Jennifer shares how by reflecting more deeply on the Scriptures, and understanding Mary as the first disciple of Jesus who saw through his mission from the Annunciation to Pentecost, helped her see that there was much more to Mary than she’d ever noticed before.

Watch Jennifer on The Journey Home

Read a written version of Jennifer’s testimony

The post Struggling with Devotion to Mary – Jennifer Southers appeared first on The Coming Home Network.

Beginnings of Faith

The call to be a priest began at a tender age, even though my parents did not go to church. Although they had me baptized as a baby at the Presbyterian church in Napa, CA, where I grew up, I never attended Sunday school or worship services. Their religion was golf. Despite this, I built an altar in my bedroom with a picture of Pope Pius XII and some other odds and ends — a Bible from my grandmother and a creche I had asked for at Christmas. It was a cheap plastic nativity scene, but it meant a lot to me.

Growing up in a very Catholic town in northern California, many of my friends went to Mass each Sunday with their families. Occasionally, I was invited to attend with them. The old Latin Mass enthralled me. For my friends it was boring, but for me it was beautiful. I didn’t dare to think that, one day, I might be the priest standing at the altar, but I longed to be an altar boy like my cousins.

After graduating from high school in 1963, I joined a group of 20 graduates on a study tour of Europe. The local Rabbi, Dr. Leo Trepp, was our leader. He was one of those I recalled during my ordination. I was anxious to learn as much as I could on the trip, and a highlight of the experience was that we happened to be in Rome for the coronation of Pope Paul VI. I gloried in the many churches we visited and decided that, when I got home in September, I would become Catholic. However, my father didn’t approve.

During a “what do you want to be when you grow up” conversation with him, I mentioned that I thought I wanted to be a priest. It didn’t go well. At the end of the argument, he said, “Why don’t you go to your own church?” I responded, “Which church is that?” He said, “Your grandmother is Episcopalian.” The next Sunday, I headed to St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. It was “high church” and looked Catholic, so I signed on. After confirmation, I began serving at the altar. Receiving communion was the highlight of my life.

Episcopalian Seminary, Priesthood, and Tragedy

In my junior year of college, I met an Episcopal priest who was the chaplain at Sacramento State University. I spent the summer in Sacramento taking English classes and living at Canterbury House, a small residence for Episcopalian students. Fr. Al was young and a great preacher, and I became one of his disciples. Being close at hand, I blindly followed him — he was, after all, Jesus’ man, no? Sadly, he took advantage of me and abused me, though I was not underage. For me, it was a deeply confusing time. I thought I could get closer to Jesus by being close to Fr. Al, and he assured me it was not a sin.

Many other students would have jumped at the opportunity to be in a special relationship with Fr. Al, but I was conflicted and troubled. Was there something about me that invited this? What I needed from him was for him to be a holy priest, but he had misinterpreted my devotion to him as a come-on. I remembered that incident years later, when young people would look at me as if I were Jesus; I saw how easy it could be for me to take advantage of them.

College over, I applied for seminary; the bishop sent me to Church Divinity School of the Pacific (CDSP) in Berkeley. During that year, Fr. Al moved to the East Coast, and I never saw him again. Oddly, he was one of the people who came to mind at my Catholic ordination. Even though he hurt me, he was also a factor in my call. One of the faculty at CDSP mentioned in passing that Fr. Al had given me a negative recommendation — in the language of the day, he suggested I had a “hang-up.” The professor concluded that, regardless, I really was in the right place in seminary.

In my last year of seminary, I had another very powerful, though confusing, experience. A priest gave a lecture on the charismatic renewal, and that same evening, as I knelt on the floor of my dorm, I received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. The seminary education was designed to call everything into question; it was the era of “demythologization,” and Rudolf Bultmann was our guide. He taught that anything “supernatural” was added by the early Church, and he doubted that Jesus had even existed. After my powerful and emotional encounter with Christ, I was completely undone and even more confused and troubled.

I needed to sort through my education and square it with my personal experience of Christ, so I postponed ordination and spent the next few years reading and discerning the truth of Christ. I had never read C.S. Lewis, but he became my guide during those years and helped me to sort out my faith. I was eventually ordained in the Episcopal Church in November of 1972, and began serving a small congregation outside Sacramento. In a few years, the parish had grown dramatically, and when a leader in the congregation who was grievously ill was miraculously healed, the growth exploded. (By the way, this healed man also showed up in my mind at my ordination.) Suddenly, the charisms of the Holy Spirit were flooding into the ministries as Christ drew in ever more people.

The bishop had the reputation of being very negative toward the Charismatic Renewal, and with what was happening in the parish I needed to make an appointment and tell him. After my tale of the healed man and the movement of the Spirit, I waited anxiously for the bishop to fire me. Instead, he leaned back in his chair and said “Well, praise the Lord.”

My preaching was “confirmed… by the signs that attended it” (Mark 16:20) and my faith was strong, but the enemy counterattacked. I had gotten married a couple years before, and when Kathy, my wife, gave birth to our first, the child was stillborn. My world collapsed, and many of the old conflicts and troubles resurfaced. I blamed Kathy for the death of the child; it’s a long story, but in essence she had been raised in Christian Science and feared the medical establishment, so she decided to give birth at home. The death of David, our baby, divided us, and my coping mechanism was to throw myself totally into my work. Eventually, after years of counseling, we separated. I left the parish for another one in Berkeley, while also teaching part-time at the seminary. An affluent congregation gave funds to provide full-time ministry for three years, with the idea that the Good Shepherd mission there would grow and become self-sufficient. Early on, the plan seemed to be working, but my depression increased, and I felt like I was wandering in a wasteland. It was clear to me that I needed to do something else to make a living. There were several nurses in the congregation, and they said, “Go to nursing school.” (At the time there was a terrific shortage of nurses.) So, I continued half-time at the church and went to school.

The AIDS Epidemic and Our Lady

When I started working full-time at the hospital, I resigned from the parish, and when a position came open in the AIDS unit at Kaiser San Francisco, I jumped at it. I had a desire to care for the lepers of our time, and it seemed to me that I had found a new ministry. I worked in that unit for seven years during the height of the epidemic. Little we did made any difference to our patients, who died in vast numbers. (Oddly, some of those patients who had made an impression on me were also in my mind as I prostrated myself at the altar during my Catholic ordination.) The Archdiocese of San Francisco supplied a Catholic chaplain to our unit, Sister Mercedes, who came seven days a week to see her “muchachos,” as she called them.

One day, we were both in the break room, and I asked her, “Sister, how do you find the strength to do this ministry?” She said, “Have you heard of the Virgin of Guadalupe?” I had, but I knew nothing about the apparition. She explained that the Mother of Jesus had called her to do this work in His name. That didn’t mean much to me; I believed in the virgin birth of Jesus, but Mary had never been much of a focus for my faith. I watched Sister visit with the boys; many had been raised Catholic, but because of their lifestyle, they were angry and separated from God and their families. I watched her non-judgmental approach and saw the miracle of reconciliation occur as they approached death. I perceived that something truly holy and special was occurring through her ministry.

One Sunday, after working all night and having several patients die in our unit, I went to the Episcopal church where I was resident. Church of the Advent in San Francisco is a very “high” church, and near the altar, there was a shrine to the Blessed Virgin. After the service, I knelt before it to commend the souls of those who had died to God. I felt that her arms embraced me, and in her, the arms of Jesus were opening to me, calling me.

Not long thereafter, I caught pneumonia from one of our patients and ended up in the hospital for 10 days with horrible complications. I remember waking up one night, not knowing where I was, profoundly fearful, and calling out to the Lord. He showed Himself to my mind with His arms extended, saying, “Come to me.” I saw that, while I had not abandoned my faith, I had put everything else before God.

When I was well enough to go back to church, I ended up attending the local Catholic parish. The crucifix in the front of the church, always in the past a symbol to me of Christ’s atoning sacrifice and suffering, was transformed in my mind to the living Christ, who said, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself” (John 12:32). As I wept my way through the Mass that Sunday, I knew that I had a clear call to “come home.”

Conversion and a New Priesthood

I spent the next few months talking to as many priests as I could to begin the process of finally becoming Catholic. I started RCIA at a parish south of the city and was confirmed at the Easter Vigil in 1995.

At first, the call seemed to be for me to put Christ and his Church ahead of everything else, and because I had experienced enough turmoil in the ministry of the Episcopal Church, I had no interest in ordination. But my pastor kept encouraging me, so I took a long weekend retreat at the Carmelite House of Prayer in Napa Valley, praying and seeking God’s face. After the retreat, I visited my dad, and he could tell something was happening. I explained to him that I wished to move toward ordination, and he gave me his blessing. Still, there were several obstacles I needed to deal with.

First, I needed an annulment to move forward, and Kathy, my ex-wife, was dead set against it. Oddly, when the annulment was granted, not only did it open the door to seminary for me, but Kathy met someone and married. We had been separated for 13 years, but it took the healing of the annulment process to open the door for her to a new marriage. Annulment does open up old wounds and fears, but also resolves them; it is truly a healing process. In 1998, I entered St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, CA. I didn’t need to complete the whole curriculum since I had several degrees, but the faculty required two years of residence in order to give a recommendation.

I worried that it would be a miserable time and feared I might be turned down for ordination, but I felt that I had to trust Jesus’ leading and give 100 percent. Those two years were actually wonderful; I had a library at my disposal, classes I found interesting, and fellow seminarians who accepted me and made me a part of that community. Having the opportunity to go to Mass daily kept me growing. That summer, I went to Mexico to do language immersion with 17 other seminarians. During that time, four of us went to Mexico City and the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I entered the shrine more or less a skeptic, but was encountered by “la Virgencita.” As I gazed upon the image on the tilma (reed cloak) of St. Juan Diego, her hands seemed to open, and her extraordinary presence in that place brought me face to face with Jesus, her Son. After the visit, I read everything I could on Our Lady of Guadalupe, as well as the other apparitions and Church teaching on Mary. Another obstacle dissipated.

The big obstacle, though, was authority. From the outside, the Catholic Church appears as a big monolith that gives little freedom to the People of God, requiring them to have blind faith. I learned, however, that this is not the way the Church actually functions. At every step along the way, I had the opportunity to question and to engage the truth. The bishops have life and death authority over seminarians, and as a part of the process of ordination, we were required to give assent to the Magisterium of the Church — that is, to the Pope and the body of bishops. Much time was spent on understanding the dogmatic teaching of the Church (Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement) and to understanding teachings such as priestly celibacy and other elements of priestly life and ministry. I was never forced to accept anything to which I didn’t freely and openly give consent. In the ordination liturgy, we are asked to give respect and obedience to the bishop and his successors. In sum, I came to understand that being docile and open to the truth made my promise of obedience something that clarified the relationship between the priest and his bishop. Along the way, I read from cover to cover the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which I found reasonable, and in short, true. The documents of the Second Vatican Council were also a great help for understanding why the Church teaches as she does. After being immersed in Catholic orthodoxy and orthopraxy (correct practice) in the seminary, the pieces fell into place for me as I moved toward the goal of priestly ordination.

That is not to say that I did not struggle. When I arrived at St. Patrick’s Seminary midyear, I was placed with a class that would be ordained in 2000. My ordination was held back until 2001, in order to fulfill the faculty’s obligation of completing two full academic years for a recommendation. It was painful to watch my classmates being ordained while I was not. However, with patience and trust in the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I was ordained a transitional deacon in January of 2001, and then shortly thereafter, on February 22nd, I was ordained a priest.

On the Job

After ordination, I was assigned to St. Joachim parish in Hayward, a large multicultural parish with an excellent school and many ministries. I jumped right in with my first pastor, Fr. Sergio; there were also three newly ordained deacons and an excellent staff.

It was during the “Long Lent” of 2001, when the sexual abuse crisis erupted. The Oakland diocese had been very proactive in protecting children, but with all the pain that resulted from the revelation of the abuses, I wondered what I had gotten myself into. I was also delegated by my pastor to call on and spend time with families who had suffered at the hands of a particular notorious priest who had been assigned to St. Joachim some years before. The diocese had set aside funds to enable counseling for the abuse victims, but for the most part the families did not want to deal with it. As a result of the abuse of their children, most of them were no longer practicing their faith, but there were a couple of families who were still active in the parish. While it is all too human to sweep such pain under the rug, my own experience of abuse helped me to empower those who would take advantage of the resources we had made available. By the end of the year, I felt that we had made a difference.

St. Joachim parish also gave me my first opportunities to celebrate the Mass and preach in Spanish. The faithful who worshiped in Spanish were very kind and enabled me to get comfortable with the liturgy in a second language. Because they were so welcoming, I got good experience toward my second assignment, which was as pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Church in Concord. St. Francis had been an entirely English-speaking community. Although they permitted Spanish Masses in the church, these Masses were celebrated by priests from an organization called Concord Hispanic Ministries; they had Masses in three parishes, as well as in school auditoriums.

The bishop decided to put the Spanish speaking Catholics back into the parishes and dissolve Concord Hispanic Ministries, so the day I arrived at St. Francis, 2,400 Spanish speaking families arrived as well. It was good for an overly entitled English speaking congregation to make room for others, although there were stresses and strains along the way. Sadly, the previous pastor had a serious drinking problem that ultimately took his life, and the pastor before him had active Alzheimer’s disease for several years, and some of the staff of both school and parish had taken advantage of the leadership void, getting paid for doing nothing. All that had to be cleaned up while I lived my first year at St. Francis of Assisi, a parish that one of my brother priests described as “notoriously cranky.” Human relations is the cross of being a parish leader, but with faith and perseverance, we got through the transition, and I settled in for an anticipated long ministry there. But that was not to be.

I gave my obedience to the bishop that ordained me, but he was replaced in 2002 by Bishop Allen Vigneron (now Archbishop Vigneron of Detroit). One of the parishes out in the Delta area of California, Immaculate Heart of Mary in Brentwood, needed a new pastor, and some dozen brother priests had turned it down. Too far away, too much Spanish, and too much debt were the usual reasons given. Finally, our new bishop called in desperation and asked if I would consider it; my answer, based on obedience, was an unqualified “yes.” The parish had been without a pastor for a couple of years, and a young priest, Fr. Ken, with whom I was very close, was their temporary administrator. I called Fr. Ken and drove out to Brentwood. He showed me the church, which had been built in 2004; it was now the end of 2006. In the course of our time together, I confided in him that the bishop had asked me to be pastor. I asked if he could give me some time to spend in the church to pray and seek the Lord’s will. The new church was beautiful, thoroughly from the post-Vatican II era, but with traditional elements that made it feel like a church. I had the sense that Jesus’ arms were opening to me in that place, that He was calling me to be there. I ended up being the pastor of that parish for 10 years, and it grew from some 1,700 families to over 6,000 during my time there. Demographics drove that growth, but the parish was also alive and bursting with ministries.

For me, it is the people who make up the parish, and I quickly fell in love with them. Fortunately, they seemed to respond to me as well. The enormous debt I had inherited was paid off within a couple of years, allowing us to borrow around four million dollars to build a hall, offices, and classrooms. This new debt was also retired before I left. I asked the bishop to allow me to retire in my 70th year, partly because I had experienced a brush with cancer, but also because the day-to-day pressure on a pastor is enormous, even though most people think we only work one day a week.

Retired but Still Working for the Lord

Jesus always calls us to himself and to ongoing conversion. After retiring, I immediately got involved in ministry in the diocese of Stockton, where I moved to be near family. I hadn’t expected to be busy, but I love being a priest and doing the things that priests do. In 2022, Bishop Myron Cotta of Stockton asked that I take on a parish in crisis: St. Anthony in Manteca. The previous pastor had resigned, and the circumstances greatly divided the community. It was my task to heal those wounds, or rather be the midwife that allowed Jesus to heal them. St. Anthony is a wonderful parish with a great school and many ministries, and I was graced to be present for the transition of the parish from the loss of their previous pastor into their preparation for a new one. Behind the church’s altar stands a life-size crucifix, with Jesus inviting the faithful in with outstretched arms. I mentioned previously the verse about the Son of Man being lifted up and drawing all to Him (John 12:32) — this, coupled with the sight of such a dramatic crucifix was, and remains, a powerful image and message, not only for me personally, but definitely for the people as they returned to Mass at the end of the pandemic. It is true that Jesus continues to love us and call us. I am grateful to the Lord, who has opened His arms to me, and through my ministry, to those who have come to love Him.

My personal experience, especially with abuse, caused me more than a little heartbreak, not to mention downright confusion as to what it said about me as a priest. Abuse is not the stigma of a single church, though; it is found everywhere. We cannot change the past, but we can change how we respond. Because God was always my loving Father, Mary my loving mother, and Jesus the source of all good, by the grace of God, I did not respond with anger and hatred toward the Church and the priesthood. Perhaps my experience was less drastic than others; still, my simple faith is that, when we are faithful to God, He can use every experience in our lives to bring good out of evil, life out of death.

The post I Will Draw All People To Myself appeared first on The Coming Home Network.

Some of you may also be familiar with the work of Jack’s wife, Johnette Williams, host of EWTN’s Women of Grace.

The post Jack Williams – Former Evangelical Christian appeared first on The Coming Home Network.

But in studying history — not just world and Church history, but the history of his own spiritual trajectory — he began to see that the God he had pushed to the side for years had been with him all along.

Derek shares how his faith and his marriage have helped him to see that despite all the wounds of his family experiences and mistakes of his background, he was always being called to be part of God’s family in the life of the Church.

Watch Derek on The Journey Home

The post Joining God’s Family – Derek Rotty appeared first on The Coming Home Network.

In November of 1973, when I was eight years old, my parents had their sixth child, Phyllis. Tragically, she was stillborn because the umbilical cord had wrapped around her neck. My innocent mind struggled to understand how this could happen, and, understandably, it devastated our whole family. What happened next, though, puzzled me greatly. At the small funeral which was held in the hospital chapel for Phyllis, I witnessed doctors and nurses crying over our lost sibling. It was profound, but even at age eight, I wondered why these medical staff, some of whom supported or even may have participated in the newly legalized abortion of the unborn, could then cry for my sister. Didn’t those babies deserve the same dignity as my sister? A seed was planted that day, watered with the many tears of my mother.

Laying the Foundation

Over the years, my interest in the sciences, and biology in particular, grew. I went to college and completed my pre-med coursework, with plans to attend medical school. While in college, I had a few Catholic friends, and I attended Mass a couple of times with them. However, I was angry because I felt as though the Catholics thought they were better than me, denying me communion, so I defiantly went forward and received the Eucharist, thinking it was only bread. I pretty much forgot about that event until I started to contemplate the Catholic Faith many years later.

After college, I applied to medical school, but I wasn’t accepted the first time I applied. Because of this, I got a job at Johns Hopkins University developing protocols for pediatric leukemia treatments, while also working as a home health nurse aide. After a year, I changed gears and went to Colorado to join the full-time staff of Young Life, working as a counselor with troubled teens experiencing teen pregnancy and teen homelessness. I also enrolled at Fuller Theological Seminary to study Christian Family Counseling. While there, I gained important skills in working with this demographic, as well as learning how to see and love them, rather than focusing on their crimes and shortcomings.

With the dream of medicine still in my heart, though, I returned to the east coast to conduct research on Alzheimer’s Disease at Duke University while working as a physical therapy assistant. During this time, I was attending a Presbyterian church with friends, but I met this bubbly Catholic Cajun girl who had just moved up from southern Louisiana for a critical care nursing internship. I had never met a Catholic who was so dedicated to his or her beliefs. Kathleen was not a great apologist and didn’t have complete answers to many of my questions, but she had an unwavering faith. I was fascinated with this new species of Christian.

Marriage and Medical School

I had always been able to easily counter arguments in favor of Catholicism, but Kathleen had a great uncle who was a diocesan monsignor and an uncle who was a Discalced Carmelite friar; she was formed well enough to resist the basic tenets of Protestantism. As we started to spend more time together, talking about our very different lives and beliefs, we began to fall in love. I had been an avid member of Intervarsity and Campus Crusade for Christ, so I was confident I could lead her to the “truth” of the Reformation. During this time, I applied to medical school a second time and was rejected again. I was told I needed to get a master’s degree to prove I could do graduate level work. So, I decided to return to The College of William and Mary where I had earned my undergraduate degree, while Kathleen returned to Louisiana to take care of her dying grandmother.

After her grandmother’s death, Kathleen moved back to Virginia so we could continue discerning marriage together while she lived in a nearby town, working as a nurse. I earned my master’s degree in biology, but was rejected a third time to medical school. Frustrated, I decided to actually move to the medical school in Richmond, get a research job, and stay until they got tired enough of me to admit me. I researched and published on brain receptors in rats and applied a fourth time. I finally was accepted.

After applying for and receiving all the canonical approvals from the Church, Kathleen and I were married two weeks before the start of medical school in 1994. We had gone through pre-Cana (marriage preparation) classes and agreed on most topics, such as birth control, abortion, and raising the kids Catholic. However, I still thought she would become Presbyterian. I would attend Mass with her, but I was also part of a Presbyterian church. The “mission” of our marriage was “to live the broken body of Christ and strive towards unity in His Church.”

A Pro-Life Ethic

During medical school, my commitment to pro-life medicine solidified. Throughout medical school, I had to fight against instruction that promoted supporting the relativistic convictions of patients rather than helping patients ethically navigate health care decisions. Birth control, abortion, euthanasia, neglecting abstinence counseling, and many other topics were left up to the patient alone, forcing many students to practice medicine against their consciences.

Thankfully, this changed when I moved on to my residency. Kathleen and I practiced Natural Family Planning (NFP), and when we moved to begin my residency position in Family Medicine in Mobile, AL, we became a certified Sympto-Thermal Method teaching couple. My first week in residency, I was faced with a 16-year-old girl requesting birth control from me. I had to pause and pray. I told her I could not in good conscience prescribe a harmful medicine to her, especially one that would support an immoral lifestyle. As a family practitioner, I practiced medicine with a holistic approach, caring for mind, body, and soul. Following this, I approached my director and told him that I could not prescribe birth control or make referrals for procedures such as abortion or sterilization. He respected my right of conscience, and I went on to complete my residency.

During this time, I would listen to my wife teach the Rosary and the tenets of her Catholic faith to our growing family. Our third child was born during my residency. Kathleen was pregnant with our fourth child when we moved to North Carolina, where I joined an NFP-only general practice. In this new practice, we started to have many Catholics come under our care. All of the local priests came to us, as well as the many large, homeschooling Catholic families.

When our kids reached school age, we opened King of Mercy homeschool and were able to incorporate our religious beliefs into our curriculum. Kathleen was becoming stronger in her faith, while the Methodist church I was attending was becoming more progressive and deviating from my beliefs. Our local priests asked us to teach NFP to couples in marriage preparation, and they went on to have me teach sessions in the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA) regarding the Church’s teachings on birth control, sterilization, in vitro fertilization, and end-of-life care. I thought it was pretty progressive of these priests to allow a non-Catholic to teach in their RCIA and pre-Cana classes.

I became more interested in Catholic ethics. During our second year in North Carolina, an influential pro-life leader was coming to town, and I was asked to host him. I spent several days with this amazing man, who was wholly dedicated to the defense of the unborn. Over the next five years, my practice partner, Dr. Danny Holland, and I offered free prenatal care and delivery services to abortion-vulnerable women. We would pray outside of the abortion clinics and set up referral services through the crisis pregnancy centers to deliver free care.

In 2006, a young woman came into the office after taking the abortion pill and immediately regretting it. She wanted to reverse the abortion. God delivered an idea to me to use progesterone to do exactly that. We had progesterone in our office because Dr. Holland was a certified NaPro Fertility Consultant, having trained at the Pope Paul VI Institute in Nebraska. She received the treatment, and her baby survived. Today, that baby is a healthy 16-year-old girl.

If I had gone straight to medical school out of college, I never would have gained the experience and wisdom to understand how protein receptors worked, to understand the plight of a teenager in pregnancy, or to see this medical dilemma with a “can do” culture-of-life medical approach.

Following this, though I was still a Protestant, I became a medical advisor for Priests for Life and started working with others on delivering this protocol to more women hoping to reverse their abortions. Ultimately, I teamed up with Dr. George Delgado, who had also discovered the reversal protocol separately, and began collecting abortion reversal stories, publishing a case series of reversal treatments in 2012. Eventually, Heartbeat International took over Dr. Delgado’s call center, and they have been able to expand the network of providers able to deliver this treatment. To date, they have over 2000 providers in 86 countries, and the Abortion Pill Reversal protocol has saved over 4000 babies, with numbers growing daily as medication abortion services expand.

Surrendering My Skepticism

Meanwhile, in the midst of this work, I was struggling with my faith, trying to sort out the truths of Kathleen’s and my seemingly opposing churches. I had debated topics with multiple priests and catechists. I had attended multiple conferences. I had been to Rome and stood two feet from Pope John Paul II while searching for answers. I led Catholic medical missions to Mexico, Ghana, and Vietnam, but I still could not bring myself to accept the Catholic Faith.

One patient whom I met on a mission particularly touched me. It was a very frustrating and unorganized day in the makeshift clinic we had put together in bush country. Hundreds of patients, some of whom had walked two days to see us, were tired and hungry and needing help. I was tired and hot and second guessing this trip. I asked God to show Himself to me and convince me that I made the right decision to come. A little boy then came in to see me. He was about eight years old, dirty and malnourished. He had scaly skin and a large wound in his head, called a Buruli ulcer. This is a chronic wound that requires surgical treatment plus special antibiotic treatment. It was eating into his skull. The village children teased him and poked him in one eye with a stick, leaving him blind in that eye. His mother had abandoned him, and his grandmother was reluctantly raising him. He was seen as a curse in this village, where many still practiced animist religions. When I asked his name, his grandmother told me, “Emmanuel” — literally, “God with us.” It struck me right in the heart. My prayer was answered, and we did all we could to cure this little boy. We offered to take him to the United States for treatment, but ultimately, we could not do it. We did get him to a regional Buruli ulcer center, but sadly, he died six months later. However, this encounter gave me a real heart for the places God meets us and helped me to understand how we are to see Jesus in each of our patients and be Jesus to them.

Despite these experiences, I was still struggling with my faith. By now, I had stopped going to Protestant services and was fully integrated into the life of our parish. In fact, people were surprised when they found out that I wasn’t Catholic.

Maybe it was pride or my inborn stubbornness, but when I really examined the root issue, it came down to the Eucharist. As a scientist and medical doctor, I could not bring myself to consider it even a possibility that bread and wine could become God — so vulnerable, so physical, so present, and so seemingly inanimate.

Continuing to wrestle with my skepticism, one day, I received a call from our priest asking me to investigate a possible Eucharistic miracle. The priest said he was looking for someone who was scientifically sound, who would honestly evaluate the Host and not be tempted to be biased based on religious belief. I accepted the task and traveled to investigate a Host that had fallen to the floor, then was placed in holy water. When the priest went to properly dispose of the Host, it had a bloody and fleshy appearance. I was fascinated and took a sample to a pathologist. The first test came back positive for the possible presence of blood, but further testing revealed that it was a bacterial growth. This type of bacteria glows very red, and the Host had become puffy with the absorption of water and bacterial growth. I delivered my report to the priest, but the event made me think very deeply about my ability to believe, especially amid my other experiences with Eucharistic miracles.

I had been to Orvieto, Italy, and studied other Eucharistic miracles, where the accidents remaining after the transubstantiation had actually conformed to the physical appearance of the Body and Blood of our Lord. I saw the stained altar cloth in Orvieto and marveled at the multiple accounts of AB blood type, the universal blood type recipient found in these Eucharistic miracles. I thought how appropriate that blood type would be, given that Christ longs to receive everyone into His kingdom. I really wanted to believe, but my data collecting brain wouldn’t let me.

All of these factors made me think about the multiple times where Christ had said we must have the faith of a child to receive the kingdom of God. I had studied Scott Hahn’s The Lamb’s Supper and even gone to several of his conferences. I decided that if there is no way possible for me to believe, then I would have never gone to investigate a possible miracle in the first place. All this time I had been waiting for God to physically change bread and wine into flesh and blood, but what God changed instead was my heart. I believe my subconscious was wanting to believe, but my conscious intellect was blocking that belief.

Another shift in my faith took place when we went on mission to Vietnam. While there, we experienced a frightening incident as we were driving in the middle of the night to the leper colonies. The priest in the car started praying the Rosary while our lives were in danger, and I joined in my desperation. This was the first Rosary I actually prayed, and I felt real comfort come over me. That we were saved from an almost certain collision and death affirmed my trust in praying for the Blessed Mother’s help, and today, the Rosary is a daily devotion for me.

Prior to this, I would always sit with our family as my wife led our seven children in the Rosary, rebelliously not wanting to “pray to Mary,” but wanting to be with my family. As a Protestant, I had confused worship and prayer, not understanding the “communion of the saints,” which not only includes those on earth but also those in heaven. When I really studied the Rosary, I realized how scriptural it was and had little argument with it. If I would be honored to have Billy Graham pray for me, why wouldn’t I want the prayers of Jesus’ own mother? I started to realize I could never love Mary more than Jesus does. When praying the Rosary and meditating on the mysteries, it started to feel like the times when I would sit with my best friend’s mother and talk about her son’s adventures. But instead of seeing my friend’s antics through the eyes of an immature friend, I was able to see those same stories through the eyes of a loving mother. That was now how I was learning to pray the Rosary, seeing the passion of our Lord through the eyes of a grieving mother, or the joy of the presentation at the temple through Mary’s eyes.

A Final Spiritual Offensive

As our children were growing older, with one in college, I knew that I needed to make a decision regarding my faith. Therefore, I told my wife that I was going to attend the upcoming RCIA classes in order to truly investigate the questions I had regarding the faith. Little did I know that my wife had enlisted multiple priests to start a novena of novenas, offering 81 Masses for the intention of my conversion. At the time I told her that I was going to start RCIA, they were already 13 Masses in, but she didn’t reveal this spiritual offensive to me until after my Confirmation on Pentecost in 2015. I remember my first Sacrament of Reconciliation, and the first sin off of my lips was that of pride. The second was receiving our Lord in the Eucharist while I was in college without recognizing that it was actually the Lord Himself. Now that I knew that specific sin was grave, it weighed heavily on my heart until I confessed it. Wow! It was such a relief, and I could finally know and acknowledge His presence in the Eucharist!

It was after this that I came into full communion with the Church through the Sacrament of Confirmation in the Traditional Latin Rite, a stark contrast from my prior faith. I chose the saint that I had only stood a few feet from as my confirmation saint: Pope St. John Paul II. Not many can say they have met their confirmation saint!

That same year, my son decided to attend college seminary and discern a call to the priesthood. He is scheduled to be ordained in June of this year (2024), and a second son will be starting his first year of major seminary in the Fall. Since the time of my reception into the Church, my faith has only grown. I truly feel that my faith is complete in the celebration of the Mass.

I am eternally grateful for the wonderful Christian upbringing of my parents and extended family. They gave me such a strong foundation in faith and Scripture. They love my wife and family very much. In fact, my wife has broken many of their stereotypes about Catholics. Even though they do not agree with us theologically, they remain continually supportive and loving, for which I am truly grateful.

I still feel like a baby Catholic and am looking forward to the spiritual journey ahead. Thinking back on the road that led me into the Church, I invite any Protestants who are considering the Catholic faith but are held back by fears to just relax and rest in the Lord. Take a deep dive into the history of our Christian faith and read the early fathers. Go and sit and attend a Mass and observe. Sit in an adoration chapel and just ask the Lord to guide you into His will.

The post Finding Life in the Catholic Church appeared first on The Coming Home Network.

Several circumstances, including the onset of COVID-19, caused him to reconsider the meaning of his vocation, and where he was truly called to be. For John and his wife, the intercession of Mary and the saints — especially St. Boniface — were the final thing that really convinced them they needed to become Catholic.

Read a written version of John’s testimony

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He ended up in the minor leagues with the Twins organization, and made some solid Christian friends along the way, but it was when that dream fell apart — and especially when his world was turned upside down by COVID — that Dan had a major conversion that would make him finally start taking his faith seriously.

Find more about Dan at danvenezia.com.

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He shares how experiencing their love and concern for his well-being has helped him to understand the role that Mary plays in the life of Christians: as a loving mother who prays that all people will come to know her son, Jesus.

More about Santonio’s work: giftofmary.org

The post Understanding Mary’s Spiritual Motherhood – Santonio Hill appeared first on The Coming Home Network.

That started for him a quest as a young man to learn not just the facts about Catholicism, but about the person of Jesus Christ. His faith caught fire, and the fruit of that search for a closer relationship with Jesus bore fruit in his discernment of a call to the priesthood.

More information: frkirby.com

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Fascinated by them, she and a friend from school began to ask lots of questions about the Catholic Faith. Sr. Julia shares how that path of prayer and discernment led her first to enter the Church, and then discern a vocation with the Daughters of St. Paul.

Watch Sr. Julia on The Journey Home

More about the Daughters of St. Paul: daughtersofstpaul.com

Pauline Books and Media: pauline.org

The post How a Catholic Convert Became a Religious Sister – Sr. Julia Mary Darrenkamp, FSP appeared first on The Coming Home Network.