The Greatest Gift
I was given the greatest gift imaginable by my loving parents growing up in Birmingham, AL in the mid-90s. They made sure that my brother and I had every opportunity to know, love, and serve God as well as have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Some nights we read Bible stories after dinner, acting out the parts ourselves—I always took the part of Jonah being swallowed by the whale (which was typically a laundry basket being shaken around by my dad). They persistently ensured that we prayed together as a family at the close of each day. At least once in my early teens I feigned going to bed early to get out of praying, only to find my mom, dad, and little brother bursting into my room, plopping onto my bed, and praying away. Prayer was non-negotiable even if we had just argued or been disciplined.
We attended a large Southern Baptist Church throughout my childhood and adolescent years. My mom enjoyed serving in the children’s and music ministries, and my dad, who has always been gifted at teaching and mentoring teens, found his place teaching Sunday school.
About the time I was 8 years old, what Catholics would recognize as around the age of reason—when a child can personally engage in their relationship with God—I decided that I wanted to accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior.
It’s an odd thing looking back. I don’t remember a time not knowing about God or about the Gospel. There’s a familiarity with Jesus that’s even closer than the dearest friend or beloved spouse—one can typically recall the first time they met a friend and certainly the first time they saw their beloved. But with God, I cannot. This must be because from the very moment of my conception, I was held in the eternal gaze of Eternity. Learning of His love is like a newborn startling from their sleep, beginning to cry, only to realize that they are in their mother’s arms—ah, you were there the whole time.
So, guided by Pastor Chuck, my wonderful children’s pastor, I prayed the Sinner’s Prayer:
God, I know that I am a sinner. And I believe that you sent your one and only Son to die for me because You love me. I want to be forgiven of my sins by His sacrifice and accept Jesus into my heart as my Lord and Savior so that I can be saved. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
According to my pastor, I was saved! We soon planned for my baptism which I understood as the public declaration of the inward transformation that had already taken place after my sincere prayer. I was told that baptism was like a wedding ring—it symbolized and demonstrated one’s commitment to God (it would be several years before I learned that this view of baptism would’ve been foreign to every believer for the Christianity’s first 1500 years). So, I put that “wedding ring” on and we celebrated.
Eventually, that personal relationship with Jesus slipped into an impersonal weekly checklist, begrudgingly attended and completed to appease my steadfast parents. This, as I was told by many Evangelical Protestants, was “religion”. And this kind of “religion” was exactly what our Blessed Lord condemned throughout the gospels. He desired wholehearted full devotion, not halfhearted fulfilled duties. Yet there I was as guilty of practicing “religion” as the Pharisees.
How often is this the pattern of our lives? We resolve to live virtuously yet drift casually into vice. We say yes to God, only to excuse ourselves from commitment the moment inconvenience arises. The soil is rocky, the thorns grow thick, and many times the birds devour the seed before it even takes root (Mt. 13:3-9). Fickle wills find it hard to will any good.
God, have mercy on us.
And He does. But sometimes His mercy is severe.
Purgation and Preparation
One afternoon in 2006, towards the end of my 6th grade year, my mom and little brother picked me up from football practice, and we headed back to our home. As we rolled down our steep hill and turned into our driveway, I smelled that someone was grilling out—a little early for a cookout, but it seemed a good enough day for it. I slung on my backpack and began walking up the cracking brick steps from the driveway towards the front of the house while the tinge of fresh flames grew stronger. As I neared the front porch reality solidified. I looked up and saw smoke spewing out from my parents’ window. My home was on fire.
The rest is difficult to remember. I yelled to my mom; she screamed to the neighbors. I tried to shoulder open the front door to let our dog and cat escape, only to find that they would not be able to do so. I remember my dad getting home from work at some time in the middle of all this, being unreasonably calm watching the chaos ensue.
While the conflagration was being contained, I walked up the street away from my former home. I remember praying then:
“Why? God, why would you take away everything that I love?”
His response:
Silence.
I can only reason now that our reason fails to do justice to Reason itself. We think God to be like any of our other relationships. We call Him Father and expect Him to be like our father (for better or for worse). We call Him Savior and expect Him to do the saving from whatever we deem we need saving from. We typically view God on our terms—and that’s the kind of god many of us content ourselves to worship. But a god made in our image and likeness is no True God. And the One, True God is a jealous God who has been and always will be in the idol-smashing business.
This day, the worst day of my life up to that point, was a gift. The God who gives and takes away was giving me an opportunity by taking away—an opportunity for reorientation towards Beatitude.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
How shall we see God? Only by way of purification—of purgation and refinement. In the aftermath and in our grief, we were cared for by the Body of Christ. Members of our church family took care of our family. Someone paid for us to go to a department store that evening to get new clothes and other essentials. I was naked and you clothed me. Someone bought our family dinner that night and I can’t recall how many more after that. I was hungry and you fed me. When we were in the confines of solitude picking up and picking through the pieces of our home after the smoke had cleared, our pastor came to visit us and brought us consolation. I was in prison and you visited me.
As He has always done, He did for me. God, in His magnificent humor, began transforming my tragedy into a comedy.
Up to that point I had maybe visited our church’s youth group teen program once or twice. It was clearly unmemorable and left no impression on me, good or bad, nor a desire to return. But now, something was oddly stirring: I wanted to go to church.
I don’t remember the games that we played, nor the songs that we sang, nor the message that was shared. I don’t even remember the name of the person who made that night memorable.
As I stood there alone, I was approached by another young teen boy. He didn’t know my story but took the initiative to invite me into conversation and friendship. And it changed my life. When I was a stranger, you welcomed me. I belonged there. And from the Valleydale Baptist youth group, my faith was resuscitated and given new life; my “religion” waned and gave way once again to a personal relationship with Jesus.
A School of Misery
Over the next few years, I became very involved with my youth group leading the praise and worship team and starting a Bible study at my high school. Eventually I had a profound encounter on a mission trip which birthed in me the desire to go into full-time ministry.
I turned down a full-ride scholarship to the University of Alabama and ended up at a no-name, unaccredited, very charismatic school of ministry in inner-city Atlanta, Georgia. It made sense to take advantage of the opportunity to pursue a practical degree and then step into full-time ministry. Yet I experienced a peace that surpassed understanding when contemplating forsaking it all to follow Jesus in this unconventional way.
The school ended up being a cult. At the very least it was a diet cult: similar flavor but maybe not quite the real thing. Almost immediately after arriving, we were passionately and persuasively taught that we had never received the fullness of the gospel, which just happened to be a private revelation received by the director of this school. We were encouraged to preach to other churches and youth groups this “true gospel”. Sadly, those who left our school on bad terms were shunned and essentially recognized as apostates.
During all this, I still experienced profound, undeniable encounters with a good God who loved us and desired us to know Him. We organized mobile vacation Bible schools for kids living in the nearby housing projects. We participated in a ministry called Adopt-a-Block where we brought bags of donated groceries to families in need. We went on prayer walks in parks and saw God miraculously heal people through our petitions. We had moving times of worship through music where people were liberated from addictions and met the God who loved them into existence.
I’ve come to the conclusion that experiences like these are not an either/or, but are instead a Catholic both/and; they are not either wholly holy or unholy, but rather, both the wheat and the tares grow together (Matt. 13:24-30). This was certainly the case during my time at this strange school. There were clearly demonically influenced persons and doctrines. At the same time, there were definite supernatural encounters with a good and loving God and beautiful followers of Jesus doing their best to know and love Him. In His mysterious mercy, God gave me many graces during this season of my life that would eventually lead me to Catholicism.
Amazing Graces
One of the graces I experienced was in a class where we were taught the concept of typology—how many of the events and figures of the Old Testament prefigured the New Testament reality which is revealed and fulfilled in and through Jesus (1 Cor. 10:1-6). I learned that baptism was one of those typological fulfillments in the Kingdom of God.
Paul recognized that the Israelites “were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” How? In their ancient exodus, they came to the Red Sea with freedom on the opposite side and their adversaries closing the gap behind them. God, through Moses, miraculously parted the Sea, and they walked through on dry land, guided by God in the pillar of cloud with their Egyptian slavers in hot pursuit to either kill them on the spot or bring them back into bondage. Once the Israelites made it through to the other side of the sea, the waters closed back upon their enemy, saving them from the power of their enemies and setting them free to worship God in the wilderness.
An even greater liberation takes place today in the waters of baptism. When a person enslaved to sin and the wicked tyrant, Satan, enters the waters of baptism, he undergoes a death and resurrection, not visible to physical eyes, but nonetheless real. Led by Christ, our New Moses, and the Holy Spirit, he who is baptized dies to his old self and way of life and is united to Christ in His death. He is then raised out of those waters and born again to a new life in the Spirit so that he can be free from the power of sin to freely worship and love God (Rom. 6:1-11, Jn. 3:5).
Baptism was much more than a wedding ring. It was the wedding itself!
I later learned that this class taught us the Catholic understanding of the Sacrament of Baptism. It astounded me to discover that this view of baptism had been held by most Christians throughout history and most of the original Protestant Reformers.
I couldn’t find peace in waving away one and a half millennia of faithful Christian consensus when it came to the matter of baptism. I couldn’t find any Bible verse implying that baptism was merely a symbolic “outward expression of an inward decision.” But I found several verses stating explicitly that God saved people through baptism in a similar way to how He had saved the Israelites through the waters of the Red Sea (Mark 16:16, Acts 2:37-8, 1 Peter 3:21).
This also meant that salvation was not a one-time event as I had previously believed. It was an ongoing process that could be jeopardized by one’s own infidelity. We can rightly say that the Israelites were saved from the Egyptians after they were “baptized” into the Red Sea through Moses. But only a few of them were “saved” into the Promised Land after their baptism. Similarly, those who are baptized into Christ, must continue to “work out their salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12) knowing that only those who “endure to the end will be saved” (Mt. 24:13).
With newfound enthusiasm to uncover the typological treasures hidden in the Old Testament and revealed and fulfilled in the New, I would soon turn my attention to the Sacrament of Sacraments: the Eucharist.
Amidst this madness, I met the second greatest gift of my life next to Jesus: my sweet wife, Bridgette! We ended up marrying before the end of our time in the school. What a gift she was through that time and for the rest of my life. Praise be to God, that He put us on the same trajectory early on in our time together. We began to see and question things similarly and were able to accompany one another on the long, winding road of conversion. He knew that we needed one another.
During my second year of school, I felt more strongly that while some of the doctrines being taught might be sound, some were certainly mistaken (and probably heretical). However, I was at an epistemic dilemma with the Protestant framework I’d inherited.
How did I know what I believed was true and what they were teaching was false? We all had the same 66 book Bible but were coming to 6,600 different denominational conclusions. When two folks are reading the Bible and coming away with two different incompatible interpretations, how do you know who is in line with the Truth? As a Protestant, I didn’t have a satisfying answer to this question.
This uniquely Protestant problem arises because of the doctrine of sola Scriptura that was introduced at the Protestant Reformation: that Scripture alone is the sole infallible authority for Christian faith and doctrine. However, in practice, one’s own interpretation becomes the sole infallible authority for Christian faith and doctrine.
The chaos became clearer upon reflection: what did good-willed Protestants do when they got a new pastor whose preaching they disagreed with? They would go find a more “biblically sound” church. And how did they know when they’d found one? Well, they’d agree with that pastor’s interpretation of the Bible! I’d seen this story play out dozens of times in my short life with friends and family.
I had been raised to believe that the Bible was God’s inerrant word. I could always trust the Bible. But, I could not always trust myself. If there was no infallible interpretive authority (like a Church established by Jesus) then our attempt to discern Truth would remain a close approximation at best, and this was not satisfying to me. I wanted the whole Truth! I wanted all of Jesus, not just my best estimation of Jesus!
Ironically, the school of ministry that unveiled this problem also provided me the solution: a church history class, specifically on early Christian worship. This was a dangerous class—a powder keg with a delayed fuse set to implode my career about ten years down the road.
Instead of searching for answers to these doctrinal questions from inevitably varying contemporary scholars, I began to discover and read texts from early Church Fathers who lived during the first few centuries of Christianity—they were the ones closest to the Source. It struck me that these men sounded very different from many of the Baptist, Methodist, Assemblies of God, or other denominational teachers I’d had. In fact, they sounded very Catholic especially regarding the sacraments and ecclesiology.
The patristic source who hit me the hardest was St. Ignatius of Antioch, who lived at the turn of the second century and was a disciple of John the Beloved, one of Jesus’ Twelve Apostles. St. Ignatius had one degree of separation from the Word of God Himself. And in chapter seven of his letter to the Smyrnaeans he wrote a warning against the Gnostic heretics of that time:
“But consider those who are of a different opinion with respect to the grace of Christ which has come unto us, how opposed they are to the will of God… They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ [emphasis added], which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again.”
When I read this letter from the second century bishop, I was cut to the heart. Up to this point I’d held a symbolic/memorialist view of communion—that communion, like baptism, was merely a meaningful symbol. But by holding this perspective, St. Ignatius was putting me in the same category as the Gnostics.
I abstained from the Eucharist because I did not confess the Eucharist to be the true flesh and blood of our Savior Jesus Christ. I began to see that this perspective of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist was not some medieval innovation, but that it had been believed by the Church from Her foundation. It made sense now why Paul would inform the Corinthians that the reason people were dying among them was because they were unworthily taking Holy Communion (1 Cor. 11:27-30). As my friend Justin Hibbard says, “symbols don’t kill people!”
It also began to make sense why Jesus would allow his own disciples to walk away from Him after teaching that His flesh was true food and that his blood was true drink in John chapter 6. They hadn’t misunderstood Him; they were just unwilling to accept this hard teaching in faith like Peter and the other Apostles. At the Last Supper, those Twelve who remained with Jesus had the eyes of their hearts enlightened to see what our Blessed Lord had meant when He took bread, broke it and gave it to them saying, “this is my body,” and of the chalice, “this cup… is the New Covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:19-20). When the Word of God who spoke creation into existence out from nothing says it is, then it most certainly shall be.
With openness to the sacramental understanding of the Eucharist, I began a decade-long journey of seeking to understand many more of these “religious” Catholic doctrines and practices that I had been averse to most of my life.
Real Relationship
By God’s grace, my bride and I graduated from the school and started off our marriage serving on the mission field in India for several months. Once we returned stateside, I was hired as a children’s pastor at a Non-denominational church in Dallas, Texas. Though there were some amazing families in this community, and sweet moments of seeing lives brought near to God, it was an incredibly difficult season of ministry that left us discouraged and nearly burnt out. Even so, the call to ministry and leading people into relationship with Jesus had not dried up.
After a couple of years, I accepted a youth pastor position at a smaller Non-denominational community church just outside of Atlanta. I was impressed to learn that though they only believed communion was just a symbol, they received the Lord’s Supper every Sunday and did their best to honor it as a sacred moment—and they weren’t thrown off that I was around ninety percent Catholic in my convictions.
Over the years, I had immersed myself in Catholic resources. I became acquainted with the works from scholars like Dr. Scott Hahn (Rome Sweet Home, Hail Holy Queen, The Lamb’s Supper) and Dr. Brant Pitre (Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist). I began to regularly listen to content from apostolates like Pints with Aquinas and Bishop Robert Barron’s Word on Fire and, of course, anything from Fr. Mike Schmitz. I became more comfortable with—and even convicted—that the Catholicism I’d once viewed with suspicion was a bastion of truth in a world of relativism.
It was an amazing season of ministry and respite for my sweet wife and me. We experienced the loving care of our senior pastor, Mike, who was, and is, a friend and a real pastor: a shepherd of souls. I was given free rein to build a vibrant, tight-knit youth group, while also serving in the church’s music ministry. We weathered the cultural storms of 2020 together and welcomed our first daughter into our family at this church. We were loved and I was content. I was happy. Until one day… I wasn’t.
On Sunday, June 19, 2022, I was cut to the heart with a deep sorrow I had never felt before, nor to this day have felt again. Nothing to my knowledge was wrong. None of my loved ones were sick or suffering, yet I was.
I left as soon as I could after the church service ended, and wept on my drive home, crying out to God to show me what was going on. After arriving at home, I turned on a Catholic homily for that Sunday and discovered the reason for my downcast soul.
Though I had become familiar with many of the Catholic doctrines and dogmas and “religious” devotions that had once seemed opposed to a real relationship with
Jesus, I was still (and still am) getting acquainted with the multitude of feast days. And that day, I learned from the man in the Roman collar, was the Feast of Corpus Christi, also known as the Feast of the Most Precious Body and Blood of Jesus. This is the day that the universal Church celebrates in unity the inestimable and unfathomable gift of Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Eucharist. The Holy Spirit had pierced my heart and allowed me to experience the insatiable longing for which I was made.
All throughout the world, Catholics were celebrating and receiving my Jesus in the most personal and intimate way humanly and divinely possible this side of Heaven, and yet I could not. Not because the Catholic Church was judgmental and exclusive, but because I had not yet come into full communion with that same Church. It would have been an act of dishonesty for me to receive this Holy Communion when I was not yet in full communion with the Church who administered this Sacrament of Sacraments. It was not this Church who needed to change—for She cannot change no matter how hard her enemies within and without have tried throughout history—it was me.
My Jesus gifted me to suffer this longing for my body, blood, soul, and humanity to be united to His very Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. And simultaneously He gave me a taste of His great desire to be united to me. It was time to sell it all and buy the field, for I had found the Great Treasure. It was time to come home, no matter the cost.
God will give you the grace to do whatever He says to do. The only reason St. Peter walked on water was because Jesus commanded him to come out to Him upon the waves—and as he did so have we.
My sweet wife and I were both confirmed and received into the Catholic Church on Pentecost Sunday in 2023—our own personal Pentecost and the greatest altar call of my life. I received Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior that day as my daily bread for Whom I had begged every time I had prayed the Lord’s Prayer throughout my life.
He also miraculously provided me a job in perfect timing with a local ecumenical pro-life clinic; my family never missed a paycheck. Now, I have the joy of giving talks at Catholic parishes, teaching a family discipleship program, and sharing my testimony to any who will listen.
We have been incredibly blessed— not primarily because of smooth transitions and miraculous provisions—but rather because of the One Whom we received and Who received us.
Throughout my entire Christian life, I have desired a deep, intimate relationship with Jesus—and during the times when I have not, I’ve wanted to. There are many things which prevent us from drawing near to the God who loves us into existence, but the main obstacle apart from obstinance is ignorance. Thankfully, God is Love—and Love is patient, kind, and forbearing.
For so long I hated, or rather was indifferent (which is arguably worse), towards Catholicism due to my misunderstanding. I believed that “religion” was a bad word and something to be avoided at all costs, or else it would cost me my most important relationship. The truth is that “religion” is what I was longing for the entire time, because true and pure religion not only takes care of the orphan and widow (James 1:27); it is the way to a real and true and substantial relationship with Jesus Christ.
“Religion” originates from the Latin word religare, which means “to bind”. If a religion is binding you to a false god or pretentious pride, then it is to be avoided. But it is clear through Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and Christian history that God Himself established a New Covenant—a new religion fulfilling the Old which is a clear way to bind oneself to Him.
This religion is promulgated by that same one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church which Christ Himself established. It is this Church which is the pillar and foundation of truth (1 Tim. 3:15). It is this Church who has survived trials and tribulations and persecutions and wicked leaders without compromising her fidelity to teach only that which She has seen and heard from Her Bridegroom. And it is this same Church that gives to us that same Jesus, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, in the Most Holy Eucharist which is the way we bind ourselves to Him.
Our Blessed Lord promised to never leave us nor forsake us even till the end of the age, and He has most certainly kept His promise. We get to receive Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior at every Holy Mass in the Blessed Sacrament. And He really and truly receives us.
This religion is the relationship for which we have been made.
Truly adored.
Truly received.
Truly, truly I say unto thee:
Blessed art thou, lacking nothing indeed,
For I Am with thee, and thou art with Me.
