Up to the point of my Confirmation, I was struggling with doubts because people had said I was following the guidance of demons and not the Lord. But when the sacred oil was poured on my head and the priest said, “You are sealed in the Holy Spirit,” I just felt like I could hear the quiet. This great stillness filled me.
And when I partook of the Eucharist for the first time, the words, “I am in you and you in me,” took on an entirely new meaning. As a Protestant, I’d only thought of that as true in a spiritual sense. The Communion bread and wine had always been, to me, a kind of container, if you will, for God’s Spirit. But partaking of bread and wine that had been transformed into Christ’s body and was itself Christ, having those molecules travel through my body and merge with my own, I had a powerful realization that even on a basic biological level, now, Christ’s physical blood runs in my veins. Christ is linked with me as part of his body in a direct physical way, not only spiritual, and we are one.
I had never, ever conceived of this before that moment. I had come to believe on an intellectual level that the bread becomes God’s flesh and blood, as I was becoming Catholic, but I hadn’t realized it experientially, and I hadn’t realized what that means for
me. At Eucharist, I had such a strong impression as the bread traveled into my system that I was actually eating Christ and had become physically a member of his body.
WAHOO!!!
So, SO exciting. And I still don’t feel that racking taste of doubts anymore. The doubts are over. History. Confirmation was supposed to strengthen my faith and it has! It has completely thrown the doubts into the department of history.
It’s all rather like the time when I first came to know the Lord personally, as a Protestant. At that time, a demon was haunting me with some terrible spiritual experiences for six months, before I came to know the Lord, and I was afraid I was going insane. But then the Holy Spirit came to me at the end of that time and released me from it. My relationship with God has ever since then been always intimately connected with the Holy Spirit, more than any other member of the Trinity.
That experience in many ways paralleled the experience of coming to Catholicism, for just as I was plagued by doubts about whether or not I was going insane while Christ was leading me to his Spirit, so I was plagued by doubts about whether or not I was led by a demon as Christ led me to his Body, the Church. Just as the doubts about my sanity were alleviated when my parents prayed over me and the demon ceased its harrassment, so the prayer of the priest over me at Confirmation ended the struggle of faith. And just as my first experience concluded with my receiving the grace of the Holy Spirit within Protestantism, my Confirmation occurred on Pentecost, again tied to the Holy Spirit, but now I have Christ’s Body as well, the flesh of God. In each case, the conclusion of the trial has been the intaking of God in an utterly new and exciting way.
Praise be to you, Lord Christ
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I feel such peace and happiness! I can’t describe it fully, but I’m just brimming over with it!!!
Praise God for his guidance. Praise God for the Catholics of this website who have communed with me and helped lead me to a fuller understanding of the truth! Praise God for all of you, for his Church, and for every part of his kingdom, including all that was, is, and is to come! Hallelujah!
