Mass and Maneuver

“We will make Jesus Christ truly present today on the back of this Ford F-150.” Thus spoke a camouflage-clad Catholic priest in combat boots and priestly vestments during a field Mass offered during cadet summer training at Fort Knox, Ky. Indeed, the altar for the Mass was the flatbed of a muddy Ford F-150, and the congregation a collection of hungry, tired, and filthy cadets toting M-4 carbine rifles and MREs.

Mass was a welcome break from the stresses of simulated combat mass and maneuver exercises, and a spiritual necessity to get through the next weeks of training. Among those hungry, tired, and filthy cadets was one prodigal Protestant who had finally started to make her way home to the Roman Catholic Church.

I once wrote that I believed the pursuit of Christian orthodoxy did not necessitate my conversion to Catholicism. Privately, I objected to Catholic teachings on the Virgin Mary and apostolic succession, teachings I believed were not founded in Scripture. I preferred the energy and feeling of contemporary Protestant worship; I bought the age-old Protestant argument that the Catholic Church represented an unnecessary and counterproductive middleman between believers and God.

I no longer believe any of the above to be true.

In my objections, I was guilty of a grave intellectual crime. I made straw-man arguments based on what I thought Catholicism taught without even reading what the Church actually taught. Thank goodness for my ever-so-patient Catholic roommates and friends, who put up with torrents of my uninformed rants and questions.

I can’t identify a single catalyst that prompted such a reversal. My conversion has been a long time coming. Christians do not serve a God of coincidence, and it isn’t a coincidence that I’ve lived here with an amazing group of Catholics (and a wonderful Protestant!). It isn’t a coincidence a kind and generous cadet — himself a convert — at Fort Knox (of all places), prayed the Rosary and read the Catholic liturgy with me, even when we were deep in the woods ambushing and attacking “insurgents” with blank bullets.

The more I learned about the Catholic faith from people I respected and admired and the more I learned about the sacraments and teachings of the Church, the more I realized the extent of my ignorance. A powerful yearning to be spiritually home, a desire to be in communion with a universal Church I could call home, wherever I was in the world, slowly emerged.

I could fill months of columns with those learning experiences, and how my objections and hesitations fell flat on their faces in the light of the love of Catholics around me who took the time to teach and reason with me. I had to be less stubborn, less argumentative, and more open-minded and docile to the idea that somebody was telling me a truth that could save my soul.

I feel like I am becoming Christian all over again and my heart overflows with joy. Part of becoming a Christian is reckoning with a monumental choice. Is Jesus Lord? If we profess Jesus as Lord and savior, our lives are never the same. Similarly, I had to reckon with Jesus and the Catholic Church that claims Him as founder. After all I had learned, I realized that if the Catholic faith was false, then all of Christianity was also false and I ought to turn entirely away.

But if Catholicism was true, my life would never be the same. If it was true that I could know and love Jesus Christ as fully as possible on this earth in the Catholic sacraments, if it was true that I could be in communion with Him and his Church in an incredible and incomprehensibly real way, then I could no longer remain a Protestant.

On the night before Easter, I’ll be formally received into the Church after several months of preparation and instruction. I’ll be honest: I’m still a bit nervous. Practical matters will construct a real divide between me and my Protestant family and closest Protestant friends. Even though our shared bonds and love are genuine and deep-seated, and we profess shared truths and principles, living out those first truths can differ in very consequential ways. For instance, we won’t all share the same rite of communion, the source and summit of Christian life. That won’t be easy.

If I learned anything from a sweltering summer at Fort Knox, it is that faith can thrive and sustain through challenge and adversity, and even in doubt. I wonder, though, if perseverance in difficulties has its limits. I can’t overlook how I am joining a Catholic Church rocked by scandals and horrors of sexual abuse covered up by its clergy. How could I possibly want to join the Church at such a time? That’s a question for another column. But it remains the case that this prodigal Protestant can’t wait to finally come home to Rome.

Grace M. Chao ’19 is an Economics concentrator in Mather House. Her column appears on alternate Tuesdays.