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Neophyte_Rose
Guest
My precious friends in Christ,
This past weekend during the Easter Vigil, Catechumans around the world became newly baptized Catholics. They made for the first time those Baptismal promises which the Church yearly renews.
It was quite probably an amazing experience, ineffable and lumnescantly beautiful.
Personally I will never forget the night I became a Catholic, April 7 2007. If my whole world should fade from my mind, from my mother’s name to the image of my newborn sister on the day I first beheld sight of her - if I forget where I went to school and the names of my teachers, yet still I would surely recall the Triduum Celebration as we celebrated it in 2007. Every moment is clear to me still with particular detail… the moment I knew, was certain, that I belong to God and am loved by Him… nothing will ever compare to that moment, to those feelings, to the consolation that only He can bring.
We must rejoice with our Neophytes; share in their joy, for they should wish it and by our sharing in it we only can increase it.
Yet we must also take up their part in prayer; as the year proceeds, many neophytes will find themselves hurt by the reactions of their friends and families. Many will be tempted to fall away or will find themselves moving deeper even into their new faith than those who first taught that faith to them; many neophytes will come to that time of testing, to a time where prayer means not consolation but desolation, to a time when truly they discover what it means to leave friend, family, and all possessions to follow Christ. They will discover the losses in their lives, and feel sorrow. Confusion. The devil will tempt them and test them ferociously.
Sadly, every year that new Catholics are welcomed at the Easter Vigil, as that year progresses many of the same abandon their faith or become lapse.
I understand why. I never truly realized how hard it would be, daily examining my conscience and going to mass even when I don’t feel like it; saying a rosary as I battle with frustration and exhaustion; the depressing realization that friends who were once close are now drifting away as a direct result of my conversion; no longer being able to enjoy various activities as I come to recognize the sin within them; the distance between myself and my grandparents as I go to the Catholic Church and they to the Lutheran. There’s no other word for it, becoming a Catholic - and being a Catholic in a non-Catholic family, a non-Catholic world - is hard.
Yes, we must rejoice with our Neophytes. Yet also we must pray for them; they have many trials ahead, and as the freshness of their Easter memories dims, as the glitter reveals itself as the glitter of a sword which pierces the heart, they will need grace.
So let us shower heaven with our prayers, that heaven may shower our neophytes with graces. Let us turn to the Lord and beg Him that this may be the year when not one neophyte lapses - the year when the faith of every new Catholic remains glowing and hot as an ember, smoldering and giving flame to a fire which may ignite the faith of each one of us.
Pax Christi.
This past weekend during the Easter Vigil, Catechumans around the world became newly baptized Catholics. They made for the first time those Baptismal promises which the Church yearly renews.
It was quite probably an amazing experience, ineffable and lumnescantly beautiful.
Personally I will never forget the night I became a Catholic, April 7 2007. If my whole world should fade from my mind, from my mother’s name to the image of my newborn sister on the day I first beheld sight of her - if I forget where I went to school and the names of my teachers, yet still I would surely recall the Triduum Celebration as we celebrated it in 2007. Every moment is clear to me still with particular detail… the moment I knew, was certain, that I belong to God and am loved by Him… nothing will ever compare to that moment, to those feelings, to the consolation that only He can bring.
We must rejoice with our Neophytes; share in their joy, for they should wish it and by our sharing in it we only can increase it.
Yet we must also take up their part in prayer; as the year proceeds, many neophytes will find themselves hurt by the reactions of their friends and families. Many will be tempted to fall away or will find themselves moving deeper even into their new faith than those who first taught that faith to them; many neophytes will come to that time of testing, to a time where prayer means not consolation but desolation, to a time when truly they discover what it means to leave friend, family, and all possessions to follow Christ. They will discover the losses in their lives, and feel sorrow. Confusion. The devil will tempt them and test them ferociously.
Sadly, every year that new Catholics are welcomed at the Easter Vigil, as that year progresses many of the same abandon their faith or become lapse.
I understand why. I never truly realized how hard it would be, daily examining my conscience and going to mass even when I don’t feel like it; saying a rosary as I battle with frustration and exhaustion; the depressing realization that friends who were once close are now drifting away as a direct result of my conversion; no longer being able to enjoy various activities as I come to recognize the sin within them; the distance between myself and my grandparents as I go to the Catholic Church and they to the Lutheran. There’s no other word for it, becoming a Catholic - and being a Catholic in a non-Catholic family, a non-Catholic world - is hard.
Yes, we must rejoice with our Neophytes. Yet also we must pray for them; they have many trials ahead, and as the freshness of their Easter memories dims, as the glitter reveals itself as the glitter of a sword which pierces the heart, they will need grace.
So let us shower heaven with our prayers, that heaven may shower our neophytes with graces. Let us turn to the Lord and beg Him that this may be the year when not one neophyte lapses - the year when the faith of every new Catholic remains glowing and hot as an ember, smoldering and giving flame to a fire which may ignite the faith of each one of us.
Pax Christi.
