Jonathan Day

The Beginning

.

My faith journey started back when I was five years old.  My dad brought my sister and I into the living room of our house.  He opened the Bible on a glass coffee table and shared with us that we needed to ask Jesus to be our Lord and Savior.  We could do this by asking Jesus into our hearts.  I asked Jesus to be in my heart and afterwards we sang “Father Abraham”.   Since that moment, I am thankful that my relationship with Jesus has grown, sometimes slowly, sometimes more quickly.   I am so thankful for God’s work in my life.  He has always been faithful to me.

…

My development

.

Then when I was ten years old, I started taking a very intensive adult membership class in our church.  During that same year, my dad gave me one of my most cherished pieces of wisdom.   He encouraged me to read the Bible every day.   Since that very moment, I took that piece of wisdom into my heart and have read the Bible almost every day.  I have always believed with the help of God’s grace that  the Bible is the inspired written Word of God and thus inerrant.

…

The signs

.

When I was eleven years old, I was baptized.  This was another milestone to me even if I did not fully realize the entire significance of the event.  I knew in my heart that this act was important.  I also began taking communion.  But I always felt that we should take communion very seriously.  I don’t remember any preaching on communion, but I do know that my beliefs about the seriousness of communion was definitely apparent in the Bible.  Jesus commanded it and Paul stressed the importance of doing it properly.   My prayer life was also marked by a distinct sign to me.  I felt that when I prayed, I should mentally visualize Jesus on the cross.  This helped to keep my mind focus and also emphasize to myself the respect during prayer and the importance of prayer.

…

The misunderstanding

.

When I was in high school, I took having a relationship with Jesus so seriously, that I even engaged a fellow student who was Catholic in a debate because I misunderstood the Catholic Church to be the antithesis of a relationship with Jesus.  I also remember learning in Sunday school that we are not religious because religion is devoid of a relationship with God.  So in seeing the Catholic Church as a religion, I misunderstood the Church as not having a relationship with God.

…

Never really feeling at home

.

Theologically, I could never find a church that fit 100% of the time.  I always found myself going to a church that at least met the minimum essentials.  But even sometimes I compromised the minimum essentials.  For example, I believed in “no eternal security”, so that ruled out most Baptist churches, even though I found myself sometimes going to them.  I also believed in regular communion and almost left a church when one of the communion services resembled snack time in Sunday school.   I also wanted to find a church that fit my personal tastes, but never could find one exactly right.  I liked music I could sing along to and everyone would be cheery.  I also wanted the pastor to have deep messages and be an excellent speaker.  It was hard to find both, but usually after several attempts, found one in the area.

.

The three week revelation

.

So during that three weeks of discernment of the Catholic Church.  I realized some very important things.  First, Jesus really meant what he said in John 6, Luke 22, and Matthew 26 regarding communion.  Second, the Bible is much clearer in light of interpretations that take the whole Bible into context.  Third, Jesus established a Church!  When comparing these three revelations to my life’s history in the faith, God showed me His Church!  I am absolutely grateful for His wonderful blessings!  I want to be clear about this.  I do not think that I am entering into a new religion or just another denomination of Christianity.   I truly believe that my original faith is just growing in its rightful home and it is because of God’s grace!   Every day God has blessed me with realizing that He is leading me down this path.  I never thought I would join the Catholic Church, nor did I ever really desire to join the Catholic Church, so I believe with all my heart that this is only possible if the Holy Spirit is leading me.  And another reason I believe it is the Holy Spirit is because I strongly feel my relationship growing with God.    Becoming Catholic is growing my relationship with God, not distracting from it at all!

.

In Part 3, I will explore the early signs and how I know God was preparing me from the beginning to take this next step.

These are just a few of the questions that were never sufficiently answered for me until I discovered the teaching of the Catholic Church:

.

1) How do we follow the commandment to keep the Sabbath day holy? (Exodus 20:8)  Importance of the question:  It is one of the ten commandments!

.

2) What is an apostle and how do we know who is an apostle? (1 Corinthians 12:28)  Importance of the question:  They are appointed by God as first in the church!

.

3) What does Jesus mean by “He who eats my flesh…”? (see John 6:41-58)  Importance of the question:  Jesus tells us to do this!

.

4) How do we know which books should be in the Bible? (2 Timothy 3:16)  Importance of the question:  This is the written Word of God!

.

5) What does it mean that “If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained”? (John 20:23)    Importance of question:  Jesus gave this authority to his disciples!

.

6) What does Jesus mean by “the keys to the kingdom of heaven…” (Matthew 16:19)  Importance of this question:  Jesus gives this authority to Peter!

I never wanted to join the Catholic Church. (But praise God its not about what we want, but what He wants!) I never wanted to join the Catholic Church because in my misunderstanding it was the antithesis of a true relationship with Jesus. And since I was five years old, I have firmly held two beliefs: First, the Bible is the inspired Word of God and thus inerrant. Second, that I should continually strive for a closer relationship with Jesus. My life verse since the very beginning has been: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6). Looking back now, those two fundamental beliefs and that Bible verse set me down the path to the Catholic Church. I believe God used the next 22 years to prepare me to enter His Church. So what awakened me to the journey that God had planned for my life? The seeds of that awakening are told by Jess here:   40 days, or How It All Began Part 1.

…

I remember picking up that Thomas Howard book (Evangelical is Not Enough) from the University library for Jess.   I even remember my reaction to the title.   It provoked a feeling of “what does that mean?” with a slight tinge of animosity.  I asked Jess about the book and getting an unsatisfactory answer, I didn’t pursue the questioning any further.  Months went by and I never thought about the matter any further.  Jess then tells what happened next:  39 Days, or How It All Began Part 2.

…

Jess was reading this book Catholicism for Dummies.  This was disturbing to me to say the least.  It represented to me an unhealthy curiosity in a Church that I misunderstood as the antithesis of a true relationship with Jesus.   However, I was vaguely interested in at least knowing for sure what Catholics believed on some matters because I knew I had only a superficial understanding.  So I decided to engage a little in this unhealthy curiosity.  For me personally, this was the worst book I could have started reading about the Church.  Five pages into it, my curiosity had vanished.  But concern for my wife grew.  I could see now that she was more interested in the Catholic Church and this bothered me.  I wanted to be supportive of her but also at the same time stop her.  How could I do both?  My solution was to keep asking her questions that I would hope would derail her journey.  She did not have sufficient answers for my questions, so I believed I was winning.  Then she would make a statement the next day that sounded as though she was more likely to join the Catholic Church.  Why was this happening?  Over the period of a few months, she asked me on occasion to read something.   I would put the book she recommended beside my bed and told her that I would try to get to it.  I never did.  This same event happened with several other polite recommendations by Jess.  I had started to think about the consequences of what was happening.  It seemed everyday Jess was getting closer and closer to joining the Catholic Church to my utter dismay.  I started thinking to myself.  I will raise the boys Protestant.  Jess can go to Mass on Saturday night if she wants.  As a family, we will go to church on Sunday morning.  We’ll figure out a way to deal with the questions from our children later.  I was also holding out hope that she would come to her senses and stop this journey.

…

Then one night in late October God spoke to my heart after Jess recommended a book chapter.   My verbalization of what He said was this:  ”son, it would be disrespectful of you to ignore your wife’s request again.  Read what she tells you”.  So, a little tired, I picked up the book and read the chapter.  It was written by Bob Sungenis and it was called “From Controversy to Consolation” in the book Surprised by Truth.  It rocked my foundational disagreement towards the Catholic Church.  It spoke of a personal story, not unlike mine.  Bob debated Catholics, but then ran into a Catholic who knew the Bible and his Christian faith.  That night, I read another chapter of the same book “The Bible Made Me Do It” by Tim Staples.  I was floored.  My fundamental disagreements against the Catholic Church were crumbling.  I was uneasy, but felt the joy of the Lord as my strength (Nehemiah 8:10).  I was not convinced, but curious.  I was not careless, but cautious.  I was not sure why God was leading me this way, but I knew I had to follow Him.  With all my heart, soul, strength, and mind, I started to walk where He was taking me.  So I set out on a journey.  A journey to find that one thing that I could put my finger on and say “Aha!  You see the Catholic Church contradicts the Word of God here and this ends my journey down this path”.  It would only take one contradiction because I could not maintain my fundamental belief in the Word of God and believe the teaching of the Catholic Church.  The next day after reading those two chapters in Surprised by Truth, I asked Jess about which book to read next.  She suggested Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic.   I scoffed at the title.  It was a play off of the term Born Again Christian, which I wrongly took as a statement that non-Catholics were not born again.  In the matter of just a few days, I finished the book.  I now had more questions about my own church or churches and fewer questions about the Catholic Church.  In fact, I was really starting to believe at this point that maybe the Catholic Church was the one established by Jesus in Matthew 16:18.  I then read “Rome Sweet Home”.  I cried more times reading that book than probably all of the last decade combined.  A man so committed to find the truth and to be with God, that he was willing to sacrifice peace with his wife.  And the agonies of his wife as she struggled with what she felt was the loss of her husband.  In between these two books and afterwards, I was visiting many anti-catholic websites.  Surely they could point to the Catholic Church’s contradiction of Scripture.  I quickly realized three things.  First, many of the arguments were blatant misconceptions of the Catholic Church teaching.  Second, the other arguments were in fact less true to the Bible than the Catholic Church interpretation.  Third, almost every one of these sites ignored the claim of the Catholic Church that it was established by Jesus and the fact that the Catholic Church had a real historical hand in picking the books of the Bible.  As I continued reading, I realized that verses that I had to “ignore” as a Protestant became vividly alive with the knowledge of the Catholic Church.  I began to pray even more earnestly. “God, please give me truth and wisdom.  Do not lead me down a false path”.  But my heart was being shaped by God.  I know He never left me, not even for a second.  I then started reading several books all at once:  The Catholic Church through the Ages, If Protestantism were True, Life in Christ, along with more anti-catholic websites and the full Catechism of the Catholic Church.  This was in addition of course to reading many, many verses in the Bible in addition to my daily reading and praying to God.  I was proceeding cautiously, but a little more enhusiastically.  I was wary of any road blocks that would pop up and prevent me from wanting to join the Catholic Church.  I then picked up the Letters of Ignatius and it was really awesome to see the mindset behind the early Christians.  While these letters are not deemed a part of the Canon, you could see they were written with the same style and heart of an early Christian wholly devoted to the faith.  These Christians wanted to be in unity as Christ desired.   It was amazing to see that these early Christians really did believe in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Communion and that authority lie with the bishop.

…

It was a Saturday afternoon, a little more than three weeks after that night that I read two chapters from Surprised by Truth, when I received a copy of The Catholic Chronicles.   This was the document that was going to be the real test of this journey because it was going to show why the Catholic Church was in fact wrong.  I spent the whole afternoon reading The Catholic Chronicles, reading Scripture, and praying.  After hours of reading and praying, my heart full of joy and tears streaming down my face, I looked at my wife and said, “There are no road blocks.  I now want to run home”.

…

Everyday since that Saturday afternoon, I have had more and more questions answered about the Bible in light of Catholic Church teaching.  To me this comes as no surprise, given that I now firmly believe that Jesus did build a church (Matthew 16:18), that the gates of Hades would not prevail against it (Matthew 16:18), that it is the pillar and foundation of truth (1 Timothy 3:15), and that it has been given authority from heaven (Matthew 16:19; Matthew 18:15-17; John 20:21-23; Matthew 28:18-20).  I have now come to realize that all Christians are catholic, so I hope and pray that one day you will find your home in His Church.  Start your journey today.  Your joy will be overwhelming!

………………………………………

My Unanswered Questions before becoming Catholic