Confessional Joy.

I have long been frustrated with going to Confession. I've had priests who suggest that it is really a waste of time coming, priests who have advocated 'celebrating' my sins by learning from them, and a priest who tries to discuss what in my childhood caused these sins. All these have really put me off going to confession; how I have longed for the old days when the priest was hidden and after a a few words of advice would absolve me.

Today, on Palm Sunday, God answered that deep longing. I went to my beloved Latin Mass and we were told that Father would hear confessions after Mass. I was full of awe at God's goodness I went into the confessional and saw that our dear elderly priest was behind a curtain. He listened quietly to my sins, gave me some wise thoughts to ponder, explained ways I could make a BETTER confession, gave me a serious penance, and absolved me.

I left church full of a joy I haven't felt after Confession for years. God is SO good.

The Stations of the Cross.

I love doing the Stations of the cross during Lent. Last year I did them every Friday after Mass (just by myself) but this year, for one reason or another I've been unable to do them. The only time there is an official Stations at my church is at a time I really can't attend. This Friday I was sure I would be able to say them, I had nothing on after Mass and it was my last chance before Holy Week. Mass finished, I prayed while people left then F. an old crippled parishioner came over and asked me if I could take her home! My heart absolutely sank, she lives quite a way from the church and I live a long way in the opposite direction: there was no way I could take her home and then come back to the church to say the stations. Of course I said yes and offered my disappointment to God. F and I had a lot of laughs on the way to her home as we're good friends and I was glad to help her. I try not to be disappointed. It's all in God's hands so we take what he gives us with joy.

Another Suddenly.

So this is another 'suddenly'. I decided today not to continue with these posts about my spiritual journey. Several different reasons but all good. My promise to myself when I began this blog was that I wouldn't be negative and I do seem to get into negativity in these posts. Perhaps I'm just not a very good writer. So it's "Goodbye Spiritual Journey' and "Hallo whaever comes along."

God is good. Amen.

Coming Home

Most of my spiritual lfe seems to have been, what I call "Suddenlies". Suddenly, I lost my faith, suddenly I regained it again. Now I had another sort of "suddenly". I had been fiercely resisting the strong impression that I should return to the Catholic Church but one day I happened to be walking past a Catholic Church, on my way to do some shopping, when I heard a voice in my head saying "NOW!" Ever since my conversion I had tried my hardest to do what I thought God wanted me to do, so I went into the church and there was a priest hearing confessions. I went into the confessional and told the priest it was 16 years since I had been a Catholic. He asked me why I had come back now...and I said...I was SO dramatic in those days... "I can't escape God any longer!" He said incredulouly "WHAT????" So I back tracked hastily and just said I thought I should.

So I was back, I have read so many reversion stories about people coming back to the Church with great joy, and I wish I could say that was how I felt, but I didn't, I just felt I had done what God wanted so I had to get on with it. I was very surprised at how much the church had changed: no Latin, the priest faced the people, everything seemed more relaxed and, in a way, less holy. But I was OK with the changes, and my children and I changed seamlessly from Anglican to Catholic together.

Stepping Out.

So it was about 2 years after I was secretly converted to Christianity that my neighbour told me that the local Anglican vicar had called on her and invited her to services at his Church. "He seems a very nice man, and I'm supposed to be an Anglican" she explained "would you like to come with me?" She had no idea I was a Christian. Although we were friends we'd never discussed religion. I thought "Why not?" I wasn't ever going to be a Catholic again, I was sure, but I supposed I should belong to a church and an Anglican one was as good as any. So I went with her.

The vicar was a nice man as she said, but more importantly he was a very holy one. He was totally dedicated to God and parishioners and had chosen to stay single so that he could serve with his entire heart, I loved being under his spiritual care.
I was a member of this church for about 6 years. Funnily enough I never thought of myself as an Anglican, I just thought of myself as belonging to that paticular Church. Then, to my horror and dismay God began impressing on my heart that He wanted me to move on. I didn't want to change, I was content and at peace but relentlessly the feeling grew and grew that it wasn't what GOD wanted. To make my depression worse, I felt He wanted me back in the Catholic Church, which was, to be frank, the last place I wanted to be. I fought it, I told myself it was just me imagining things. But after about a year of struggle God acted. Again.

My first Steps.

So I was a Christian once more, but not, I hasten to say, a Catholic. I believed in God, I believed in Jesus. That was all.

The first thing I did was read the Bible. Why did an atheist and an agnostic have a Bible in their home? It was by the grace of God of course, but the apparent reason was that my husband, who loves old things and collects them, had found this Bible in an antique shop. It was printed in 1850 and was quite inexpensive so he bought it. We'd enjoyed having it, not because it was a Bible but because it was old.

So I got out this old Bible and read one of the Gospels the next afternoon. (I am an avid and very fast reader). I closed the Bible when I'd finished and thought, with something like despair "No one could live up to that!" But gradually, I grew more familiar with the gospels and grew to love them. I had never read the bible before. And I prayed. Just little, hesitant prayers. I read books about Christianity. The one thing I didn't do, was tell anyone.

I didn't tell my husband or my sisters or my friends. I'm not sure why that was. For a start I was so awed. How could I tell anyone that I had felt the presence of Jesus in the room? They would thnk I was mad. Yet I never lost my certainty that it had happened. So I just read a few books, prayed a little and read my Bible. It was a precious womb-like time. It lasted about two years.

The first step back..

I was 29 and had been a atheist for about 12 years when God acted. I was in a situation, in my own home, when I was very, very frightened. My husband was at work and my two children were at school and I was absolutely terrified. In my desperation, crouching behind a chair and with my eyes tightly shut I prayed "IF there is a God, DO SOMETHING!" Immediately and incredibly I felt a presence close to me in the room. My eyes were closed and I didn't open them but I felt this definite, calming presence near me. It was an unmistakeable and quite definite presence. I don't know how long it lasted, it was probably only a few seconds, but it changed my life. I just knew 4 things, I don't know how I knew but I was totally sure of them:

The presence was Jesus.
He had come when I was desperate.
He was real, God was real.
I was an atheist no longer.

When I opened my eyes I saw that my prayer had been answered and the threat I was facing had gone. But in a way it didn't matter. I realised I'd been blessed in a way that I didn't deserve. Why would God bother with someone so insignificent as me? I was awed and humbled as my new life as a Christian began.

But it was only the first step on a long, long journey.

Being an Atheist

I was a very happy atheist. I proclamed loudly that Christians were people who needed a featherbed to protect themselves from the realities of life. I faced those realities with the calm confidence of youth. I believed that when I died that was the end of me and I was OK with that. I'd just have a good life and go into oblivion without a regret and at least I didn't have to worry about Hell!

During this period I met and married my agnostic husband and we had our first two children. Oddly enough, as we planned our wedding it seemed as though neither of our families would be attending for completely opposite reasons. Mine because I wasn't getting married in a Catholic Church, and my husband's because he was marrying a Catholic! It made no difference that I had left the church. But by God's grace we did finally get married in the Church. My family had been very upset when I stopped going to church and became a very aggressive atheist but worse was to come. A few months before the wedding one of my younger sisters was killed in a road accident. This was a shocking grief to us all but completely devastated my mother. Despite my beliefs I couldn't cause her any more pain, so we had a quiet wedding in our Catholic church.

This was going to be my last ever church service, but the God in whom I didn't believe, had other ideas.

My journey begins.

I've been thinking about my life's spiritual journey and what a long and tortuous path it's been. My closest friend was born a Catholic and has stayed a faithful Catholic all her life. Mine is a very different story, maybe now is the time to write about the road I've travelled. It may take some time.

I was born into a mixed family. My mother was a Catholic and my father was an agnostic. My mother didn't go to church, she said she didn't have time with 5 children, but she always made us go to church and she sent us to a Catholic school.

I was quite a devout child and into my teens and I knew all the arguments why WE were right and everyone else was wrong. My Faith was like a strong wall against the pagan hordes outside.

However, when I was around 17 years old, for about a year, small cracks started to appear in the wall. Nothing bad happened, I just started noticing little inconsistancies over what was said and what was actually happened. Maybe there was a certain lack of logic, but nothing too worrying and after all I had been taught that to doubt was a sin.

But the cracks must have been more pervasive than I realised, because one casual remark from my father made the whole wall collapse. He asked me why I was going to Mass on Saturdays and I explained patiently and confidently about the 9 (I think) Saurdays. He said dismissively "It sounds like something Red Indians believe." That remark stunned me and in a moment of shocking clarity I thought incredulously 'Yes it is!' and my faith disappeared in a cloud of dust. When it cleared I realised I didn't believe any of it. I refused to go to church again and proclaimed loudly that I was an atheist.