Jaymie Stuart Wolfe is a convert to the
Catholic faith who entered the Church in 1983. Her apostolate, Loaves and
Fishes, is dedicated to teaching, evangelism and prayer through word and song.
I was baptized Catholic, but raised, Confirmed
and Communicated in the Episcopal Church because my parents had both been
divorced and remarried. I graduated from a
Catholic girls' High School. Then, I left home for college.
When I became a Roman Catholic, I became the
unimaginable—at least what had been up until that point, unimaginable to me.
There was no reason to make a drastic move like that. After all, I had Christ.
I certainly didn't need anything else. Both faith and Scripture were in my back
pocket. Aside from my ambitions and goals, Jesus was the focus of my life. In
my teens, it was easy for me to believe that even my unquenchable drive for
success, somehow, served Him. Freelancing faith seemed like the best of this world
and the next. But a series of experiences over the course of five years added
up to convince me otherwise, so much so, that on the Vigil of Easter in 1983,
at St. Paul's Church, as a senior at Harvard, I came into full communion with
the Roman Catholic Church.
When I look back at how that happened, I see a
tremendous amount of orchestration that was not at all apparent to me at the
time. Experiences that seemed quite disconnected from each other, were strung
together by a Divine current of grace— running fast enough to carry me along,
but beneath the surface of my consciousness enough to keep me blissfully
unaware of where that stream was taking me. If I had even slightly suspected
that I was swimming in the Tiber, I would have immediately stepped onto the
banks and hightailed it into the woods. Rome was the antithesis of where I saw
myself going. Catholic was the very last thing on earth I wanted to be.
Yet when I walked forward to receive Eucharist
and Confirmation, I did so freely and with joy. Grace had led me all along.
Grace unseen, but all-seeing. Grace to change my path, and even my identity.
Grace to step out into the dark and stay there long enough to find that I was
home. The struggle, in some respects, wasn't that interesting. I lost every battle
I fought. What won out in the end was redirecting grace, almost manipulative,
almost deceptive, desperately trying to convince—dare I say "seduce"
me.
Coming into the Catholic Church was my
unconditional surrender. It involved my waving my white baptismal gown, laying
down my arms, and relinquishing my personal papacy. The experience of
conversion felt as if I was allowing God to pull a fast one. Now, more than
twenty-five years later, I can see His presence backstage in every scene of my
life. These poems are my attempt to bring you into the wings with Him.
Mother Theresa
They made one of those PA system announcements
at my Catholic girls' high school that Mother Theresa was coming to speak at
the Catholic university down the street. I figured that maybe my mom and I
could go and see what she was like.
None of the other girls seemed to care much, maybe because it was before she won the Peace
Prize, maybe because they were more concerned with earrings, and nail polish, and boys.
I think Mother Theresa was just another nun to
them. I wasn't sure what she was to me,
but I remembered the movie I saw about her work
when I was nine or ten or so. They showed it at the Episcopal church I went to— the one that was so very comfortable with the
60's; the one that struggled through Services for
Trial Use; the one where I sang in the choir; the one that had a "drop in;" (I was
never really quite sure what a "drop in" was.) This was the church
where a kid in Sunday School drew a picture of a cat with a mustache when we
were told to draw a picture of God.
Anyway, the movie was called "Something
Beautiful for God."
My mom remembered it too, and so we went to see
Mother Theresa speak. I can't remember a single word she said, but I remember what I saw because it scared me.
Entering the auditorium was long line of men in
academic robes. They wore their colors,
their stripes, their anachronistic hats with great solemnity.
Dignified music played and dignified men processed in order of
ascending honor. Behind them all, completely obscured —almost
invisible— walked Mother Theresa, so small, so plain, so poor, in sandals, her hands folded in front of her, her head bowed down as if to shelter herself
from what preceded her.
Men of honor had gathered to honor her, But in
her presence they seemed so empty, so false, so proud without cause. Walking towards the stage, it seemed as if she was the only one not
somehow out of place. Real humility has that effect; it shames the honorable; it calls to the conscience; it jars the achiever; especially if you've never seen it before.
Everyone stood up. My seat was on the center aisle. As she approached my row my heart beat faster. And as she passed by I couldn't stop myself from stepping into the aisle to touch her
hands. When I looked into her face, she smiled, and I cried.
I dreamed about doing important things, about being recognized, and respected, even famous.
She did little, menial, things; and cared less about the things she did than
about Whom she did them for. And while everyone in that room called her "Mother," not one was really her child.
Pope John Paul
I'd been at college for less than a month. I was living my dream, at the top of the heap,
pretending I wasn't afraid to fail; hoping I wasn't the one really bad mistake the
admissions office had made the previous April. The Pope, I heard, was coming to Boston— the
young,
Polish, multilingual Pope.
The two of us Protestants decided to go. Our
Catholic roommate decided not to. We imagined there would be thousands of people,
that the T would be crowded,that if we wanted to get a good vantage point,
we'd have to get an early start, especially since we were outsiders,
non-Catholics, schismatics, maybe even heretics. So we did something kind of strange: we spent the night at the airport.
It was too cold to go to the Common overnight,
maybe that was why we did it. While the hours passed we talked a lot, about
this Pope, about whose Holy Father he was,about the old divisions that separated us, that
kept us apart from him and his.
We found a large piece of cardboard around the
baggage claim, and begged a marker and tape from one of the ticket agents, and noticed some long wooden sticks lying
nearby. We decided to make a sign, one that would make the Pope smile, one that would tell them all why we had come.
"Protestants for the Pope" it said. We got there at the break of dawn,
early enough to set up camp on the grass right
behind the rope that was the great divide
between the crowd and the chairs that were set
up for people with some kind of ticket, or pass, or arrangement.
It wasn't long until the ground filled in
behind us, behind our sign so that it looked as if
"Protestants for the Pope" was a
sizable organization, even though it was just the two of us Freshmen. All of those arriving crowds were Catholics, of
course, at least the ones around us were. They asked us about the sign. They shared their blankets, and their snacks, and excitement.
They told us how happy they were that we had
come. We had to wait all day. The people around us sang to pass the time, and
we sang too, because we knew their songs.
The Pope arrived and cheering voices rose from
Boston Common like incense, like smoke
climbing to form the dark gray clouds that
covered the sky. Mass began, and then it started to rain.
We just stood out in the rain, because we were young; because somehow it renewed us; because we
wanted our sign to be seen. When the Pope spoke the sun came out, and the
rain stopped mid-air. His voice echoed off the buildings; and though he addressed tens of thousands, I
felt like he was talking just to me.
"Be not afraid," he said. And even though I didn't think I was afraid of
anything, He said it again and I took new courage. Just before Communion the sky opened and rain came pouring down harder than before.
The Lord's Prayer thundered on every tongue. An army of priests waded into the crowd— past
the people with tickets and chairs—with mud staining their white robes; with mud
splashed up to their knees; soaking, shivering, carrying covered bowls filled with bread I knew
I could not take— Bread for Catholics, not for me.
But I watched them come, and come, and people moving forward in the mud; and thought
that no one would do this for a piece of bread,
unless he was very, very, hungry; unless, in fact, he was starving, and it was the very last piece of bread on
earth.
Our sign finally collapsed,but more than a few news photographers had
taken our picture with it during the day, before the rain, before they had what they came for and left.
(...)
My evangelical church was too small for me, too
narrow, too conformist, too uncomfortable with women. And so I went back to another, bigger one I
knew before, one that was home to me as a child, one that
had sacraments, and liturgy, and hymnals instead of overhead projectors, and even a few monks.
The priest there told me that sometimes a
crisis in faith was just an indication that your God was too small, or your Me was too small. That sounded good to me, but when I went to him to ask about how it was that some of our bishops
didn't believe in the virgin birth; or miracles; or somehow thought that they could reconcile priesthood with active homosexuality; he suggested to me that underneath it all, I was secretly a lesbian. I knew I wasn't gay, but in that conversation I realized that my Church was still too small.
Mass confusion
For no reason my fiance's roommate invited me to Mass, and
for no reason I said I'd go.
I sat there mesmerized for no reason, by something I had seen enough of before to be
able to dismiss. But for no reason I could not dismiss the student Mass, that Sunday night, in the basement of the Church, especially when, for no reason, the choir sang One Bread, One Body during communion, and for no reason, I broke down in tears because I couldn't receive what I didn't believe in at the time. And it was the lack of a reason that confused
me.
So when the priest announced a series of talks called Basic Belief, and said that this week's topic would be
Eucharist, I decided, for no reason, to go.
Listening closely to what The Church taught
about Eucharist, I was shocked. In four years of religion at Catholic school I had never heard what that priest was saying,
and that made me mad. It made me mad to think that all this time I
had been deceived by the evangelicals, and the episcopals, but even more by Catholics about what Catholics
believed— or were supposed to.
It infuriated me to no end that they had kept their truth to themselves; that they had found a way to keep me from
finding out what they really thought, and taught, and believed when push came to shove.
And so, when the priest was done, I introduced myself, protecting my Protestantism, but confessing that I had been sorely
misinformed about the Catholic Church; and that after what he said, I had to admit that Catholics were Christians after all— a kind I did not understand— but thought I ought to make peace with.
He asked me how serious I was about making peace, and when I told him that I was serious indeed,
he got out his appointment book, and I got mine.
The Crossing
I went with the intention of making peace, not finding it. But when I sat down in that priest's office, in the basement of the Catholic student center,
I told him much more than I intended
about being homeless, and not knowing if I could believe any more. I confessed Plato, and Machiavelli, and Nietzsche, and how I had come to the notion that every myth and philosophy was interchangeable.
But what I meant was that none of them no
longer fit the ever widening canyon inside me.
I told him how I had wandered through
denominations; how I hadn't found a real home in any of them, at least not one that lasted long after I revealed my true self.
I felt as if I was at the edge of an abyss, on the verge of unresistable atheism. I could no longer simply believe.
Without saying a word, the priest got up, took a crucifix down from
the wall, and put it on the table between us. Looking into my eyes,he leaned forward, and asked me to tell him
that the cross didn't mean more to me than
Plato, or Homer, or all the philosophers I had read until I could no longer think or even breathe.
Finding that I could not do so, I made the
crossing; and sailing on tears, landed safely on the other side of the abyss that never was.
Lumen Gentium
The priest asked if I was willing to read for
the sake of the peace I said I wanted with the
Catholic church.
I took it without hesitation, with no secret agenda, without intentions other than what I had
stated.The book he handed me was the Vatican II
documents. He told me to read Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.
So when I got to my room, I opened it instead of my other work; instead of Latin, or Greek,
or political philosophy. I thought I could afford forty pages of
diversion, But I didn't really know what those forty pages
would cost me.
The words I read were startlingly familiar.
They rang with the same Truth I had encountered only when reading the Bible.
The Mystery of the Church, The People of God, The Universal Call to Holiness; every word flowed from Scripture interpreted as I had never seen it: fresh,
whole, deeper than deep.
I inhaled each successive line with excitement, and joy.
And when I finished the final page, I closed
the book, not quite sure what to do next, because I had not found a single thing that I could argue with, or look down upon, or shrug my shoulders about.
Everything was plain, and clear, but the plainest and clearest thing was this: I was no longer
a Protestant.
And when I went back to the priest I told him
so, and to my surprise I asked him what I had to do to become what I already was: a Roman Catholic.
Jaymie Stuart Wolfe is an author,
singer-songwriter, and lay evangelist. A 1983 convert to the Catholic faith,
Jaymie is a wife and mother of eight. She has written a biweekly column in
America's oldest Catholic newspaper, The Pilot, since 1995. Experienced in
parish faith formation and music ministry, Jaymie currently serves full-time as
a Children's Editor at Pauline Books & Media. Find Jaymie on Facebook, or
learn more about her ministry at www.loavesandfishesministry.net.
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