Three things I wish someone had told me in RCIA.

his East­er Vig­il will mark five years since I entered the Catholic Church on April 23, 2011. It is one of those events that you treat as a kind of birth­day, and you keep track of the num­ber of years that have passed since. Becom­ing Catholic is the best thing I ever did. The year I was in RCIA, and the cou­ple of years that fol­lowed, I lived at high pitch; and I have seen that same high pitch in oth­er con­verts who came into the Church after me. I know the emo­tion they feel.

Though: for all I learned and all I absorbed in my year in RCIA, there were three things I could not have been taught, and no one could have pre­pared me for, which I had to learn in the years that fol­lowed.

Why Did God Bring Me Here?

Briefly in RCIA, we talked about charisms. Every­one has one. “Maybe my charism,” some­one ven­tured, “is to be the guy who eats the donuts after Mass.”

On East­er Sun­day in 2011, in the cof­fee shop after Mass, I was asked: “So now what? That’s the excit­ing thing: What did God bring you here for? That’s what you need to find out.”

About a year after that, one of the RCIA team lead­ers said to me, “You have a knack for explain­ing apolo­get­ics top­ics in a straight­for­ward way. Have you ever thought of start­ing a blog?

So I did. The rest took its own course after that.

New con­verts: Each of you has some gift, and it comes from God, and God means for you to use it in ser­vice to the Church. That is why you are here. The hand can not say to the leg, I have no need of you. You are here because God has need of you. What will you give?

How Will I Be Tested?

At the clos­ing Mass for RCIA in 2011, Fr. George Schom­mer looked at each one of us dur­ing his homi­ly and told us: “You will be test­ed. That is the only thing I know for sure.”

Being Catholic is not easy. Being faith­ful is not easy. It only seems that way, at the begin­ning, for those who take the leap with joy. But “way leads on to way,” as Robert Frost once put it. It gets hard­er.

And your bat­tle with Satan does not end at the East­er Vig­il; it begins there. Be ready. Go in with the Rosary and the Prayer to St. Michael. They help me.

And remem­ber, as the great coach Vince Lom­bar­di said: “It is not whether you get knocked down. It’s whether you get up again.” The Sacra­ment of Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is always there for you too.

How Long Before The Excitement Goes Away?

New con­verts: This joy you feel as you approach East­er Vig­il, and when you receive the Eucharist for the first time, as though there is no ground beneath your feet and you are see­ing beyond the veil: It does not last. You need to know that now. Enjoy it while God gives it to you—for way will lead on to way.

I hope it will not dimin­ish your joy to know that you will not have it all the time. There will be long stretch­es of dry­ness when it has left you; and then sud­den­ly, it will seize you again unawares. And then it will go again. Knowl­edge of this should cause you to trea­sure your joy all the more. It is a glimpse of the Beatif­ic Vision. Trea­sure it while it is yours.

Annie Dil­lard put it this way, in Pil­grim at Tin­ker Creek: “The lit­er­a­ture of illu­mi­na­tion reveals this above all: Although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most prac­ticed and adept, a gift and a total sur­prise. … The vision comes and goes, most­ly goes, but I live for it.”

Be on fire while you burn, and when the fire dims, know that it will catch you by sur­prise one day and burn again, and go again, and burn again. It is how you live your Catholic life in those mid­dle parts that counts. Will you remain faith­ful, or will you drift when the days feel dull?

At those times, take refuge in the Sacrament—at Mass, at Eucharis­tic ado­ra­tion: and know that, even when you do not feel His Pres­ence, Christ is there, and he is the one who brought you here, and he is the one who will sus­tain you.

Wel­come home, dear broth­ers and sis­ters.

Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished at Epic Pew, March 14, 2016.