Journey Home - 2018-11-19 - Fr. Joshua Whitfield

[Music] [Music] good evening and welcome to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host for this program you know I think Mother Angelica was right years and years ago when it was her idea to do the journey home program and I'm grateful she invited me to to host it but I myself to love to hear stories of conversion sometimes it helps us remember the way the Lord worked in our life and sometimes it reminds us of things that we've taken for granted that really it's work of grace God opens our hearts to a deeper walk with Christ and maybe to a church that we never thought of before maybe we're running as fast and as far away from as we could get but then our Lord who knows us and loves us better certainly than we do ourselves reaches into our lives and awakens us stuff but it's not a we're not puppets he gives us the freedom to choose but he awakens our heart and our mind through the the gifts of faith hope and love that we might draw closer to Christ so tonight we we sit to hear another story our guest tonight is father Joshua Whitfield a former Episcopal priest and father Whitfield it's great to have you here thanks for having me Marcus it's not good yeah and it's been I think you and I met years ago yes it's been a while but it's interesting I look at your name Whitfield and those of us from our Protestant Bangaru remember a name of somebody long long ago during the Great Awakening of it a preacher named Whitfield right I'll show you that Association little gray bit of an honor yes well it's good to have you on the program great to be here thank you let me invite you to go way back and let's let's get your journey started way back well I was born in Hays Kansas in western Kansas and lived my first eight years or so in my life in Kansas we moved to a suburb of Kansas City on the Kansas side a lake the Kansas and that's where I first remember things and had a good childhood a happy childhood older sister who I loved and hated and fought with as you do and she's a sweetheart and not particularly religious we went to church you know Easter Christmas weren't anti-religious just were any particular tradition at all you dipped your told not differences toes in anything you know it my at that stage it really was a creased or experienced you know I couldn't tell you if it was a Baptist Church or a Presbyterian Church but but I you know to dwell in those early years you know it wasn't an anti religious home it wouldn't it wasn't an anti spiritual home and and my I had my first religious experience in in my little neighborhood and in Olathe Kansas and because I remember Saturdays and Sundays we wouldn't go to church but I'd I'd go out and you know back in the day you you could just let your kids wander around without fear in different world now but but I do remember distinctly you know I must have been six seven eight years old just I didn't know what to do so I just looked up and and started talking and and it it seems silly and small but but the experience was was a real one for me and I since then I knew there was a God and I and I and I it wasn't an abstract concept it was it was a God who knew me and and I spoke to him like you're not talking that telephone my day was how my week was and so it was it was a beautiful experience in it and it happened completely outside of the experience of a church my my fresh encounter with with I was gonna see their before we move on yeah that you said it was silly no it seems yeah it seemed silly and that's why I wanted this before in this program that you know a lot of times God reaches into our life in ways that are for us yeah right absolutely they lose their power maybe in the telling but they were for us and there is a powerful as anything there is yeah because it was God's grace touch as well look at how many a few if you were looking out your window and you saw the seven-year-old kid walking up and the sidewalk waking up and talking I don't know what you would think but but for me it truly to this day it's one of the more profound experiences of prayer that I've had and and and so I you know and I'm I'm still grateful for that experience I can still feel it in us in a way and and so so I that was my first sort of spiritual inkling and and in it in it carried me to to my grandmother's church I used to go down and spend time with my grandmother and great-grandmother in Tyler Texas and she was a faithful member of a great disciples of Christ Church down there in Tyler First Christian Church Tyler Texas and and I used to sit in the pews with my hot wheel cars and go out for a children's church and did that thing and and and and that was that was my first experience of church and and again it was a beautiful one you know it was real simple and and and that carried me and and when you look back on those experiences over you're still very young with her hot wheel cars was it primarily about Jesus yeah it was and it was I mean it's and that's sort of the front from from there and through my experience with with this my grandmother's church you know it it was you know classic evangelical terms me and Jesus and it was it was a it was a tangible personal relationship feeling you call it what you want but but it is it's that it's that ability to to go to Jesus yeah and talk to that that that I've never not had since that time and and so really that that you know don't don't talk too much about that because it's the genesis of everything and it's it's what brought me here to talk to you and and to me in full communion of the church but but that that that heart-to-heart you know core loquitor to human you know that that's Jesus and and in that love and and with him began on the sidewalk and it continued in my in that pew with those hot way of cars with my grandmother and it carried through my life you know those summers changed me you know really beautiful did it tempt you to become a Church of Christ no no you know again I I don't think I was so uncharged at the time I don't I don't think if you had to ask me at 7 years old what a Catholic was I would have been able to tell you and I or a Baptist or Presbyterian and in a and so I didn't I didn't grow up and he sort of with any sort of denominational identity you know I just knew my grandmother's Church and I knew these people in this this youth group that I hang out with and when I was down there and denominational consciousness really didn't happen for me until later in adolescence I was baptized at nine years old and in that in my grandmother's church in the disciples church and and that's when I began to become conscious of the fact that there were disciples and there were Baptists and there were Fisk Italians and then there were Catholics and and that that's when I started to notice this difference and and also notice it you know also notice that these differences weren't always amicable I distinctly remember I was in the fifth grade and I had these two friends Jonathan and Nathan and they had a younger sister and I remember her saying about a kid down the street she's an Episcopalian and she and her eyes rolled and I thought to myself oh what's an Episcopalian and and so really that that I can point to that as the first sort of experience of denominational difference and they were Baptists and I was disciples of Christ and so I didn't know where I stuff it and again you know religion religion what was sort of a gentle thing for me it wasn't it wasn't you know what we went to church every Sunday but it wasn't I don't know how religious had to tell you I was at the time and just I went to church and enjoyed it and no formal catechesis no prune aromatics but you were drawn to Christ and yeah by that miracle grace yeah it it looking back on it I mean that that's what it was I mean I in that little disciples of Christ Church there in Tyler I came into contact with some really beautiful caring people that the the minister had baptized me George Richardson was was extremely kind to our family in the mean time from Kansas we my dad was in the army and so we went from Kansas City to Chicago and my parents got divorced and that's what brought us back to Texas because my my on my mother's side of the family they'd been in Texas since the 19th century and so he returned to Texas and and and that church really ministered to my family my mother and and we were baptized and they showed the love of Jesus and and there's still people there who you know just are full of beauty and actually just in the process to be ordained George I reconnected with him because he had to write a letter about my baptism for my dossier for the Vatican and and it was such a beautiful moment and he died shortly thereafter and so it's just a beautiful sign of how grace does sort of work in these ways to bring people and and so I'm I'm I'm eternally grateful for that experience our guest is father Joshua would feel no so there you are how long did this last [Music] you have a call to ministry really at that time yeah so you know from Chicago to Tyler baptized at 9:00 my mother got remarried and and he was a Texas football coach right so I there's a strong Texas theme here and and we moved to a little town called Glen Rose Texas and 2000 people beautiful little town and to coach football teach and and it's there that my dad carried me over to the Episcopal Church and and because he had started going to the Episcopal Church before he met my mother yeah this is my stepfather and and when when he took us to that little Episcopal Church which was a high a physical Church Anglican Church that that that did something for me that beauty in that worship of that little parish that the smells and the bells the vestments of incense where has this been all my life you know and and and and that really that aesthetic captured me and and and it captured me at a time when you you know you're 11 you're 12 you're becoming an adolescent your hormones are starting to rage and your rebellion starting to raids and all that stuff and and so I lived the teenage life with with this this anglo-catholic high Pisgah pelion Church you know holding on to me and and you don't struck me as you were saying that is he said that your stepfather had had come to thee that church yeah before well you know I was gonna say something that usually that's the thing we need our dads having a an awakening of faith mmm and that itself kind of jumps out at me that he returned to this church right right well let me tell you about my dad stepfather who I wouldn't be here with that he and this is very interesting he's an interesting guy my dad and he he was a disciples of Christ minister in the eighties and when I became when I was a kid in my grandmother's church I'd go up to children's church and he would be the associate minister leading it little did I know that 10 15 years ago later he'd be my stepfather but in that time he had had a move from the disciples church to the Episcopal Church and in sort of a Catholic progression and although he's not Catholic now but we're working on that so I know he's I know he's going to see this but and so he carried me into the Episcopal Church and and I and I I'm grateful to him every day to all the people in my life but but his fatherly shepherding without him I wouldn't be here it was that he's gone you know and and and also I mean I should say my mother's very gentle and beautiful the freedom she allowed me to pursue the spiritual journey I mean to this day she's a cheerleader and it's it's I'm grateful yeah but so your father stepfather lets you to this high uh-huh no high anglo-catholics to a certain extent assume they're Catholics Oh exactly that's the big problem the you know so that and that's that was my experience so I grew up in this little Episcopal Church that was those anglo-catholic and and high and beautiful I had a little parish priest who who was had a Bible much like yours and was it was a great Evangelic Oh preacher he preached the screaming so I had the best he said he said I he used to say I celebrate like a papist but I preach like a Baptist and and that did it for me because because within that aesthetic that beautiful high Anglican aesthetic I fell in love with Jesus and I again and in his scriptures it's really in that context that reading the scriptures every single day being understanding that you need to know the Bible fundamentally to be a Christian of any sort that that's it's in that community that that virtue is instilled and and so you know it's it's uh it was a unique little parish and you know it gave me it gave me high Catholic formation but also evangelical formation but as you sit I mean and this is the challenge of of many of us to go our path I grew up in that experience thinking myself completely Catholic right under seeing myself as completely Catholic as as any Roman Catholic and in fact a little bit better because we had better music we had better preaching widow better vestments right all you had to do I mean you've probably heard this before I mean the the cure for Roman fever back in the day it was said was we'll just go visit a Roman Catholic Church and then then you'll see why you want to stay in your nice pretty Episcopal Church and so I grew up very much in that false consciousness that then that I was truly Catholic and and so there's it's a mixed bag because I am I just Minh my teenage years you know I like many a teenager many a young person you know you you had a little bit of Jekyll and Hyde you know you know and and so I had this this extreme love for Jesus and the church while I'm being a rebellious teenager and and those two things are contending in my soul I grew up in a little town as I said and I was one of two Episcopalians in my town because we had to go over the next and of the Episcopal Church and and they're all good evangelicals and good just sand and and and I was in a place where I reacted negatively to that and and and I didn't I didn't like what I saw in in my Christian Baptist peers and looking back on it now I see it as as more my being judgmental to be honest but but that's not a Christianity I wanted and and and and so this would have been 15 16 ish I had what I would call I guess a second conversion or an intellectual conversion something however you doing to describe it reacting to the the the phrase when I was in high school the Jesus Freak sort of Christianity that evangelical Baptist sort of Christianity which I which I hold no animosity for now but I did that because I've grown a little I said I'm not gonna be a Christian I'm if that's Christianity I don't want that and so I took that stand you know to shock Lutheran's I took that stand to might this Episcopal priest who celebrated like a papist and preach like a Baptist and I said father I just I'm I'm giving up on Christianity I'm not I'm I'm not a Christian right and father foster and dear father Foster was his name he looked at me and he said okay but do yourself a favor and read do yourself a favor and read and because because you want to know what you're giving up right and so I was he must and he knew how to play me he must have known that I was arrogant enough to take the challenge and and and that began that began my intellectual conversion my conversion of mind which which eventually revitalized my heart and what I mean by that is I started reading right and I I'm I have a problem with reading today because I read constantly and and that that's a habit that that started right then and I read and I read and I read and I and and what do you do when you're trying to explore Christianity well you start with CS Lewis I don't know why it's in the air everybody's got to read CS Lewis so I started reading CS Lewis and CS Lewis is magnificent and and I was reading God in the dog and there's that little essay in godman talk about about reading primary sources basically you know why would you read about Plato when you want to read Plato I thought this makes perfect sense so I put CS Lewis down I didn't touch him for fifteen twenty more years because I went from that to reading the Bible right and I read the Bible every day the little daily lectionary that's in the back of the 79 prayer book and and so I and and so I just started reading the Bible and I read I got to know the scripture in a way that I hadn't before and in it I wasn't an academic it wasn't I didn't study it I just read the story I just got familiar with the story of the Bible and and a little bit along the way you start reading a little history you start reading a little of the these people called the Church Fathers did you know there's these things called the church you know and this is all happening what you know going back to the source exactly say yeah and so 16 and 17 this is happening to me and and and you can ask my high school librarian I had my corner in the corner of the library where I just sat and read and and and over time but a year two years that that faith which I had renounced I rediscovered and in a way that that I've never not enjoyed and and and again just to throw you know because a reading was a big part of my reconversion I read I read Kierkegaard purity of the heart is to will one thing and and I can tell you it's a page 64 I don't know why but but he it's one of his many sort of allegories you know and of a man he talked about a man who's drowning any and he's meditating on that that bubble of air the last bubble of air that comes out of his mouth and floats to the top and and cuckoo guard I couldn't quote it exactly but he said was their hope in that bubble of air you know this first sir so all this reading of scripture there's this history and then sort of it was Soren Kierkegaard of let now let's bring this back to you what does this mean what's your decision and and as a man it sounds again it I don't mean to say it sounds silly but I guess why would why would this teenager be crying over character door in the corner of the and but it's it's there when I read that Padgett I thought I'm there right and it was an alignment of mind and heart in faith and and and and and so that this this this Jesus I had been talking to her for years you know became stronger and and and so and it's from that that you know I I went back to my little Episcopal Church and became you know a church rat you know one of those one of those kids who could never leave the church and served every time you could serve beautiful in the midst of that did you get an appreciation for the wider evangelical commitment of faith or yeah did you strengthen more in your high church Anglicanism it was more you know it was more in in the direction of becoming a good angle Catholic right and so cuz I still had it it took me a while to to warm up to that evangelical expression of Christianity and I think for me it was I had to shore up my identity as a Christian within an Anglican context and so you know which is a good thing for humans to do but but sometimes the the casualty of that is distinguishing yourself against others and so think sometimes you villainize the people that are on their own journeys you know and and I don't feel a nice probably strong word but I certainly would have told you at 17 years old that being an Anglo Catholic was the best thing in the world ever to be you know and and and because I was I was my game at the time with Milton like I said some at high angle Catholics see themselves as Catholics and it seems to me one of two things either we are Catholic and we're fine or we're Catholic on the trajectory to Rome hmm and you know some always see that's a trajectory I was certainly Catholic and we're fine at that stage and there we are but another thing I was going to comment on it seems to me that one of the problems of high church Anglicans high church Lutheran's hydra's batarians and Catholics is sometimes we can be content and focused on our externals without the internal awakening and that's kind of what it sounds like you had gone through was that you you had fallen in love with the externals of made and then struggled and then you had that internal away well it was really and thanks to that Episcopal priest Father foster because he it was it was a take read experience and and it really he knew that that that that through reading through the mind the heart would be warmed to to quote Wesley you know and and and I think that that that may have been just a unique gift of of that particular time that particular parish and for which I'm I'm very grateful but you know after that experience I was I was a hundred and ten percent in anglo-catholic and I fully viewed myself as Catholic and self-sufficient and and and so it was the mass it was you know it was everything and and that created a very strong sense that that only broke with my journey home that that that that I was fully Catholic and that's the great challenge many of us coming through Anglicanism and angle catholicism but but my experience my profound experience why don't we pause let's take it it's time for a break so let's pause there and we'll pick up because I'm curious you know at what point did you sense a call into ministry and then whether at the same time where there was an inkling of the Catholic Church and those of you watching I'm suspecting that there are I know from the emails we get that some of you watching are on journeys like father and or maybe you've been through the journey you've come home and I just want to remind you that the coming home network is here to stand beside you in your journey if you're seeking the church or if you've come home and still got questions we'd encourage you strongly to connect us connect with us because we're here to help answer your questions and guide you to deeper walk with Christ in this church if you like to connect with us you can do so at our website CH Network dot orgy seen a bit [Music] [Music] welcome back to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host and our guest tonight his father Joshua Whitfield former Episcopal priest but I've rudely interrupted you in the midst of that journey or you haven't mentioned yet well you've sensed a call yeah you know that or the call sense to me I as I said you know I was I was a church rat so to speak and it was after a Holy Eucharist one odd Wednesday I think and where I was in the sacristy cleaning up picking things up and and asking father foster all sorts questions I can t remember about what and and I and I don't even know how the conversation turned but out of the blue all of a sudden father foster said well I know you're going to be a priest oh I beg your pardon yeah you know because it for some reason it hadn't dawned on me and because I had plans to go do other things and and and and that was the seed which was planted and and about six months later make a long story short I'm back in father Foster's office and I say I think you're right and really that was the my senior year a second toward the end of my senior year in high school and and that was it and since then I mean I this is what I'm supposed to do and and this is the air i breathe vocationally but again at the time i send to that location I understood the call I saw myself as working toward being a Catholic priest right I didn't see it in terms of being coming a Protestant minister or a preacher I was an angel Catholic Anglican you understand I was a call to the priesthood and so I saw no distinction between my vocation and my journey and and the Roman Catholic priesthood I just didn't you would have thought it sacramentally and sacrificially absolutely absolutely catholic okay because you know at the time I mean I I believed I believed at the time that the mass was the mass the the bottom blood of Christ was you know transubstantiated and and so I and and again that's the big with all due respect to my past that's the big blind spot you know I mean I was a few blind spots because number one and I haven't asked you how you dealt with the history of how Anglicanism started in the first place I didn't go there but also those thirty-nine articles didn't quite deal with radiation exactly well you know I mean to be an Anglo Catholic and you know Ronald ox has this wonderful line of Anglican thought this when he says anglo-catholics ISM is the mimic Riviera Catholicism and to be an angle Catholic requires a profound imagination a real sense for the romantic in order to give a get over some of the things in the thirty-nine articles in order to brush over this history with Henry the Asian you know and and so you know the the the arguments and the hermeneutics applied to get around things like 1300 articles saying that you know things like they're not binding there has you know in the so in the 79 book they're they're classified as historical documents we pointed all those things to say well you know the Oxford movement we we can you know the track 9 D and all that stuff we pointed to all those things to create our imaginary world and and and as a anglo-catholic I was very good at it just as they are still today and again I say with all due respect but so that's that's where I was but at the time I was I was I was gung-ho and I was I was eager and I in and I to this day yeah I I believe as a genuine coal mm-hmm and and that gets into the whole beauty and grace of the Catholic Church and allowing me to pursue that under these circumstances so after after high school I went to out to Texas Tech University which is not known for its religious teaching I went out there and got an English degree I loved it I loved Lubbock Texas and after that I went to England and went to seminary in the United Kingdom at the College of the Resurrection up in West Yorkshire and and you've been England you know the College of the Resurrection is run by the community of the Resurrection a religious community founded by Charles Gore Walter freer at the end of the 19th century and the college was founded in 1903 to to train men for the Anglican priesthood from the working classes and those who those young men who discerned a vocation who weren't Oxford or Cambridge and so it had a strong Catholic sense of itself strong Catholic formation it was basically a monastic formation and in the theological formation was continental right and so so at Muirfield we read on raided luboc and von Balthasar and and it really was what time period was this would have been the early arts of the 20th century so I 2002-2003 all right and so it really was a truly beautiful Catholic formation and the greatest gift I think that Muirfield gave me was community and and discipline right coming together in prayer working together or at labora and and an introduction to Catholic theology in a sense of the Catholic Church and Roman Rite exactly and what I mean by that is is we weren't confessional II Anglicans right we didn't we didn't revere Kramnik Rama was a figure in our history but but when when we when we asked basic questions of mission and theology and worship we asked them as Catholics we asked them we didn't we didn't we didn't priority is anything particularly Anglican so we looked at the best of that you know of contemporary Catholic theology and but again we could do that because to a man every single one of us there thought well I'm a Catholic right and which gave me that freedom to read right and because they only doesn't call it theirs Eastern Catholic off yes exactly exactly so within the beauty of Anglicanism not having really any Magisterium to speak of you could do that you had the freedom to to read chapter and verse of the Catechism and and and for that to be fine and and so we did have the freedom to develop the mind in Catholicism but again it just reinforced the the sense that we were Catholic and was that reinforced all the way through all of the other all to the end and in fact I had an experience my first experience with Newman you know we had a vacation in the spring of it and maybe my second or third year and and I my great mentors at Church of England Bishop and and so I stayed in this house all week and you know stole from his library and in one week I read the biographies of Keeble Pusey and Newman right the great lights of the Oxford women John Keeble Edward Pusey John Henry Newman and only Newman became Catholic as you know and and so reading those three biographies Keeble lived this beautiful life pastoral poetic Pusey this great intellectual this great men of integrity and then Newman the convert and as you know I'm sure Newman's life after he became a Catholic was hard and difficult and and when I read it not very attractive and so looking at these three biographies in this week I thought who on earth would follow Newman who on earth would do that you know it was difficult because not only was he rejected by his former Anglican friends and family but he was not received well mm-hmm within the Catholic I was a pioneer and and it was a very lonely existence and and for me you know obviously I'm starting to think in terms of Roman Catholic versus me mm-hmm and and I'm trying to find ways to to understand that and so one of the ways was to read Newman and not like him when I first came around shortly thereafter I went with two of my best friends to Rome and we're all three Catholic priests now actually though we were just about to be ordained Anglicans we went to Rome we stayed at the Bata college it's been a week in Rome there's my first time to the Eternal City and and I that was mice did not have a good experience I did I didn't I didn't like it was full of tourists I came away from that first week in Rome thinking I'm happy to be an Anglican and I really had the strange reaction against Roman Catholicism at the time after a week in Rome and and I think and again I think looking back that was part of my trying to find myself as a anglo-catholic knowing that there's st. Peter's right there you know and what that means so when you looked at Newman or Ronald Knox or Hopkins or yeah I saw them as sort of you know brilliant may be arrogant defectors for the anglo-catholic cause and and and so I was not ready to hear them and and and so when I was ordained I was ordained a deacon in the church of england over in England and then came back and served in the Episcopal Church in Texas and and as you know in the middle of the middle of the this was been oh three 2003 your I was ordained into a fiscal church that was collapsing fading suing itself into oblivion and it was not a good time to be a young newly ordained Episcopal priest and and so like a seed you know seed gets sort of scarify ditz got to be roughed up a little bit to put down you know that that time in my life was certainly a time of discomfort and and and my Anglican imagination my angle Catholic imagination that romanticism was really starting to to collapse and to come apart and and we st. Anglicanism an Episcopalian isn't because of that crises that was happening in the church that had begun years before but escalating there were divisions oh right visions and divisions and divisions and and I was smack in the middle of it in in the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth we were a very angle Catholic Diocese and and we there was a there was a strong sort of almost swashbuckling sense of of camaraderie as we fought the fight um but but you could only hold on so long right and it's then when I returned to Newman and I reread the apologia and and this time I think I understood it and when he talks about seeing a ghost in 1839 and he sees it again you know and the ghost being the truth of the faith right he compared it to seeing a ghost as scared I knew what he meant Macedo he said has that wonderful line in the Apple Oh Jerry says be my soul with the Saints he understood that that the church is this true communion this true organism that that that started with Jesus and the twelve and you can follow it you can follow it and by the way that's Roman Catholicism and Protestantism Anglican whatever stripe you want is is an intellectual construct it's a it's a historic historiographical construct right so Anglicans the Church of England separated from from Rome and Cranmer and john joule and all these guys they tried to construct a church according to scripture and the best fathers you know John Jewell said you know the fathers do side with us you know and Newman said look you know this is this is this is a paper Church this is this is this is just an idea right but the true organism the true communion has gone through shades of light and dark certainly sin and reform but that organism that communion is the Roman Catholic Church and and you know he retreated a little more and tried to tried to you know he picked up every straw he could to keep from becoming a Catholic but as he said in the apology says I'm afraid the Roman Church is gonna be found true and he was right so anyway I read that and that's when things start to move for me and I go back to England to visit some people and some friends getting ordained and I make a trip by myself to Oxford to little more to visit the place of Newman's you know struggle and conversion as I go and and some reason no one's there except have the sisters of the Society of the work or something it's just me and this one sister she could barely speak English I'd and and but she showed me around and I saw where Newman knelt down and then she took me into Newman's Chapel and and I I'm not quite ready for an experience I'm I have my skeptical hat on and and so we go into his Chapel and she grabs me by the arm and she Yanks me down to kneel and she kneels down beside me and she and her English broken English starts praying for the unity of Christians I don't know if I in and in that experience she just started praying for Christians to be one in that place and I just couldn't help I mean I just that hit me and that that that was it you know and I knew that Christian unity was something I had to take seriously and something I couldn't continue offering my might right Anglican excuses to avoid if that makes sense so I come back to Texas and by the way my beautiful wife is a saint and supportive all the way along this isn't tooth when had you we got married in 2003 okay right so and she was a good Anglican and and and this was 2008 the Anglican Church is breaking apart you've ACMA and they had all this stuff and that the separating Anglicans meet in jerusalem and they come up with this declaration the Jerusalem declaration or whatever and I'm sitting there watching it and watching the news and reading about it and I just see we're here we are Protestants we're creating our church again you know and I break down and just cry I cry like a little child and my wife bless her leans over gives me a kiss and says we're gonna do whatever you feel called to do and and she and I she's she's a better Catholic when I'm be honest she's a sweet soul and a saint and she she has been a spiritual friend and companion and as in a shepherded us and and we became Catholic in in 2009 after visiting with Bishop van and that whole amazing journey and and and my wife we've taken us a long time to get pregnant and my wife conceived our first child and she was pregnant with our first child Magdalene when we were received and you know our first our first kid was was baptized a Catholic which again as a convert means the world to give her this church and what was the if there was either the hardest hurdle to get over to make that Roman trip or the most compelling yeah okay that's I mean the the the the difficulty I think you know is is once you as Newman said you've seen the ghost you see that that that you have to obey your conscience if you don't if you know the truth you have to make a decision am I going to pursue this truth or am I going to close that door and and exist that was the frightening moment because for people in my situation and you've had guests on like this for people in my situation to pursue truth means to give up your job to give up your livelihood and that's frightening to give up friends for people to understand why on why on earth you making this decision and then in a call that I perceive you heard it's a six year old booth right exactly wait and and so it is a frightening thing and and it it's I learned what it meant to trust the Holy Spirit in those times I learned what it meant to really trust in the Lord and and to have faith in his Providence at that time because it was frightening and and I used the word when I described it and I'm helping other people who are in that part of their journey I used the word nausea Allah you know it's a roller coaster you looking at it because it because the Lord teaches us that we're not the driver's seat and and and again I think that was important for me because becoming a Catholic is about it's about obedience it's a it's about submitting to the truth of Holy Mother Church and and and not holding things back you know I couldn't come in and be a Catholic worth anything if I'm if I have any sort of reservations if I'm gonna I'm gonna I'll give my heart in my mind to the Catholic Church but but not this you know it has to be a hundred percent and and in order to break oneself to be obedient the way you ought to be obedient man that that's that's a tough one and and so I think there's if you're in the middle of that journey you know people watching or in the in the middle of that that roller coaster Naza period there's Beauty to it because because faith faith is a real virtue and not something you just say the scripture tells us that a father and it disciplines his son from good reasons you know and often the Lord allows us to go through difficult times and you know pushes us yeah nudges us into difficult times some of my growing our faith and I'm guessing that even though at the time you were going through this though the Catholic Church may have been holding opportunities for you from doing the priesthood still your journey in you would accept the possibility that you may never be a preacher right the the biblical image that came to me at that time was Genesis 22 sacrifice of Isaac you know Abraham had to be willing to bring that knife down on his son he had to be willing to sacrifice it all and and and that passage just really hit me at that time that that I have to everything I've felt this call to the priests of this call of the ministry I I had to be like Isaac over I a bravura Isaac I had to be ready to sacrifice it and and so I came into the Catholic Church understanding that that I may never preach again and I'm a preacher that's that's like air for me I may never be a priest and I had to be say I had to say okay because because you have to lay it at the feet of the church although otherwise what are you doing you know and so that was I'm so grateful for it now in the time it was so hard yeah and your wife was right there she was right she received together by Bishop van who by the way one of most apostolic men I've ever met and who's shepherded so many of us and I wouldn't be here without him and for those that may not realize a bishop van who's out in Orange County know was was in Fort Worth in Fort Worth and was very instrumental in the key player if you will in the past provision as well as the ordinary attend a seminary yeah and Monsignor Steenson mm-hmm but the at the very used to be a good Fort Worth priest as well so well maybe quickly because of time let's get you to where you are here with the collar on still yeah sure sure well I I became a Catholic and again it's a beautiful thing I I was circling the drain of my Anglican life didn't know what was going on what was happening when father rock from Cistercian Our Lady of Cistercian in Dallas called me out of the blue and he had helped me and he still is a confidante he said do you mind if I talk to a few people about your situation discreetly sure then a few days later I got a call from then Monsignor Marc sites who was the pastor of Saint Rita Catholic Church in Dallas and we have lunch and I tell him my story everything I've just shared with you he's looking for a Faith Formation director he calls me back two days later and says would you mind becoming a joining us his Faith Formation director you betcha I'm because I need a job and and so and it sounds it sounds like a joke when I say it but I was a Catholic for about 30 hours when I became the Faith Formation director of Saint Rita Catholic community my wife and I were received on a Saturday by Bishop man and I started on Monday and and so I started as faithful nation director I ran our CIA even though I didn't have to go through it I've never been through it but I ran the RCI in and I loved it and I sort of got rooted Monsignor mark was ordained auxiliary bishop of Dallas became Bishop of El Paso his successor Bishop Robert Coerver I'm a father Robert Coerver became bishop of Lubbock in the meantime I get ordained through the pastor provision I with a little skirt through the ordinary and and and and then when Bishop Bob becomes a bishop Bob out in Lubbock in Bishop Farrell goes off to Rome I'm named pastoral administrator of Saint Rita Catholic community that I've been there since 2009 and and here we are now I'm a busy Catholic priest and as I say my being an Episcopal priest was the best part-time job I ever had because as Catholics we are where we're busy and for the Lord in a good way whenever you hear the story there's ups it starts and stops and all over the place but again when I hear your story I see the work of God's grace dirty when you're a little mm boy I'm gonna go all the way through now you were a high Church Anglican because the time I love the things I'd love to ask you but one I need to ask about Our Lady where was she at all in this journey glad you asked my journey to Catholicism was understanding that Christian should be one historically that brought me to understand the papacy and I became the Pope and when I understood when I found out that I was not a Catholic truly you know although all the while I thought I was a Catholic but when I discovered that I wasn't that I became that was a wound and I became vulnerable and I became like a child and it's at that point that a prisoner who's now Catholic said why don't we start praying the rosary in my little Anglican parish and from that woundedness from that vulnerability I felt the need and I felt what what john paul ii called the the maternal economy of grace i developed and that sounds scandalous but to my protestant friends but i stiii felt the need of her prayers and I felt her maternal shepherding in into the church and so my journey to Mary was experiencial in a way very very similar to those walks on the sidewalk but but always pointing to her son and and and she pointed me my heart to her church and so that that came at the very end and and again it's it's one of those things it's very close yeah father as we close could I ask for your blessing yeah may Almighty God bless you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit may Our Lady's prayers strengthen you and the angels protect you amen father thank you thank you so much every day it's on a journey home and our our prayers are with you likewise I thank you for all you do for us and thank you thank you so much for your witness thank you very much if you appreciate father Whitfield story and want to join us in praying for others who are on the journey towards the Catholic Church please visit us at CH network.org to be kept up to date with prayer requests from our members and to learn what you can do to help provide encouragement to these brothers and sisters in Christ again that's ch network or and again I hope that father Whitfield witness is an encouragement to you god bless [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: EWTN

Views: 14,472

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Keywords: jht01635, ytsync-en, jht

Id: ziZa8xv7lKQ

Length: 56min 10sec (3370 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 19 2018