Part 10: One Flesh

“Come.” 

The call is both an echoing roar and a soft, still whisper.  The church is silent, and yet His voice resounds in every corner of my heart.

He is here.

He is waiting for me at the end of the aisle, and it feels as if He has been waiting for me my whole life.

Everything has served to direct me to this day, to this very moment, where His waiting and my longing – His heart and my heart – would finally become one.  

He is here.  

It is time.

So, nervously, I begin taking my first steps down the aisle. 

More than two years had passed – twenty-seven months, to be precise.  Things had been busy.  We welcomed our first-born into the world, I earned a master’s degree, we welcomed our second-born, and we bought our first house.  As mighty and weighty and life-changing as these events were, there was another enormous and simultaneous event, an on-going seismic shift occurring – surging and receding and eventually cascading into an enormous crescendo of change. 

In hindsight, those twenty-seven months marked for us a slow march toward Catholicism.  In real time, every step seemed like a freefall into no-man’s-land.  Every question felt like the ascent of a hill whose landscape beyond was a total mystery.  For Ryan, the collapse of Sola Scriptura and his announcement that he was no longer Protestant was the beginning of a long, long road.  

He had questions about the papacy, Anglicanism, atonement, Orthodoxy, the development of doctrine, Mary, and the saints, and each topic led to hours and hours of reading, asking, searching, listening to debates, and finding answers. 

While Ryan and I wrestled with the same questions and uncertainty, our journeys occurred on different timelines.  I’d been researching Catholicism for two years before Ryan told me about his complete paradigm shift.  Ryan researched Catholicism for two years longer after this enormous event.  

In the ensuing months after Ryan’s announcement, I began attending daily Mass.  The flame that had erupted in my heart when I first learned what Catholics believe about the Eucharist had been burning for a long, long time.  Now, with Ryan’s newfound openness, I wanted to experience Catholicism firsthand.  Not being Catholic I knew I couldn’t receive Jesus in communion, but I wanted to witness all that I’d been reading about for years: that at every Mass, Jesus is really, truly, substantially there – Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity – in the Eucharist, giving Himself to all who believe. 

So I went to Mass, and it blew me away.

The Mass is Scripture, it is prayer, and it all leads to the moment when the priest says the words of Jesus: “this is my Body, given up for you.”   

Then, Jesus is there.  

Really and truly there.  

In the hands of the priest. 

Then laid on the altar.  

Then offered to all who believe.  

I realized I knew, after so many years of questions, that I was now sitting before the Answer.  

It astounded me.

The Mass astounded me.  

I believed.

“This is my Body.”

The same God who deigned to become a baby to save us also deigned to become bread to feed us.

It was a breadth and depth of humility I knew I would never fully grasp in my lifetime, no matter how many Masses I was lucky enough to attend.  

The true Manna, the true Passover meal, His true Body – was now here – offered to me.  

It was the greatest gift I could imagine.  

The Mass was a glimpse into the throneroom of heaven.  It was a front-row seat to the indescribable love of God.  It was an invitation to say yes to Jesus, to welcome Him into my heart, into my soul, and into my very body.  

I felt like the most fortunate human alive, just to be in the room when it happened.  

“He who eats my flesh abides in me and I in them.”  

The God who tabernacled among us was now inviting me to be His tabernacle. 

As a Protestant, I’d been led by amazing pastors, edified by incredible preaching, and accompanied by wonderful friends – and the fire they’d stoked in me to seek the Lord with all my heart was erupting into a roaring blaze.  They’d taught me that true life is in Christ, and true happiness exists in seeking Him with all my heart.

Sitting there in Mass, I realized I’d never dreamed I could get this close. 

This – the gift of the true Presence of Christ in the Eucharist – was the fulfillment of all I had ever been taught to desire.  It was as near to Christ as I could be on earth. 

In Jesus, I had everything.  In the Mass, I could hear Jesus, behold Jesus, and receive Jesus.  

What more could I ever want?

So, for twenty-seven months, I attended daily Mass, filled with longing to one day receive Jesus in the Eucharist.  I knew that Ryan needed to ask all of his questions, and God had put it on my heart to wait for him to arrive at his own conclusions.  He was on his own journey, and on his own timeline.  Almost this whole time, I never knew where Ryan would land.  My job was to wait, and pray, and let God lead Ryan. 

And eventually, God led Ryan to Catholicism.  

Two years had passed.

Ryan was convinced.  I was convinced. 

The day was set for us to become Catholic. 

“Come.”

The church is silent.

Jesus is here. 

The day has arrived.

I am walking down the aisle to receive my Savior, to become one with the One Who set me free.

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

His love is a consuming fire, and this is my first leap into the eternal furnace of love.

Step by step, I draw nearer.

He is waiting for me.

“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.”

He is so close.    

“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.”

He is here.  

He is lifted up.

“The Body of Christ.”

I say amen. 

And we are one. 

The tears fall.

My beloved.

It is You.