I see men as trees walking, part 2: A capacity for wonder.

thers besides myself have described the jour­ney from Protes­tantism to Catholi­cism as a “par­a­digm shift” [1]. It always dis­tress­es me when I describe some­thing in what I think is a unique way, only to find that some­one else has used that very same descrip­tion. I pre­fer to think I’m orig­i­nal, but occa­sion­al­ly need the reminder that oth­er peo­ple have been there before; orig­i­nal­i­ty is an attribute of God alone.

As far as par­a­digm shifts go, I don’t find very many con­verts describ­ing what the expe­ri­ence of one feels like. Some do. I shall have more to say about this anoth­er time. When still in RCIA, how­ev­er, I had the ter­rif­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty to lis­ten to Dr. David Anders describe his con­ver­sion from Calvin­ism to the Catholic Church [2]. Dr. Anders was one of the first to artic­u­late cer­tain Catholic teach­ings, which I was still strug­gling with, in a way that made sense to me and which I could embrace. That was still a dif­fi­cul­ty for me at the time: Cer­tain teach­ings I could under­stand log­i­cal­ly, but there’s an impor­tant dif­fer­ence between that and being able to say that you’ve crossed the bridge between hav­ing some­thing in your head and hav­ing it in your eyes—the bridge between how you think and how you see. That’s one way of describ­ing what a par­a­digm shift is. And as Dr. Anders point­ed out to Mar­cus Gro­di, “It’s not easy to undo a com­plete world view and rebuild it from the ground up. And my heart bleeds for peo­ple who have to go through that.”

Which is why many resist the beck­on­ing of Christ. It’s scary. It feels so threat­en­ing, like an earth­quake. It took me near­ly twen­ty years, and I still have a sense of mourn­ing over time lost. But—and this real­ly what I want to write about—my expe­ri­ence of par­a­digm shift over two spe­cif­ic Catholic teach­ings led to very dif­fer­ent emo­tions than the ones that Dr. Anders is describ­ing. Those teach­ings are the Real Pres­ence and Pur­ga­to­ry. When the illu­sions of Protes­tantism fell on these points, I expe­ri­enced moments of joy­ful epiphany that I hope will always be with me. That may sound strange with respect to Purgatory—that believ­ing in its exis­tence would give one joy—but I explain below.

How can a symbol be a sacrament?

The first illu­sion of Protes­tantism to go for me was the belief that the com­mu­nion ele­ments were mere­ly sym­bol­ic of Christ’s body and blood, and that Tran­sub­stan­ti­a­tion was a bizarre medieval super­sti­tion. I seem to remem­ber a sar­cas­tic chok­ing scene in Pat Con­roy’s nov­el The Prince of Tides (unless it was The Lords of Dis­ci­pline) that por­trayed the Catholic belief in so fan­tas­ti­cal­ly ridicu­lous a man­ner that I was led to dis­miss Tran­sub­stan­ti­a­tion more with a guf­faw than rea­son. When I did think about the sub­ject, it seemed to me I had all the author­i­ty of an Eng­lish major on my side. Christ was speak­ing metaphor­i­cal­ly. When he said “This is my body,” “this is my blood” (Mark 14:22, 24), he was using a fig­ure of speech.

And that is true, inso­far as def­i­n­i­tions of fig­ures of speech go. In a sim­i­le, you draw a com­par­i­son by say­ing “x is like y.” In a metaphor, you draw a com­par­i­son by say­ing “x is y.” But in nei­ther case do you mean that x is lit­er­al­ly y. Robert Burns could have said, “My love is a red, red rose,” and been no clos­er to say­ing that he was in love with a lit­er­al flower than he was when he used the word like. And I was as con­fi­dent in apply­ing this analy­sis to Mark 14:22–24 as any Eng­lish major can be con­fi­dent in any­thing. And if you’ve known Eng­lish majors like the ones I have, you’ll under­stand exact­ly what I mean. That was the begin­ning and end of my think­ing on the sub­ject.

But that pesky “Scrip­ture inter­prets Scrip­ture” for­mu­la of Protes­tantism can cut both ways. And it end­ed up cut­ting an unex­pect­ed tear through the cen­ter of my paper-thin delu­sion. The turn­ing point was a ques­tion that I posed to myself one day when I had occa­sion to be think­ing about the sub­ject more deeply. The ques­tion was this: How can a sym­bol be a sacra­ment? In hind­sight, I find it inter­est­ing that I did not ques­tion that the Eucharist was a sacra­ment. That’s not typ­i­cal think­ing for a Protes­tant; Protes­tant church­es tend to be at best a-sacra­men­tal, if not thor­ough­ly anti-sacra­men­tal. So it was an inter­est­ing way to ask the ques­tion, and God may have been secret­ly work­ing in the far cor­ners of my mind, implant­i­ng in me an intel­lec­tu­al frame­work that could begin to be recep­tive to Catholic teach­ing.

The point is this: Once you ask the ques­tion, and put it in exact­ly in those terms, it answers itself. A sym­bol can’t be a sacra­ment. They are com­plete­ly oppo­site cat­e­gories. So either the Eucharist was­n’t a sym­bol, or it was­n’t a sacra­ment. “If it’s just a sym­bol,” Flan­nery O’Con­nor once said, “then to Hell with it.” I knew I was in trou­ble.

Damned if it’s a metaphor.

When I arrived home from church that day, I decid­ed to take anoth­er look at what I already knew was a key pas­sage: 1 Corinthi­ans 11:26–29. I’m going to quote from the King James Ver­sion because that was the one I used at the time [3]:

For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come. Where­fore whoso­ev­er shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthi­ly, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man exam­ine him­self, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drin­keth unworthi­ly, eateth and drin­keth damna­tion unto him­self, not dis­cern­ing the Lord’s body.

Hav­ing reread this pas­sage, I posed to myself—not anoth­er ques­tion, but this time an obser­va­tion. Those are pret­ty strong words to use, I thought, if you’re only talk­ing about a sym­bol. It was hard for me to imag­ine damna­tion depend­ing upon one’s response to a sym­bol. It was hard for me to imag­ine the unwor­thy par­tic­i­pa­tion in the mere­ly sym­bol­ic being of such impor­tance that it makes one guilty of the cru­ci­fix­ion. Honestly—and I don’t mean to offend any­one here—but I’ve heard the Eucharist referred to, among peo­ple who call them­selves “Bible-believ­ing Chris­tians,” as “a stink­ing piece of bread.” Does it sound to you like that’s what St. Paul thought of the Eucharist? He refers to it as the Lord’s body. To St. Paul, for some­one to not dis­cern the Lord’s body in the Eucharist is to “drink damna­tion.” Strong words. Con­tem­plat­ing this pas­sage, I had a hard time pic­tur­ing Christ send­ing peo­ple off to their damna­tion for the sake of a fig­ure of speech.

If “Scrip­ture inter­prets Scrip­ture,” could not you say that 1 Corinthi­ans 11:26–29 ought to pre­vent us from inter­pret­ing Mark 14:22–24 as metaphor? At this point in my line of rea­son­ing, I did give vent to an unguard­ed fig­ure of speech: I’ll be damned.

It is his body. I did­n’t yet know how. But I could no longer accept it as mere­ly a sym­bol.

Epiphany.

Matthew 3:11–12: Pentecost or purgatory?

A year lat­er, after I had been wrestling through some oth­er points of Catholic teach­ing, I made a break­through about Pur­ga­to­ry that, at the end, left me in a sim­i­lar frame of mind. As a Protes­tant, I con­sid­ered Pur­ga­to­ry unnec­es­sary because Christ took unto him­self every pun­ish­ment. His right­eous­ness, if we were saved, was applied to us. Either you went to Heav­en or you went to Hell. No pit stops.

To be hon­est, I can’t remem­ber what exact­ly it was, in con­nec­tion to Pur­ga­to­ry, that led me to con­sult John the Bap­tist’s words in Matthew 3:11–12. But here is what I read:

I indeed bap­tize you with water unto repen­tance: but he that cometh after me is might­i­er than I, whose shoes I am not wor­thy to bear: he shall bap­tize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thor­ough­ly purge his floor, and gath­er his wheat into the gar­ner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquench­able fire.

I was thun­der­struck. But my thun­der­struck-ness I artic­u­lat­ed in the form of anoth­er ques­tion. (I was ask­ing myself a lot of ques­tions.) What, exact­ly, is this bap­tism with fire? Could it be, I wondered—and this was the only alter­na­tive I could think of, which would allow me to con­tin­ue to deny Purgatory—could it be a prophe­cy of Pen­te­cost, when the Holy Spir­it came upon the dis­ci­ples like tongues of fire (Acts 2:1–4)? That expla­na­tion seemed improb­a­ble to me, for two rea­sons. The first was that Pen­te­cost was the bap­tism by the Holy Ghost, and John spoke of that as dis­tinct: “He shall bap­tize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire” [empha­sis mine]. They are two sep­a­rate bap­tisms. The bap­tism by fire is anoth­er, and it is described as a rather unpleas­ant process. It is a “thor­ough purging”—which sounds not at all like a descrip­tion of the first Pen­te­cost. In fact, I thought that the use of the word “purge” was impor­tant. What John is describ­ing is a com­plete and thor­ough cleans­ing of the soul very much along the lines of how Catholic the­ol­o­gy describes Pur­ga­to­ry.

Malachi 3:2–3: Does he declare us righteous or make us righteous?

I con­tin­ued to “search the Scrip­tures,” which any Protes­tant will encour­age you to do. And the pas­sage I found was none oth­er than this one, from the prophet Malachi:

But who may abide the day of his com­ing? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refin­er’s fire, and like fullers’ soap: And he shall sit as a refin­er and puri­fi­er of sil­ver: and he shall puri­fy the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and sil­ver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offer­ing in right­eous­ness. (Malachi 3:2–3)

Quite incon­ve­nient­ly, there was that “purge” word again. And what I not­ed in Malachi was that the process was described as some­thing done to us—not some­thing done on our behalf. In oth­er words, the “right­eous­ness” that is attained, in the pas­sage from Malachi, isn’t the result of God declar­ing us right­eous, but rather of God mak­ing us right­eous. And this process is described in the lan­guage of pur­ga­tion. Malachi, like John the Bap­tist, sud­den­ly struck me as very Catholic.

“Well,” I said—the unguard­ed fig­ure of speech returning—“I’ll be damned.” God does not declare us right­eous. He does­n’t impute it to us. God is not a liar, and he does­n’t cov­er up dung with snow and say, “Look every­one! Snow!” He makes us right­eous. He turns the dung into snow. Epiphany.

I said some­thing else too: “If the Catholics are right about Pur­ga­to­ry”—Pur­ga­to­ry had been a very sig­nif­i­cant bone of con­tention for me—“what else are they right about?”

Conversion and the capacity for wonder.

In his con­ver­sion sto­ry Suprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis describes him­self as “the most deject­ed, reluc­tant con­vert in all Eng­land” [4]. Joy came lat­er; ini­tial­ly, con­ver­sion was “check­mate.” He felt defeat­ed. He was that pride­ful in the right­ness of his own rea­son.

Con­ver­sion is that way for a lot of people—it cer­tain­ly was for me, at moments. But that’s not how I felt when I began to crack open the real argu­ments for the Real Pres­ence and Pur­ga­to­ry. The process was much more com­pli­cat­ed than I’m mak­ing it sound—necessarily for the sake of space. I’m describ­ing mere­ly sin­gle, key moments in a 20-year process, and there will be more to be said lat­er, in a more specif­i­cal­ly con­ver­sion-sto­ry con­text. But my point is that when I not­ed those things that I have described, I felt elat­ed. I felt a joy­ful surge of enthu­si­asm for hav­ing solved a seem­ing­ly insol­u­ble intel­lec­tu­al dif­fi­cul­ty. I felt like Scrooge on Christ­mas morn­ing, who was so excit­ed he could­n’t keep still long enough to shave with­out dan­ger of cut­ting him­self in a thou­sand places; he was danc­ing the whole time. It was an epiphany.

My whole con­ver­sion was­n’t like that. In fact, very lit­tle of it was. Which may be why I look back on these par­tic­u­lar moments with such fond­ness and joy. I know it sounds unusu­al for one to describe him­self as joy­ful over the dis­cov­ery that Pur­ga­to­ry exists. You have to under­stand, how­ev­er, that part of the whole process was a dis­cov­ery not only that Pur­ga­to­ry is real, but that it is a purifi­ca­tion rather than a pun­ish­ment. C.S. Lewis describes it this way:

Our souls demand Pur­ga­to­ry, don’t they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, ‘It is true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are char­i­ta­ble here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into the joy’? Should we not reply, ‘With sub­mis­sion, sir, and if there is no objec­tion, I’d rather be cleaned first.’ ‘It may hurt, you know’—‘Even so, sir.’ [5]

I am deeply conscious—I cer­tain­ly was dur­ing the last year or two of my conversion—how full of sin and filth I am. And some­one who is aware of being dirty, and who is an adult about things, wants des­per­ate­ly to be cleaned up. He does­n’t want to be lied to and told that he is clean sim­ply because some­one else is. Some­one who is an adult about things would be embar­rassed to stand before a King all filthy. If there’s no objec­tion, I’d rather be cleaned first. I look for­ward to Pur­ga­to­ry. Not because I think it will be pleas­ant. But because I know I want to stand before a King. I want that epiphany above all oth­ers.

Not that I don’t wish that the process of con­ver­sion could be eas­i­er than it is. I have had the blessed oppor­tu­ni­ty, after becom­ing Catholic, of meet­ing oth­ers who are on the jour­ney, and I have seen and been moved by how dif­fi­cult it is for them. When your eyes are opened to the truth, some­times you feel threat­ened and imme­di­ate­ly want to close them again. Like the patient that Annie Dil­lard described, many con­verts cry out: “No, I don’t want this. I’d rather tear my eyes out.” But by God’s grace, these same people—having shut their eyes for a while and then final­ly reopened them—also have those moments when they say, like the oth­er patient, “Oh God! How beau­ti­ful!” And they’d cut them­selves shav­ing for the inabil­i­ty to keep from danc­ing.

Again, I don’t want any­one to sus­pect that I stopped think­ing about the ques­tions of the Real Pres­ence and Pur­ga­to­ry when I reached the stage in my con­ver­sion that I described above. But sure­ly, when the wise men saw Christ in that first Epiphany, they did not have a ful­ly-devel­oped Chris­tol­ogy. But they knew who he was. Epipha­nies, after all, are not entire­ly intel­lec­tu­al moments. And some­times you just have to sur­ren­der to joy. No one is sad­der than the one who has lost his capac­i­ty for won­der. Some­times you just have to accept the hap­py expe­ri­ence of see­ing men as trees walk­ing.

Endnotes.

[1] See, for exam­ple, Jason Stell­man’s con­ver­sion sto­ry here, specif­i­cal­ly his com­ment #492, where he uses the pre­cise phrase “par­a­digm shift,” as opposed to vari­a­tions on the word “par­a­digm” which appear through­out the arti­cle.

 

[2] Dr. Anders’ first appear­ance on “The Jour­ney Home,” on 8 Feb­ru­ary 2010, can be found here; his sec­ond, on 6 Decem­ber 2010, here.

 

[3] I was­n’t a King James Only­ist in the sense that I believed that the trans­la­tion was nec­es­sar­i­ly 100% accu­rate, or the only accept­able trans­la­tion for Eng­lish-speak­ing Chris­tians to use. That belief struck me then, and it strikes me now, as ludi­crous. But I did believe that the KJV was the best ren­dered Eng­lish trans­la­tion, and even today most oth­er trans­la­tions strike me the same way as nails on a chalk­board. That’s the Eng­lish major in me. I do, how­ev­er, get a mis­chie­vous sense of delight when I con­sid­er rad­i­cal King James Only­ists con­tem­plat­ing an indi­vid­ual who became a Catholic through the King James Bible. It’s also the Eng­lish major in me to enjoy that kind of irony.

 

[4] Lewis, C.S. Sur­prised by Joy. New York: Har­court, 1955, pp. 228–229.

 

[5] Lewis, C.S. Let­ters to Mal­colm, Chiefly on Prayer. New York: Har­court, 1963, pp. 108–109.