hard you have given me so much it was so much promise and I have done this to you I can't I can't live anymore what have I done can I not be a saint anymore is it too late is this proof that my character is no good and and I wept oh I wept and all of this alone when my parents knew none of this of course their hearts were broken for me but they were in the middle of the end of their marriage and I knew didn't realize at that time but they were desperately unhappy there they were being torn apart and and I was just one more problem for them so I decided that I was going to find a mentor I had visited my mother's psychiatrist and he had been sexually inappropriate with me in his conversation and I was never gonna go back to him and couldn't tell her about it and so I sought out someone I had instincts against the Dean of the Cathedral later he was in peach for adultery and alcoholism so I'm glad I didn't go there I didn't trust any of the teachers in the area later was to find out that so many of the teachers from interlaken and the teachers from my high school at had what's now called pedophilia so my good sinks were right on row so I found a doctor who was not from Burlington and he was from South America and so I thought all right Lord I need a mentor now I was on my way to conversion obviously to the Catholic Church I always wondered about the Catholics the Catholics to Burlington I was taught that the Episcopalians were their thinking people we were the intelligent ones the Catholics were that the poor folk who needed to be told what to do and if you weren't smart and you did something somebody else to tell you what to do when you were Catholic well this didn't make sense to me what but where did the Saints come from you know so I met this heard about this doctor dr. visto South American so I thought okay he has no agenda from the roads on the hill and he did I'd been - by the way - I've been brought brought up in the small and early dancing class of the white clothes and I didn't find out until last year that no Catholics and Jews were allowed no wonder I was so miserable I hated them why don't we pause yes really please to pause yes you're getting ready to introduce this particular advisor that's too big place you know this let's pause it because we need to take a break let's come back this a little bit thank you very much for sharing us so far be with you a bit welcome back to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host our guest tonight is Caroline rude former Episcopalian we're still written the middle of her story though it sounds like we're we're getting to a place where the Lord is you know I was thinking Caroline that you know our lives shape us so much and you know God is never the cause of evil he allows but with his great wisdom part of what he allows he shapes us and who we become it's a formation across yeah there's your name and in the midst of that even as a young girl in the midst of the solitude of your life and the tensions of your life you were given this this gift of of meditating in a sense of seeing the Lord wanting the Lord wanting to be intimate with the Lord and it was a great gift of you because of the other tensions in your life is able to get you through difficult time I mean here you have an experience where you you snuck a cigarette and you get kicked out of interlocking and a lot of people would have not been able to handle that at all but you had some spiritual background was able at least reflect on on what did this mean for my life and hoping a desire for you to get someone the guidance from someone so that's where you kind of left us off you've got this man from South America I did I did and his name um I guess won't give his name that's right whatever but let me tell you that I was I realized now and I was looking for what I have founded father Leo Clifford and and some priests I was in conversion very much in process and looking for a mentor a spiritual director and looking for someone to help me with what I now know is to make reparation I wanted to live a life of penitence for what I had done and so I I remember kneeling down before my first visit no one knew he was new in town and asking the Lord that no matter what I would be Jesus servant in this man's life and that his will would be done I stood up from that prayer and I again felt that piercing of the knife and a terrible sense of foreboding no rhyme or reason I walked into that office sat down and the door opened and out came mephistopheles a tall thin man with a goatee pince-nez shining black shoes he clicked his heels Catalan yes coming so this heavy heavy Peruvian I think accent our Chilean he sat me down when he asked me why I was there and I told him that I was heartbroken over what had just happened in my school my peer group were all drinking smoking and having sex and and my parents marriage was a mess in my family was terribly torn and I needed help I needed someone to help me with how to become I wanted to become a woman of God I wanted my art to girl of glorify the Lord I was depressed the nation seemed in turmoil and now the key question I said I need to be God's servant do you believe in God he said no I'm an atheist he said I'm a fraud Ian I was terrified what had I done so I shut my mouth everything I'd wanted to pour out to him I couldn't say and so he listened to be a bit and I'm sure he must have thought that my faith was displaced sexuality my father imaged my this that and the other so I mean I I was so frightened of him and everything was truth for it in everything was sexually interpreted as an atheist and so I think that he must have thought all kinds of things that I didn't they asked him and he told me he thought that I was a very sick girl and he was going to put me on a medication I didn't want to be in a medication I wanted the Lord but he said I think you need it and it will raise your spirits and it will calm you and it may affect your appetite now I'm going to tell you briefly that the next four years of my life turned into living hell I was hospitalized eight times given 30 shock treatments and given massive doses of a drug that's only used on death row now or two it's a use for the elderly to shut them up in institutions when it shouldn't be and I don't know how to talk about this it was a time when everything turned inside out and upside down to me I didn't know what was happening why and so I would go home and I would sit alone and people say cuz you didn't have family support I did not my parents paid for the whole thing but it was I was out of the way I became the scapegoat and I was a very convenient scapegoat their marriage was falling apart and it deflected the interest on to the troubled child I've since read a book called the designated patient where there's a there's usually a member in society or in a family and it's usually the one that's the especially gifted or the one that's born with problems that become the focus and that was definitely so I spent most of my time alone before the Lord praying and I said Lord is this do you want me to be martyred please help me to stay in solidarity with the martyrs and I just prayed and prayed and prayed and he said do you remember when you're a little girl and you had that vision of a little boy and I said yes and he gave me an image of that little boy my age growing up with a knife in his boot and I said Lord I know I'm imagining things maybe I am really crazy but in case it seemed I'd better pray and I prayed and I knew both that I was being prepared for something that's all I could say now as a little girl my mother had to used to cry and say she was afraid she was going to be driven insane and end up in the Vermont state mental hospital and I had given myself to the Lord sacrificially and said Jesus I will go for her so she doesn't have to go I had my 21st birthday in the Vermont statement Hospital and so many rumors had circulated I was insane I was a paranoid schizophrenic no one knew what that meant but it sounded romantic I was a communist I was a prostitute I was being punished by God I was a Satanist the rumors flew people loved it and I was there and the doctor left town he just left picked up and left and I was left to pick up the pieces of my life and I had been that my last time in the hospital and I said lord I don't care if they straightjacket me I am NOT going to have this and a long white gown entered the room undone and she said they decided to give you no more medication you don't need it it's not helping you so in the hospital they told me I was being protected from my family I was not really ill they put me in a halfway house I got a certificate for geriatric care I started a journal for the patients and the and the staff with everyone participating of writing and everything and I was there for three months and I came home now two weeks after I got home Christmas I had an incident I was up in my bedroom now this is going to be pivotal also I had what I now knows amnesia attacked me I was kneeling in prayer and I I can't the distension of what I had been through and my recognition that something was terribly wrong and that I had been betrayed somehow and no one was telling the truth and I was trying to pray it out and be christ-like and I suddenly felt as though something came and shaved away a huge section of my insights and I lost a huge segment of my past I lost I literally lost huge segments of my memory and I felt from that point on for several years as though I had a dead me in my arms on ice and she could see me and I could see her but we couldn't talk and I live that way for decades and I really pretty much fled Burlington I was afraid of what they're gonna do to me and I picked up with it the next young man who came around and I left and I ended up ultimately in New York City and that relationship of course did not last and I and I but it got me out and I was in chelsea across from general seminary and I had like a reintroduce Keable Church and I met Sam and be Wiley he was the Dean then they took me in their arms and said oh let us help you we know of a place out at Cape Cod where you can go for retreat and be helped back to the Lord and healed and and I was just wondering I'd lost my ability to play piano I could kind of sing but I'd lost a lot of my abilities and my vision in memory yeah yeah very very dramatically and I couldn't tell anyone if I didn't know what it was I just didn't in New York was the place to because no one knew me and I could hide out well I think what's going on here and so they sent me to this place called the community of Jesus they did not do research because a Rockefeller relatives living there and it was supposed to be an incredible place it was a diabolical place and I was held there for a year I was beaten and shot in the cellar my evil thoughts broke machines and made babies cry I was punished I was forced to do disciplines of cleaning had to ask permission to go the bathroom was never allowed to be alone it was a matriarchy all were the Episcopal liturgy they built themselves a church and I was told I was so insane I wouldn't know the truth if I had a terrible terrible place I won't get into it it became another cross the cross loomed the and I said Lord make me like you these poor people how did they get here how did this happen am I going to die here I was so everything had been so terrible if this was just more so I just said Lord not my will but thine be done that was my prayer not mine and I began to have great compassion for these people how would they have come here there's since been an expose in that community by a Boston newspaper who could be part of when in pretending he wanted to be there and he got out took pictures and he called it the community for the up an out and doing or New England Jonestown so you know it's quite quite the place so I finally rather more escaped and got back to Burlington and and was taken in by my cathedral and protected from my parents were having quite the time with that marriage ending and my father had begun a series of affairs although I didn't know it at the time and so I was taken in by some other people and protected and I I knew I had to go back to New York because that's where my I had gone I didn't dare stay in Burlington frankly and and I prayed I had a year at a Catholic College getting back on my feet and that was that was Catholicism I began to feel why am I not here why am i why do people say this about the Catholics so with much prayer I decided to go back to New York City and I went back with a few dollars in my pocket and moved into the Lower East Side told that that's where all the students lived and that's where all the poor people live and it was okay and on epiphany Eve I had dinner with a new Episcopalian friend a little Christmas and I came home to my apartment and I opened the door I heard a noise behind me and I turned around and a tall fellow with dinky hair was behind my said hello I'm new here do you live here and he pulled out a knife and that was my appointment that was my appointment that the Lord had been preparing me for now I remembered nothing but I remembered that and I knew where I was and I looked at him and I said may the lord have mercy on you and I began to pray for him and he said shut up and grabbing by my hair which is very long and led me obviously knew the area very well and led me down to a gutter behind and I kept praying I said may the lord have mercy and prayed out loud so we get here with my voice and I said Lord if you're going to take my life for this soul I am yours but if you can spare him committing a murder please do and I said what can I say to him to comment and I said please don't hurt me and his voice changed and he said I'm not going to hurt you well he raped me but his heart wasn't in it and he grabbed my bag and threw everything he'd oh but he opened up my bag took all my money I just cashed my check from rent picked up my slippers I come from dance class that day before I went to church and he squatted there in the snow and he said I didn't know you are a dancer and I said yes strange and then he said okay if you make any noise I'm gonna send my buddy after you he had no one so obviously the Lord had decided to spare me now there I learned how faithful I was and there I learned that I had not imagined that this at all as my whole life had been preparation for this sacrifice and and I learned how faithful I was that changed everything from that night on that was the end of an era and I walked the next day I went to dance class and I went to work you know in a restaurant perfectly calm well I held the Holy Spirit's hand I rejoiced that I felt like Lord I'm becoming one of their Saints I really am yours I'm yours I'm okay and I it spurred me I began to search for where I belong I went to I would spend six months in a Baptist Church a year with the Church of the Nazarenes I would visit the Catholic Church back to the Episcopal Church I did a Christmas Potter - and ballet study ballet couldn't get back into the piano but I could do ballet so I actually performed loved it it was so intense that it didn't have to think about anything the discipline was so intense and I was like it healed my body it was theology of the body and it was a chance to bring my body into honor as a woman that had been harmed and I felt that the Holy Spirit was dancing with me and teaching me how to dance the Lord it was the most radiant ly beautiful experience if I could have another life I would do nothing my dance and I did a pas de deux of Mary and Joseph at a place called the Lambs Club in New York City and it was on their way to Bethlehem that was a Christmas party and that was my first real it was the birth of Mary came into me because I did it with her I know I didn't know Catholic I knew that I'd always loved Mary and I'd been kind of a closeted Catholic but Mary was mine and it was my excuse to be with her and I asked her to show me show me and that dance was my heart and soul was everything and so I moved on there and people would take me in from the extremes of the evil that I had suffered people would see my face and say oh my goodness and they'd let me stay in their homes that they'd send me on vacations or they'd give me special treatment they saw something in me and and it was just quite miraculous and so I kind of was in a dream walking through everything for years in New York City looking for where God wanted me and I ended up at st. James Episcopal on Madison Avenue and I helped to start a group for the suffering Africans back before Adar fir and I chose Sudan as my nation and I met the bishop Macra max Ghazis I don't know if you know who he is he's been on EWTN a lot he was the bishop in Nubia and it'll be in mountains and he told me about the Catholics the African love for Catholics was something I'd never seen and I knew right then I guess we'd been growing oh my and within months I started catechism privately with some because I did one weight and I was converted on my birthday on my birthday I entered the church so is born twice and this has been my life has been the sacraments it has been adoration it has been absolutely bathed in the saints it has been Mary I it's my excuse to be myself it kept the Catholicism has given me permission to be Who I am it's given me an open door to worship I believe he calls all his children to be Saints and that so few of us know that that's what he wants I think he wants us all a saint is who were meant to be and so you know I I the sacrament of reconciliation is greatly liberating him there once a week I go to Mass every day if I can and I'm an adoration every time I can be and I read the Saints I they I cannot describe the transformation that has been mine in my brief time as a Catholic it is everything to me you had mentioned that your mother had made the quote of that scripture yes - unto whom much is given much is required but there's a way of seeing that also that all of our life the good and the bad shape who we are and then draws us to God if we're open to that even the bad of your life then you had had yet it was a preparation that seems to give a sensitivity to your own soul for others as well as the guiding of the Holy Spirit even to see that difficult moment with the man and the knife and what had happened yet to see that that in the midst of that was a blessing of God and there was a soul who was the epitome of the distressing guise of the poor there was a soul who is far more indeed than I was the distressing guise of the poor comes and in many faces and we must look for them everywhere because who could be more need than people who have who have come to such a point we have an email from Carol from Pittsburgh how can practicing Catholic devotions deepen one's faith in the sacraments especially the Eucharist for you the devotions of a the Rosary I've come to ask Mary to prepare me for the Eucharist and before I receive the Lord I always ask her to receive him in me and to form him in me because I can't do the job of it that she can so the Rosary is a very important devotion for for the Eucharist on st. Peter Julian e-mart has become a very important saint to me because epiphany was my Epiphany and that's when he introduced that to the world on epiphany so I would say that the rosary and the study of the Saints is an act of worship we're reading about the constant humbling the constant humbling of yourself to recognize that we are dust and the more we can accept our poverty and our nothingness the more Jesus can fill us in the Eucharist the more real he becomes for busy trying to become someone but get in his way if we accept that we're nothing and that helplessness a childlike place then we can receive him and palpably feel him take over our lives with with the Eucharist and it seems that again as the gift of the Spirit you had a sense of the model of the saints and the martyrs from absolutely earliest days of your life remember absolutely in the American churches is more spoiled we mustn't be afraid of the cross without it we're in God's Way well thank you much for the guest thank you thank you now come on Christmas and Easter in other wise you know and until we face the cross we're not really living the life it's there that is the release and not death and dying we live let's say we've got folk watching I don't know if they've had the exact experience that you've had but have gone through really difficult in one why has becoming Catholic you know they had a quick word really helped you see God more clearly in your life the church is Jesus own it was the church and Jesus is the King of the Jews and he started a church that was Jews and Gentiles and there's the root of everything that we are Catholic has the traditions it has it has the history it is the story of Christ and his body being fleshed out through the centuries and once you know it how could you do anything else and yet I remember people who told me that Pope was Satan you know he's our Pope we're so privileged to have the Poteau we have know sometimes it is in the one hand for some it's you can give all the apologetic reasons but like you said once you realize the beauty of the church what we're saying with all of its problems was we're not perfect for what all of its problems but we are he's everything he's everything all right Caroline thank you so much for sharing your story the intimacy of your story in our prayers are with you it cuz we're on this journey together so thank you very much Caroline thank you thank you for joining us on this episode of the journey home I hope the way the Lord has guided Caroline is an encouragement to you and your walk with our Lord Jesus in His Church god bless you see you next week you

Channel: EWTN

Views: 13,510

Rating: 4.7664232 out of 5

Keywords: EWTN, Journey Home, Marcus Grodi, Caroline Rood, Former Episcopalian, Catholic, JHT01333

Id: nK6JD3cJtuE

Length: 56min 24sec (3384 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 01 2011