I Don't Belong Here Anymore

In getting ready to appear as a guest on EWTN's "The Journey Home" next week, I have been going over the past twenty years in my head. Why did I become a Catholic? What attracted me to the Christ, to the Church? Where did I come from, and what does it all mean?

My story is a bit of a "conversion wrapped in a reversion." In outlining it in chronological order (so I can keep things straight in my head for the show), I realized that the timeline looked like a weightlifters barbell--2 significant years on the beginning end, 2 significant years on the other end, and long stretch of "in-between" floundering to live the faith with integrity from age 18 to 36. I'd like to shelve the beginning part of that journey for now (I've shared some of it here and here) and focus on a detail I had forgotten about until I started writing it down.

It was the summer of 2016, and I was in Colorado for a bachelor party. Now, ever since high school I have loved to party, and even as a new Catholic I never stopped. I went to parties, threw parties, and would party into the morning with friends. I never had a drinking problem, but temperance was a virtue I had trouble developing. I prayed, went to Mass every Sunday, read spiritual books, but was 'friends with the world" (John 15:19), trying to have my cake and eat it too.

This particular bachelor party I was not really looking forward to attending, but I had to, for various reasons. The guys were younger, and I knew they partied hard; I was getting older, but still susceptible to influence. The first day I tried to not partake in any of the revelry, but concupiscence and appetites are a funny thing, and by day 2 I was crushing the opposition in drinking games. I found myself mirroring Paul's words, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do" (Rom 7:15)

At one point near the end of the weekend I went in my room in the mountain house the crew had rented, and sat on the bed. I wasn't in full on praying mode, but I was really hoping God could get me out of being there. No body else there seemed to have any pangs of conscience or problem with going full tilt since they weren't believers, and yet here I was, feeling the tension of having one foot in the world and one foot in the Church, not living as a good example as a Christian, and not be able to go in with full abandon either.

I always carried a small Gideon bible with me whenever I traveled. I took it out and sat on the bed and prayed a quick prayer for help. I remember to this day, I opened it and the first thing I read was

"Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourself of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and you have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator." (Col 3:5-10)

I was struck dumb. I recalled the story of St. Augustine in the garden, picking up the scriptures at the words he heard from a child, "Take up and read, take up and read." What he read was this:

"Not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual excess and lust, not in quarreling and jealousy. Rather, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh." (Rom 13: 13-14)

I called a Christian friend back home, a man of integrity, and told him what had happened when I opened the scripture, what I landed upon, and how it cut to the heart and left me exposed to my inconsistency. He was encouraging, but in that room I felt alone in a crowd. I didn't belong there anymore.

In the Imitation of Christ, Thomas A Kempis wrote about this wretched 'in between' state of a lukewarm religious in a way that hit home:

"A fervent religious accepts all the things that are commanded him and does them well, but a negligent and lukewarm religious has trial upon trial, and suffers anguish from every side because he has no consolation within and is forbidden to seek it from without. The religious who does not live up to his rule exposes himself to dreadful ruin, and he who wishes to be more free and untrammeled will always be in trouble, for something or other will always displease him." (Chap 25)

Fence-sitting had never born a lot of fruit in my life. Reading the Word of God in the passage in Colossians made me realize it's a lousy place to be, and that friendship with world makes one an enemy of God (James 4:4). Who was I kidding? I had to get off the fence. The past two years has been a series of grace-encounters and renewal that have sifted weeds from wheat in my life, and introduced me to people that don't make me feel like so much of an outsider in my faith.

We all need that from time to time, being called to be in the world but not of the world. I pray for the grace to take that to heart, and to never go back to straddling the line. Now when it comes to my faith, I'm invested. It informs my choices, even when they come with costs. I'm in too deep. Thankfully, there's no where to go but deeper.