Journey Home - Open Line - Marcus Grodi with Dr. Scott Hahn and Kimberly Hahn - 09-06-2010

good evening and welcome to the journey home my name is Marcus Grodi your host for this program this is a special edition of the journey home excuse me this is the beginning of the 13th season of the journey home I don't think Mother Angelica and I thought this program would be going this long but by the work of the Holy Spirit it continues we'll talk about that in a moment what I've always done for this particular episode of the journey home is to invite back guests that are good friends special guests that would help us celebrate the beginning of a new season mother Angelica's actually appeared on this particular episode at several times but I couldn't think of any other couple that I would more love to invite to this program than the couple that's joining us tonight they've been on not only the journey home program before but on many other EWTN programs you're very familiar with them dr. Scott and Kimberly Hahn it's great to have them on the program and we're going to have some phone calls and emails for them in a moment let me first do is I always do is welcome to the journey home backs Kaiba Kimberly Simon happy Anniversary for this that's amazing I'm going to make a comment that we've said a bazillion times as would you've ever have thought that here we would be years ago and I'ma let the audience know that I've known this couple for quite a while if I could tell something because we were in seminary together and 30 years ago exactly right and you know it still amazes me when I've I try and remember back because we weren't as good friends then as we are now I mean I knew of you you were far too Calvinist for me and I think I always say I played too much sports then buried my nose in the books like you both were great students but but when I think back on that I do remember and in which I've always said I think that's the reason why when when you two came into the church and I heard about it later the reason that I was so open to your witness is because I've always known your integrity and your love for Jesus Christ I mean that's what was behind and even when you were staunch Calvinists it was because you were deeply committed to Jesus Christ to follow what was true and at that time our knowledge of what was true it was a bit truncated because of our past but actually how this gets in another area but because you know your journey in the church was really a trajectory of some of the things we had learned in seminary sure what truth of what we learned in seminary and so in that sense we're very thankful mmm very thankful to the seminary went to yeah I like to say this what I'm more grateful for my evangelical formation today that on the very day I was ordained a Presbyterian pastor and I was very grateful at that moment but I look back and I realize okay there were flaws there were gaps but there was so much substantial truth that we got and we look back and becoming Catholic is not subtraction it's addition the good news just keeps getting better and I would take it back even further and say it really traces back to the heart of the home in which I was brought home from the hospital and in which I was raised and I am so deeply grateful for my parents and their faithfulness to God for all that they really commit to him every day I'm very very grateful actually I knew you if I mean your father before I knew you I believe it was I called together and we stow on Minister retreats together and I remember him I remember the time that he became very a staunch warrior against pornography yeah and remember him when he showed up on that retreat and we talked about that and he saw in his heart how much he saw that that was was destroying people's lives and at that retreat one of the ministers opened up it never opened up before because of the witness of your father and that's we saw that good thing now the audience you've 99.9% of you know their story coming into the church if you don't that I think there's a book on it if not a couple and you know you've told the story on EWTN Roma Sweet Home is the book that that has changed so many lives including my own in your stories on EWTN but I always ask the guests to at least give little five-minute summary of why the Lord opened your heart to the Catholic Church for those that might not know or not remember all the details yeah all right first you'd have to go first stories first okay I'll try to do it two and a half minutes you know I was raised in a nominal Protestant family we didn't go to church all the time and it didn't make much of a difference I got into a lot of trouble as a juvenile delinquent at the age of 13 14 and that I got saved through young life I remember hearing the gospel in a way that just to touch my life at precisely the time I needed my life to be changed and changed by God alone and the formation that I got for the rest of my years in high school was really steeped in Scripture but it was also in the reformed evangelical tradition of Calvinism and so I became not just your average Calvinist but a very staunch and vibrant one so I went off to college studying theology philosophy as well as economics studying Greek falling in love with the most beautiful gal on campus we teamed up together in young life for the last two years of our four-year stint there and after we both graduate in 79 we got married and got back from our honeymoon packed up and moved off to Boston to study at gordon-conwell and just through a number of providential circumstances things happen in the three-year program there I think the first step was something that Cuba we might relate a little bit more about but discovering that the Catholic Church had it right on contraception I didn't see that one coming and she shared that with me and I had to admit in all sincerity that the Catholic Church was right and so was the Bible and so was historic Protestantism but still I wasn't really willing to give the Catholic Church anything more than just credit for getting one thing right you know but it was my third and final year that I began to read the father's much more in-depth and I think it was largely for practical reasons because I was looking for sermon material I was going to after graduation came ordination and I couldn't just Rob for my favorite preachers because they were on TV or radio they were publishing so everybody would reckon the sources so I just began to comb these pages of the Sunday Sermons the early fathers I began to realize they read the Bible differently than I did they read the old and the new together which is what I strove to do but they did it in a way that was just much more penetrating and so after a few months of this I had graduated began to preach and I began to really employ this notion of reading the old and new together typology as it was known as was known him all of a sudden everything started coming up Catholic oh the Eucharist especially but baptism as well and what it meant to be born again and the whole Gospel of John was most especially sort of the place where I began to realize for the early church fathers have it here and in John 6 with the bread of life discourse the Eucharist eat my flesh drink my blood you know within less than two years I had studied and prayed myself into a crisis of faith you know which required me to kind of step away from the pastor it step out of the the role I had as a professor at seminary and then go in search of a church that fit the job description that I found in the whole Bible not just the New Testament not just with proof texts but reading the new and the old contextually and it was in the mid-80s we moved to Milwaukee so I could begin studying for a doctorate at Marquette thinking I'm going to need at least five years to make this conversion look intellectually respectable and then I went to Mass secretly it had been a second day a third day after two weeks or so of attending daily Mass I just felt my heart transform my mind illuminated and the Scriptures just really coming true in a way I never imagined before and so when I broke it to Kimberly after having pledged to her I would wait five years here I was asking her to pray about allowing me to do it after one year and barely one if even that and she asked me why and I just blurted it out because delaying obedience to what I know is true is feeling more like disobedience every day and I hadn't I really hadn't plotted that response but when I heard myself say it I realized that was really the bottom line that was the the truth of the matter the heart of the matter and gracious woman that she was she came back a few hours later and said I prayed I'll release you what are we talking about here well what we were talking about was becoming Catholic at the Easter Vigil of 1986 which was four years before I told her I would and I think in God's wonderful and humorous Providence four years before she did and that was a tumultuous period for the for the both of us well my background is deferring that my father's a Presbyterian pastor and my mom was a Christian ed director at a church and so they they married wanting to establish a Christian family and I was their firstborn so I know I was covered in prayer and taught about the Lord from the beginning and I still had a conversion experience I still had a moment in which Christ broke through really profoundly in seventh grade and and where I realized things weren't just true on on a test that you would take but but deeply true Jesus died for me and for my sins and and and it was transforming even though I was basically a good girl before but there was an inner transformation that had to be God's work and I you know started prayer meetings in at school and wanting to share my Bibles on the top of my books from then on junior high and high school public school and and as I've gone to reunions people have sought me out because they remembered that I was a Christian and knew that I would want to know they had become Christians after high school the college name I back outward they figure we are but the strange like when I tell you were Christian your classic yeah that had some odd conversation specific in in college we met and he recruited me for young life and that was just such a powerful experience of ministry and really opened my heart very deeply to Scott and wanting to be his partner in ministry for life and so seminary for us was just a chance to go very deep in our faith and I also earned a master's different masters but an MA in theology and and after graduation being a pastor's wife to me was like the pinnacle here we are you know he was teaching some seminary classes and and then really the ground began to move and at that point I had one baby and one on the way not feeling like I had leisure to sit and read theology and really the Masters was done so I didn't really want to delve deeply in my you know free free few moments and it was it was very hard my thought was I'm just going to maintain this course and Scott's going to go way out here and I'm just going to wait and catch him on the rebound because I don't need to have this whole you know up and down and and he would try to say you know this it doesn't look like the same faith but this is like the Acorn in the oak tree one has become the other and and this is all interrelated it's everything that we believe I'm not repudiating things but it really was a crisis of faith for me because I did not want to go there and as we left for Milwaukee you know I had this promise firmly from him it would be minimum four years and maybe longer and yet it wasn't when he came with that request to release him it was ten days before Easter and in the process of him converting we both lost a number of friends I he was not the only one that lost friends and it was very difficult to know how can our marriage survive this because I found some family a long way from family and if I I felt like if I revealed the depth of my pain and anguish to either family they would rally to my side which wasn't about sides and I didn't know if our marriage could survive that and so it was very hard to remember writing my prayer journal who can I go to Lord and do not tell me Mary and the Saints that's not what I'm going to do but you know he would push I would hear this little jingle and I recognized that they were rosary beads and Scott would go out the door having had a difficult conversation with me and here he's going to take a lovely little walk with Mary and you know and then have to come back in the house to deal with me and it was so hard I mean to be to feel jealous of Mary how do I compete you know and it says and the turning point for me really in large measure came through the challenge of my own dad which he had no intention of trying to encourage me in the direction of the Catholic Church but he said to me do you pray every day the prayer I pray Lord I will go wherever you want me to go I will say whatever you want me to say it will do whatever you want me to say do and I will give away whatever you want me to give away and a little sarcastically I said no dad I don't pray that prayer these days that would mean becoming Catholic and he said oh honey this has to do with Jesus being Lord of your life and and he said if you can't pray that pray for the grace to pray that prayer and it was 30 days I had jotted it down in my journal 30 days that I just prayed for the grace to be able to relinquish my life again completely to him and the beautiful thing is that what God did was instead of locking my heart away which was my fear he showed me I was the one who caged myself and he was unlocking the door and all of a sudden it was joy in discovery and reading I mean it was a mix it was I did not want to become Catholic I mean and it was not like well wasn't Scott smart enough to convert you it wasn't about brains because there's your heart has to be there anyway this is much longer than five minutes but I'm grateful there has absolutely never been one moment that I have said I am so sorry I did that oh not a moment of regret no yeah and I think that issue of heart in and mind are are true and even in our work in the coming on network we don't our motto is we don't push pull or Prada anybody into the church because it isn't just head nor is it just heart it's got it it's got to be right you get a sense that this is right within and to me heart isn't feeling heart heart is your soul I mean it's a deep connection with God you know I think I was in that class when you studied the about the contraception I Kember what the topic of the class was but I think we had a fix yeah Christian ethics yeah I was in that class I think I think I was in that class although I think we had different topics and I dealt with racism it was the topic that I chose ending if I think if it's the same class our teacher was a young life guy okay okay you know one of the young life people I don't mention his name yeah was one of the young life guys which which also connects us because we were all young life because I was young life I work for young like before with the seminary and there's something about the evangelical commitment to Jesus that carries with it the same thing your dad told you and my dad was also young life yeah fact that Jim raver and the founder of young life in Texas actually recruited her father right out of college bringing life to the East Coast to Pittsburgh which ended up being where his son-in-law was saved through it years later yeah we have an email that this is good this is a good time to bring this email in because after we hear your story stories this is a fine email comes from Diane from Alabama each week on the journey home I hear another fascinating conversion story why are there so many men and women even ministers being called home to Rome now good email why now I mean well first of all do you think from your experience the two of you do you think that in fact we're seeing more journeys home to the Catholic Church through clergy and other intellectuals than in the past all there's no doubt about it I mean I and to try to reduce it to one factor would be impossible but I think you can observe something of a cultural crisis the likes of which nobody saw coming not 30 40 50 years ago that we see the collapse of social and moral values and and you know if that only happened in the world you know that's one thing but for that to have spilled over into the church the the mainline denominations and even some of these non-denominational churches that have sprung up in the last century or so you know I think that's what's causing a lot of people to take stock and say you know as you put it to go deep into history is deceased to be Protestant quoting Newman but this seems to go you know to go deep into Scripture to go deep into culture and to recognize as father Benedict Groeschel has said you know 50 years from now there might not be a single institution that we know today still standing except for the Catholic Church I mean the the foundations are being rocked and this is how scripture describes God's judgment at certain periods of history where political government where economic institutions where social fabric is torn and I think all of us are a part of that and yet we all have our own individual stories and we have to kind of take a look at okay where are we where have we been where are we going and why is this denomination or that denomination of this and said you know the Catholic Church seems to be the only thing that has made it into the 21st century and really shows that kind of divine life that is going to survive the collapse of yet another civilization now and I remember it being struck by Scotts comment even though at that point I had no interest at all in the church Catholic Church but I remember him holding our firstborn Michael and he was not a year old and he said what church will he raise his children in and for him that was such a crisis it was like I'm going to tell him this is the truth and try to plant him in a church and how will I know that that this will even be here for his children or that he'll be able to do that in my own family you know my father's one Presbyterian denomination I have a brother's a different Presbyterian I have a brother who was and now he's free pastors and then and then the others are members of other denominations and I think that was one of the things that struck me that's so radically different in the Catholic Church you have something called a deposit of the faith that cannot be changed yes our children need to understand why the Church teaches what she teaches but so it's not rediscovering or reproving it but it is a discovering you know why does the church see what she teaches and it can't be changed and that's part of what so many of our friends where pastors have wrestled with as their denominations have tended toward a liberal approach and the only thing they can do is become schismatic and separate so that they can hold on to the trachea the Presbyterian group that I was a pastor of back in 1990 at the rate at which they were losing members anticipated they would be closed now three years from today because of the rate and they're still losing at that rate but what I want to get get to it was when you hit me with the first timothy 3:15 passage when you told your story that well you got hit and then you get me with it in other words what is the pillar and foundation of truth and i like you with scripture and realized normal scripture says it's the church that really opened my mind but what what i wanted to talk about though is this issue of why are there so many today 250 years ago if we were living in new england near where we went to seminary there wasn't a catholic anywhere for six generations people could have lived in new england from the time of the pilgrims until the revolution and never have met a catholic and so think of how hard it would have been for a protestant minister in new england staunchly Puritan to be open to the church the information was not there that's not anymore by the way as a fun note about one of my favorite theologians was jonathan edwards who was a theologian pastor and evangelist in massachusetts and you know he of course he would have circled true the Pope is the Antichrist and the Catholic Church is the of Babylon and the Reformation is the rediscovery of the gospel but in fact he didn't meet Catholics so all that was a continental European phenomenon you know and also in England but in New England it was really a chance for Protestantism to kind of find virgin soil plan itself and then discover the principles of anarchy that were embedded in Protestantism going all the way back to the early 1500s you know and I think that's what's coming home you know I a lot of a lot of these chickens you come to roost in this sense that's hot you know people will hear okay according to the firts there are over 30,000 different products and denominations you know once I never gets that big it's almost meaningless but when you actually experience the disruption the disintegration of denominations and the splitting of congregations then suddenly it's not a statistic it's not an abstraction it's a heart wrenching experience and you see families divided and you realize God if you're a father certainly you must have died designed this church of yours with a better policy that just sort of every man for himself when it comes to the Bible but just to illustrate that a good friend of ours who has now come into the church with his family went to a non-denominational denomination and an association probably call it that's when we call ourselves when I was a count reason and you know set up movie theater style so they all stop and get their coffee and literally bring their coffee cups into into the church and that morning yep theater seating that morning the the person leading said we're going to do something a little different we've set up communion self-serve and so at any time that you feel moved during the service you just come forward and you just take communion and at that moment our friend said this cannot be what Jesus founded and I think that's part of what there is a hunger in people's hearts to say surely the Holy Spirit has had a plan and he's at work and I want to I want to be a part of that and and part of the point I was making is that EWTN is one of the examples of the what they didn't have to and fifty years ago that we have God has given us this the media in so many ways so there for the first time scholars can't hide in some little church and in New England right Northampton live their whole life and never made a Catholic you cannot be in isolation anymore you see the Protestant you see everything just the way it is you can you put your finger on something - because scholars are now making this move in a way that say 13 years ago when the program began and you know when we we collaborated with you as you had the inspiration to start the coming home network back in the early 90s you know for us it was really ministers and missionaries and okay though I was getting a doctrine though I had that scuttle event and I was a professor all of that stuff I didn't really hold out much hope because in the Academy the the professional pressures that are brought to bear upon you are not only external in terms of being hired and getting tenure and all of that but they're also interior intellectual pride is certainly the occupational hazard more of the scholar I think than the Pastor almost any other group in our society and so to see that in the last five or ten years you know just last week the great Lutheran theologian Michael rout announced his reception of the Catholic Church but we've had Bruce Marshall as well you know we've had Douglas Farrow and so many others is back with Francis Beckwith I mean not just five or ten not just 50 well over a hundred academics young scholars middle-aged scholars senior scholars in Scripture in church history in philosophy and ethics apologetics it's across the board it's one of those things where thirteen years ago when you began his program I never would have suggested to you look around that category for guests but here you are getting these like Frank Beckwith and others it's remarkable it really is and again we've seen that the work of the Holy Spirit using the media the way it was intended which also reminds me that because we can't hide anymore it even reminds us how much more you know the first Peter passage about being ready at all times it give a reason for the hope that's what the verse goes on a pure conscience that's right our witness needs to be just as strong and of course the media has put our dirty laundry out there too but let me ask you that from your experience Catholics what almost 25 years or have you been like yeah I'm coming up to my quarter associate anniversary I mean we see the the lives in the witness of so many that would be an encouragement to us but we've also seen scandals have you've seen that affecting the flow of those into the church surprisingly not I mean you think back to the real explosion of scandal in 2002 you know at that moment would have thought there's just no way this can continue your program you know it's going to be you know bereft of I mean all networks we thought yeah and yet within three years of course we had the death of John Paul and then suddenly you know it was like going through the worst of times and then suddenly seeing the best of graces where you know with the death of John Paul and then the ascendancy of Pope Benedict came an unexpected springtime of graces and an unprecedented profusion of conversions from Ministers but as I was saying a moment ago from scholars theologians philosophers biblical exegetes and so on and so you look at that and you realize it's the same kind of thing that Chesterton and many others have commented upon that the closer you get to the Catholic Church you know it's not going to look like a speedboat you know it's like this old boat that you know this would have sunk a long time ago if it hadn't been designed by Almighty God you look and you realize it has so many flaws so many problems there's just no human explanation for its durability and longevity except Christ said what he meant he meant what he said you know the gates of hell an upper it was you that prepared me for that I don't know if you remember but I was not in the church yet and we had moved to Steubenville and we lived in the house and there was one time when I was sicker than a dog and bed and you stopped over at the house and you said you know you might want to read this book just to find out what you're getting into and you gave me an mug ridge's book oh yeah that's let's see which she just lays it all off yesterday and I remember that and I came out of that experience with the advice I have given when it comes to the scandal in a church and this is what I learned from what you told me four-step process number one you can't be afraid to look at the church there were sinners yep it's there number two on the other hand you also got to recognize that that isn't just sins in the church it's everywhere else too right we knew that the media doesn't always cover the others but it's in the church number three have you've done that you look in the mirror and then number four you recite for ten times very prayerfully but for the gray so God go I I mean it sauce and then you get ready to go to confession and along with that is realizing that the majority of the church is not here on earth you know as Protestants we're sure we tend to just so separate heaven and here and when we realize that the church is you know in heaven primarily and yes on earth and yes guided by the Holy Spirit yeah Amen quarter you feel out why I've always loved football I've always loved football because I thought it just the the idea of football such a great illustration of teamwork and everything but the part about the football game that I never thought about what's the stands are just as much a part of the game I mean that's the whole church right the cloud of witnesses and they're not just spectators I mean they're they're not dead for one thing they're more alive than we are and you know the church that was founded on Peter is it just like was founded on Peter a long time ago he is more actively engaged in assisting Christ through his prayer along with the other apostles that are the foundation stones in John's vision they're in Revelation 21 I mean as you say there are two churches one up here you know one down here one up there to liturgy it's one liturgy it's one church and the church in her essential reality is not reducible down to an earthly institution it really is where Christ and Mary and all the saints and angels are and when it gave to that you know to Peter the keys the kingdom the keys the kingdom of heaven whatever you bind on earth if you look carefully at the Greek it's will have already been bound in heaven the earthly tale doesn't wag the evalee dog it's the other way around and that that insight I think is so often lost even to Catholics they tend to think of the churches just their parish or their diocese and the Chancery or maybe the Vatican you know and the papacy but it's so much bigger it's not just worldwide it's Universal it's stretching from earth all the way to heaven and there alone do you find the members in their perfection let's take just take a pause there and take a break we'll come back in a moment some of your questions for dr. and Kimberly obviously welcome back to the journey home this special edition with two favorites here at EWTN dr. Scott Hahn and kimberly Hahn and it's great to have them back for lots of reasons good old friends we've got a caller waiting before we go to the car just real quickly you know you've both have written so many books and I know these are books to help the audience Catholic or non Catholic understand the faith if you want to mention one book right now which would you like to mention for the audience yeah okay the third in my Bible study series on proverbs 31 called Levitt and blessed biblical wisdom for family life ok very good and my latest Doubleday book was the work of the year of the priest it's called many are called rediscovering the glory the priesthood is really designed for young men who you know who might you know be considering who could use some encouragement but it's also designed for priests that could also use some encouragement and just for ordinary Catholics to discover what it is that God has given to us in holy orders it's an amazing sign know that in many ways the end of the 20th century was a real attack on manhood life that's what it means to be an ongoing father yeah yeah a man and that's what it was yeah this book many are calls to show that God began with that your goals you talked about Mayor Joe Freda the great quarterback now who's appreciative for diocese and and many others like him to have have discovered their manhood not in spite of being priests but precisely because of their priesthood tomorrow we have a caller on the line hello it's John from Wisconsin hello what's your question for us Thank You Marcus listen I've been married for about 30 years and I've got a feeling that a calling that I need to become Catholic and every time I talk about with my wife she throws up a wall and I don't want to tear my marriage apart and but I've got this calling or this feeling that God's calling me to the Catholic Church you have any suggestions how I can deal with this with my wife and you know yeah you know thanks John a great question and I wasn't sure if he said that she throws up a wall throws up on the wall but probably for some it's the same man when people are not wanting to consider the Catholic Church right but what do you do for John well I'll respond in terms of some of the mistakes that I made yeah I would say first of all you know you go to Our Lady and start praying for your wife because let's face it she needs special graces because she's married to you you know my wife needed special graces because she was married to me and you know the first step is to pray for her more than ever before the second I would say if they get spiritual direction from a priest who is experienced who's wise who's not necessarily young and on fire but old and seasoned veteran and get that kind of advice the third thing is to take that advice and to really back off the kind of debating or the kind of setting straight or here if you'd only read this you get all your questions answered and really intensify the love the unconditional love the romance you know not any pretentious stuff you know but you know make it a priority to complement her to take her out on a date to go do for your bride what Christ does for his I was going to read you a verse just I love you to comment on scriptures but in this particular verse from first Peter about husband's responsibility adds a little bit more than even Paul does when he says husbands live considerably with your wives bestowing an honor and the woman is the weaker sex since you are joint heirs of the grace of life in order that your prayers may not be hindered yeah I mean are we I mean how often people's what can I do to help them come into the church and when we say we'll pray for them as if its flippant right right like that's all you can do but it's not it's substantial its substantial and you can you can ask your guardian angel to pray you can ask your guardian angel to work with her guardian angel to pray and and you do need to differentiate I mean Scott and I talked a lot about it the difference between the role of the Holy Spirit and the role of the husband and not to confuse the two I think the closer you are and marriage has got to be as close as you come it's fewer words it's greater actions when Scott began to go to confession and come back different gentler you know looking for ways to serve it spoke more to me about the true fulness of the sacrament of confession then going through a Bible study on it the one thing I would say which is probably not what you'd expect me to say is it's very important that you honor Christ before all and when you have that conviction that to not become Catholic would be to disobey the Lord then you need to release the grace you can release into your family by becoming Catholic and to the best of your ability you say to your wife I'm not doing this to spite you even though it may not feel like it I am doing this out of love for you and first and foremost out of love for Christ but what do you think about the importance of listening on this and then they get to this that often when you know in our work in the coming home network we've discovered that at least 80 percent of the time that the couples are not on the same page I mean it when you say a 3 out of 4 I'm and it's understandable for a variety of reasons but in very when I hear the stories what often stops in the road is that as soon as an issue comes up all of a sudden they're in a debate right rather than you know if you're on the journey that sometimes we just need to listen what is there you don't like about the Catholic Church and then instead of getting ready for a debate is listen prayerfully listen to the person so they get it out and also what is it you fear the most if I were to make this decision you know what is it that that frustrates you the most about how I've done this and I've not included you in the right ways or you know I've included you in all the wrong ways you know I think you're right UNAC communications you know it does present us a challenge it presents that one of the greatest challenges to a marriage and yet it also presents opportunities to kind of go back and say look you know if only I had shared more honestly or if only I'd been more patient you know but I do think it comes back to this idea where it's faithfulness to Jesus Christ you know and you can't be glib you can't it resort to a cliche you have to say you know as far as human beings on earth are concerned you're the most important human person in my life but there is a divine was the Lord of lords and your savior and my Savior and I won't be able to hide behind you on Judgment Day I'm going to stand alone given a council to him as to what I did with all the truth he gave me and if I could just interject one little small thought and that is this if I could have gotten Scott to give me one more year or two more years or three more years I would have without having an intention of using that time to come alongside him I didn't want him to become Catholic now there are probably holier wives out there that would genuinely use that time but I wanted a stay of execution and so my plea to him to wait was not a plea of wait long enough and I'll come alongside you it was I don't want this to happen and I can keep it from happening if he just waits to do it every married couples you know it's like Peter Craig what he says a lot remember it's every conversion like a snowflake is totally different and every married couple is totally different and so that's why I think spiritual direction might be the wisest course especially you could find the kind of priest who could talk to the spouse who's not interested and who's really putting up a pretty fierce struggle because I think sometimes those kinds of priests prove to be even more powerful channel of grace than spouse you know I think we have an email that might even touch in some of the same issues this comes from Connie from Detroit I can't seem to effectively share my faith with my non Catholic family as a recent convert I want to let them know what a treasure I have found in the Catholic Church but whenever ice whatever I say seems to fall on deaf ears even when I quote scripture how can I communicate my love for Catholic teaching with my family well I could have typed that email because I mean it's been 25 years for me and yet on both sides of our family people are still really reluctant to even to engage me even the shallow conversations you know and I would say the most important thing is to recognize again you're not the Holy Spirit you just can't kind of go barging into the Holy of Holies which is how Numa describes the conscience but I think the best advice I got was from you and that is the joy of the Lord you know the more you experience the joy of Christ as a Catholic the more you can show people that you know I enjoy the life of Christ before I was a Catholic and it's now the case I just enjoy it so much more and don't just do that as a strategic kind of get them to ask the question and suddenly can barge in with all of your arguments and all of the troops that come pouring into that you know really just experience the joy and let them see it and at the same time be honest with them and yourself you know when it's a struggle it's a struggle but I think that kind of the joy the Lord is our strength is just you know joyless Catholics I think are the greatest tool for the devil I wanted you'd go more on that John 15 11 these things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full now think about that how many Catholics don't get it even good faithful Catholics are fighting each other within the church about you know how faithful they are how traditional or whatever that is where's the joy and it's not just to be a happy thing it's to be like this this reminds me of the spiritual life that your joy is to be full and that's to me that reminds me father debate talking about our life is to be a deep deep deep fullness but we miss it yeah I mean we have to grow in our awareness of how much the God of the universe is intentionally in love with us and that he you know it's not our goodness that causes him to love us it's his love that is the cause of our goodness just as his love is the cause of my existence he's loved me into existence he's loved me to the point of my goodness that love is the reason for the being of the whole universe and it's what's going to get the whole world through whatever problems we face and it's going to get me through whatever crises I face and God sends these things to us not in spite of his love but because of it and I know the more you realize this is truth the more theology becomes therapy I mean I have studied and taught theology to bring healing to my soul to overcome worry sadness anger all of these things nothing works as well as good theology if you just get it out of the head put in the heart and realize God you love me more than I could possibly imagine and I would have to say along with that that it's it's okay in your heart to acknowledge the deep sorrow of not being able to share this it is very hard to have brothers and sisters and parents that you long not only to share the thoughts and ideas but to share the joy of receiving the Eucharist and and what that means and how this is a living out more deeply than ever before of the faith that you were given and I think I mean there have been times of deep sorrow for not being able to share that and and to say I'm going to offer even the sorrow as a gift along with my Eucharist and just Lord use this for your glory and maybe and maybe your family won't be the family touched most by your faith but it will be other people who are trying to reach their families you know and yeah it's good so it's yeah it is joy but it's also acknowledging that it is real suffering well I remember once traveling on many times we travel and I was particularly time in a really cheap hotel I can't remember why I mean really cheesy place when I went to use the shower there was like three things coming out no you had to jump up then do it again I mean it was like what and I looked up and all the holes were encrusted with you know blue calcium or whatever am i running my hand across it I was opening holes and all sudden I had a full flow on the one hand that's why we want our separate brothers become Catholic right you both want the race will flow and the sad thing is that Catholic sometimes stuff up the holes lock up the stuff though you know their misunderstandings and and bitterness and whatever we want the full flow or it's the drinking and the swearing and that you know it's it's your neighbors that are this way and then they'll go and your brother-in-law Scott Hahn and one of my siblings will just go yeah it's just yeah they want my people the joy and vehicle you know I want it for my family and myself we have another phone call from Richard in Illinois hello what's your question for us tonight hey Marcus Kimberly and Scott first of all Marcus I just want to say congratulations on the 13th anniversary of this wonderful program coincidentally it was about 13 years ago that I became Catholic for 27 years of marriage and I had more more of a statement than a question when I went through the RCIA program my wife who was a cradle Catholic came with me every week and she to this day will tell me that she got more out of going to the RCA program then I so I would just encourage anyone who is married and there are spouses becoming a Catholic to go with them and I think like my wife you'll be amazed at what what you learn thanks Roger excellent point yeah we hear that often we hear that often yeah I mean we need to know why our catechesis I heard about the journey on programming me some people think this program is only for people on the journey but how many Catholics have told us that we watch the show and it helps them appreciated faith that sometimes they take for granted that's right I mean if John Paul taught the world anything it's the conversions ongoing and ever deepening and it never stops and I think that's true for cradle Catholics and you know they are blessed by the conversions and yet the converts are blessed by those who've been hold down the fort for all those many years as well it's really a nice little feedback loop you know you're going on your 25th year as a Catholic and you're be about your 21st at first okay and I mean there are so many reasons that open your heart to the church originally what I found in the work we do is that often it's after 10 15 20 years that you begin to truly appreciate some things in the church now that you didn't see way back when for whatever reasons because of the baggage we got get the bed what about for you may surprises after all these years that you really come to appreciate more or that we're new to you I would say the one thing that really strikes me now after a quarter of a century is The Passion of Christ just a simple crucifix on the one hand it just struck me a few years after becoming a Catholic how everybody universally acknowledges that Jesus death at Calvary was a sacrifice despite the fact that it occurred to me that no Jew standing there at Calvary on Good Friday could have possibly described that event as a sacrifice because it was outside the walls of Jerusalem far from the temple no altar is no priest thus no sacrifice it was a Roman execution pure and simple so how is it that the Passion of Christ at Calvary became known universally as the supreme sacrifice only by backing up to Holy Thursday and looking at Good Friday in the light of the Eucharist being instituted the Eucharist I think is what illuminates the mystery of Christ's passion for us so much more than I realized when I was a Catholic at the first year and I would also say this that another truth that's really struck me now after a quarter of a century that I didn't see coming was how it is the church is the body of Christ and not as a metaphor but as a mystery and that's why Jesus calls the church in different times of history to undergo a passion what the body of Christ is undergoing right now at this point in the 21st century and it can only be described accurately as reliving the Passion of Christ the church's passion is what's going to make better sense out of our experience as Catholics at this point in Salvation history that anything else I have found and I didn't see that at all 25 years ago did you see this verse when you were you so him all when you're pressed up Galatians three one who is bewitched you before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified right what was he talking about publicly portrayed as crucified they hadn't been there right in the mass that's right I mean that's gotta be what he's doing that murdered in the proclamation but in the Eucharist we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes that's what Paul tells the Corinthians in first Corinthians 11 and so you really have suddenly this is not an execution in light of Holy Thursday this is a sacrifice nobody took his life he freely gave it on the night that he was betrayed he took bread and gave thanks why because he didn't know he was going to be betrayed he knew it was going to be betrayed and worse but he gave thanks because he knew what the Eucharist would do with that death would be transforming into a sacrifice and a sacrament for us all to undergo a kind of love that we could never do on our own what you can you know for me I think it's new depths of prayer and I don't want to come off like I'm super deep in prayer but I'm discovering as our children are marrying and leaving home why you so often see grandparents on their knees you know and we so quickly say all I can do is pray which I am discovering it new levels it's not an all thing it's a wonderful thing and so being able to offer my mass or my rosary each day for a particular family member going deeper in the devotion to the Stations of the Cross which we have now up in our woods praying well especially reading the lives of the Saints and praying with them and so I've read saying the story of a soul recently I'm reading this wonderful book catherine of siena and and and then i can only read two or three pages then i need to close it and i want to pray in a similar way you know and have them teach me and so that that scent i mean st. francis of rome is very very close to my heart and st. Elizabeth Seton elizabeth anne seen it just certain saints have become really spiritual friends and i anticipate that deepening in my life and so I'm so grateful for these treasures of the church that that I'm in a sense sort of uncovering and it's it's theological but it's not just theology it's it's deeper prayer let's do four prayer I would say that we should have more time to talk about the whole thing because for me one of the main things I discovered has coming in the church was a quote that I heard from TS Eliot the Tom Howard in his book on the Four Quartets when TSA said that the way up and the way down are one in the same I mean in other words my understanding of my spiritual journey wasn't just the evangelical you know God's going to bless you for good it was know it's suffering we the more we grow to learn about prayer also the more we learn about how far we've got to go but it's both in the same we're on the journey in redemptive suffering with something I never thought about even on the journey it came later we do have an email from Alan from Pennsylvania I am a Methodist pastor and I've been drawn to Catholicism for several years how can I tell my congregation of my desire to become Catholic I don't want them to feel that I am abandoning them this is actually kind of a question we get a lot from guys that are in the no-man's land they know they're to become Catholic but they're not right you know that's what you just gave me the first step to the answer because contact the coming home network and get involved in not only the email and the phone conversations with the people here you know at the coming home network but even more with the people that your network and put them in touch with because you know all I tried this but you don't want to try that you know where I tried this and it really worked with my congregation and again you know congregations are like converts and marriages they're all unique and so the one size doesn't fit all but at the same time one person story will help another person who's going through that struggle I think the most important thing is just to reaffirm the fact that I am more in love with Christ today than ever before more committed to Sacred Scripture than ever before and more committed to the people of God and so what I'm about to share with you in the next few months might come as a shock to you as it has for me but it's it's a result of falling more deeply in love with Christ and staying closer to the word you want to add to that you know I confess it's very well we've got men and a half let's say somebody's sitting at home Protestant where you were real quickly what would you like to tell them that why they should make the same journey home you owe me Eucharist I made the universe the Eucharist is not only what illuminates Good Friday is more than an execution but a true sacrifice the you courage is what illuminates the reason why Paul called the church the temple of the Holy Spirit 1st Corinthians 3 why not a synagogue you know where there's a scroll on a rabbi why a temple because there's a priest there's an altar and there's a Holy Sacrifice and that's the Eucharist and that is Jesus he is the priest he is the victim if you're in love with him find him in the Holy Eucharist and and I would say you don't like Jesus died to give you all these treasures of the church and he wants you to know his Heavenly Father better he also wants you to know his mother who is a spiritual mother for you and the Saints her older brothers and sisters you do not need to be as alone as you are there's a whole host of heaven ready willing able to to strengthen you and pray for you and and be a part of your lives and and so many other treasures I would say you know join us join us come home well thank you both you know of course my wife and I both thank you for your witness because it just as you said a moment ago because of your journey we had somebody to talk to on the journey that helped us so much and I also want to thank the audience for joining us go to salvation history comm on ewtn religious catalogue you'll see lots of books by both these fine Christians and they're here to help you in your journey thank you for joining us on this program god bless you see you next week you

Channel: EWTN

Views: 114,260

Rating: 4.8863907 out of 5

Keywords: Journey, Home, Marcus, Grodi, Dr., Scott, Hahn, Kimberly, Catholic, JHT01280

Id: btYWd31QIy8

Length: 56min 11sec (3371 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 07 2010