Rome Sweet Home

by Kimberly Hahn

  It was a very fruitful trip, renewing friendships strained by Scott’s conversion and having challenging conversations on theology. As I began to share with our friends why Scott said what he said, I became more convinced of the logic behind his arguments, though I did not necessarily want to be.

  First, Jack and I went phrase by phrase through John 6:52-69, examining the Catholic position. Though I had read John through many times in my life, I had never been struck before by the force of Jesus’ words as he says over and over that his body and blood are to be eaten (even chewed) and drunk to receive his life.

  I said, “Jack, what do you do with that?”

  “I think Jesus is teaching about faith, Kimberly.”

  This was the same analysis we had been given in the class we had taken together in seminary.

  “Wait a minute. Are you basing that on the phrase ‘the flesh is of no avail’, in verse 63? Read the rest of the verse. ‘It is the Spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail.’ It’s the Spirit that gives life. In other words, Jesus wasn’t saying to the people, come on up and one of you can have a finger and one of you can have a toe. He was pointing to a time after his death, Resurrection and Ascension when the Spirit would give the disciples his glorified body so that his flesh would be life-giving for the world.

  “Besides, Jack, why would it have offended the Jews so much if Jesus was only talking about faith and a symbolic sacrifice of his flesh and blood? They left disgusted, thinking he was talking about cannibalism. Why did Jesus allow most of his disciples to leave under a basic misunderstanding and never clarify for even his closest disciples that he was only talking about faith in a mere symbol of his eventual sacrifice? At least for his closest1 disciples, he cleared up misunderstandings of teachings in other passages of Scripture.”

  Jack did not see the difficulties I was seeing with a Protestant understanding of this passage, but I was feeling the force of Catholic arguments for the first time. This discussion shed light for me on a different problem I had had with transubstantiation: How could Jesus, in his humanity, give his actual body and blood to his disciples at the Last Supper? And if he didn’t do it there, then why should we say it is more than symbol in our imitation of his act?

  I knew Catholics said it was a miracle, but that seemed too facile an explanation until I tied it into the earlier teaching in John 6 of the miracle of the loaves and fishes. This multiplication of food was to point the way to the miraculous multiplication of the body and blood of Jesus for the life of the world. And though in his humanity alone, Jesus could not have separated his body and blood in the Upper Room to offer it to the disciples, he never was only human. Since Jesus was fully divine as well as fully human, he could have sat there in his body and blood and at the same time turned the bread and wine into his body and blood.

  Next I visited another pastor friend, Bill, and his wife, Lisanne. After some conversation, Bill asked, “What’s going to happen to your children?”

  “Our children will be raised Catholic eventually. I really have no other option.”

  “You do have another option”, Bill assured me. “You could take the children with you in a divorce, because he’s abandoned the faith and embraced heresy.”

  “That’s not a possibility, Bill, because I know that Scott has acted with too much integrity as a Christian simply to write him off spiritually, taking away the children.”

  Bill and Lisanne asked lots of questions and gave me a real chance to share my heart, unlike most Protestant friends we had. Later in the conversation, I said, “Look, I’m not a relativist and neither are you. If I join the Catholic Church—and I don’t want to—but if I become convinced it’s true, I want to take y’all in with me!”

  (A few months later Bill called Scott to apologize for giving me the advice to divorce him and said my explanations of Scott’s beliefs had been so convincing he was beginning to study the Catholic Church in earnest. Lisanne became my long-distance study partner. She and I were in similar situations: both needing to study these things and having mixed emotions about doing it. We would study a topic or book and then have one- to three-hour conversations about twice a month. Months after my conversion, both Bill and Lisanne came into the Church amidst many sufferings related to excommunication from their church and denomination.)

  I came home from the trip with mixed emotions. More pieces had fallen into the Catholic puzzle, and yet I could tell that some of my Protestant friendships might become quite tenuous if I continued my search. There were still times of depression and isolation. And I felt mistrusted by some new Catholic friends.

  I was not sure Catholics even believed what I was studying that Catholics supposedly believed. When we would go to Mass, people would come in and leave their coats on, looking like they were ready to bolt as soon as they received the Host. (I would never go to dinner at someone’s home and leave my coat on!) For an evangelical Protestant used to fellowship and friendly conversation after the service, it was a shock to discover that most people did not intend to stay and greet one another.

  I watched as people would receive and go right on out the door—I guess they wanted to be the first out of the parking lot. Can you imagine going to dinner somewhere and not even thanking the host who had provided the meal? And yet, supposedly, these people were receiving the Lord of the universe, the God-man who had died to save them! And they had no time to give him thanks for this incredible gift! Scott called this the Judas Shuffle—receive and leave.

  One evening, we had an opportunity to be at a Mass where there was a eucharistic procession at the end. I had never seen this before. As I watched row after row of grown men and women kneel and bow when the monstrance passed by, I thought, These people believe that that is the Lord, and not just bread and wine. If this is Jesus, that is the only appropriate response. If one should kneel before a king today, how much more before the King of Kings? the Lord of Lords? Is it safe not to kneel?

  But, I continued to ruminate, what if it’s not? If that is not Jesus in the monstrance, then what they are doing is gross idolatry. So, is it safe to kneel? This situation highlighted what Scott had said all along: the Catholic Church is not just another denomination—it is either true or diabolical.

  Since I had to decide, because the monstrance was coming closer, I gave it a half-hearted, half-up and half-down motion. Once again I felt nudged by the Holy Spirit to continue to take my study seriously, because this was not as simple as picking my favorite denomination.

  Though I was not ready to make a commitment to the Catholic Church, I was already being cut off by some new fundamentalist friends because they felt I was becoming too Catholic. It was as if they could not see that we both sat on the Father’s lap—as if they were trying to shove me off, saying, “You don’t have a right to be here! You’re going to become Roman Catholic!”

  Yet I still had major obstacles to conversion, especially Mary. Scott understood that—he’d been there, too, at one time. When Scott heard that Dr. Mark Miravalle was coming to give a presentation on Mary at our college, he invited me to the lecture. I thought it would be helpful to hear a presentation, getting me out of the head-to-head combat in which Scott and I usually engaged.

  I did not like everything I heard; I had a lot of questions. But I was not as defensive as usual, I listened as Dr. Miravalle clarified what the Catholic Church taught about Mary. First, she was not a goddess—she was worthy of honor and veneration but not worthy of worship, which is to be given to God alone. Second, Mary was a creature uniquely fashioned by her Son as no other mother has ever been or will be. Third, Mary rejoiced in God her Savior, as she stated in the Magnificat, because Jesus saved her from sin from the moment of conception. In other words, her sinlessness was a gift of grace, saving her before she sinned. (Certainly God had saved many of us from wild profligacy before we got into it; perhaps he saved Mary even earlier. I granted that it was possible.)

  Fourth, Mary’s title as Queen of Heaven did not come fro
m being married to God—as I had thought—but was based on the honor of being the Queen Mother of Jesus, the King of Kings and the Son of David. In the Old Testament, King Solomon, the son of David, elevated his mother, Bathsheba, to a throne at his right hand, paying her homage in his court as the queen mother. And in the New Testament, Jesus elevated his mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, to a throne at his right hand in heaven, bidding us to pay her homage as the Queen Mother of heaven.

  Fifth, Mary’s mission was to point beyond herself to her Son, saying, “Do whatever he says.” At this point I realized that certain examples of Marian piety that focused on Mary to the point of neglecting Jesus perhaps were not faithful to Catholic teaching on her. Perhaps these dear souls did not even realize it, but they were offending the Blessed Virgin even in their attempts to honor her, if they were neglecting her primary mission to bring us to her Son.

  When Scott and I got home that night, we had a good talk about Dr. Miravalle’s points. He added a description of Mary as God’s masterpiece that I found helpful.

  “Mary is God’s masterpiece. Have you ever walked into a museum where an artist was displaying his work? Can you imagine his being offended if you were viewing what he considered to be his masterpiece? Would he resent your looking at that instead of at him? ‘Hey, you should be looking at me!’ Rather, the artist would receive honor because of the attention you were giving his work. And Mary is God’s work, from beginning to end.”

  Scott continued, “And if someone praises one of our children to you, do you interrupt with, ‘Let’s give credit where credit is due?’ No, you know you are being honored when our child is being honored. Likewise, God receives glory and honor when his children are honored.”

  I took these thoughts to prayer that night and for the first time asked God what he thought about Mary. The phrases that came to my heart were these: “She’s my beloved daughter”, “my faithful child”, “my beautiful vessel”, and “my ark of the covenant bearing Jesus to the world”.

  I could not figure out why it was that it seemed to be that Catholics worshiped Mary, even though I knew worship of Mary was clearly condemned by the Church. Then I got an insight: Protestants defined worship as songs, prayers and a sermon. So when Catholics sang songs to Mary, petitioned Mary in prayer and preached about her, Protestants concluded she was being worshiped. But Catholics defined worship as the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Jesus, and Catholics would never have offered a sacrifice of Mary nor to Mary on the altar. This was helpful food for thought.

  Many major theological questions were resolved, but there was a wall, an emotional block, that took a supernatural gift of faith even to want to look over, let alone climb over. In November 1988, I wrote, “Where there is death, God can bring resurrection; yet the thing has to be completely dead to be raised. Am I dead yet? Am I fully yielded to you, Lord, to die to self and to live in you? It is very difficult to dodge depression and despair. As I muddle in the middle, I praise you, Lord; for you know the end from the beginning.”

  One day I was having a particularly difficult day with the children when a friend called. I shared that it was a tough day, and he said, “Why don’t you think about Mary as a wonderful mother that you can go to and ask for help?”

  I said, “Let’s be honest. First, you’re telling me that I’m dealing with a woman who never sinned. Second, you’re telling me this woman had only one child, and he was perfect. Just think about it: something goes wrong at the dinner table, and everyone looks at Saint Joseph—it had to be his fault!

  “I don’t even believe in going to the saints for prayer. But if I did, I’d go to Joseph. I can’t even relate to Mary!”

  (Later on I shared this story with a friend who was troubled about the fact that I couldn’t relate to Mary. After thinking about it awhile, she said, “Kimberly, what you said is true—she was perfect, and she had only one, perfect child—but if she’s really the mother of all believers, just think how many difficult children she’s had!”)

  It was at this time that God, in his mercy, allowed us special suffering: we miscarried two babies in 1989, one in January (Raphael) and one in December (Noel Francis). I say in his mercy because he has a tremendous way of using pain and suffering to strip a lot of nonessentials away and to draw us closer to him. As Mother Teresa says, our sufferings are God’s gentle caresses, beckoning us to come back to him, to admit we are not in control of our lives, but he is in control and can be trusted with our lives completely. I realized much more deeply the truths I had already embraced about contraception relative to God’s gifts of new life and began to understand in a personal way the redemptive nature of our suffering.

  Heaven became a much fuller reality; for up until then, I had thought of heaven as only Jesus and me. I had been taught that to think of being with anyone else in heaven was in some way to detract from the glory and wonder of being with Jesus. But with each miscarriage a part of me had died. I longed to be with and hold those children and know those precious souls. The joy of being reunited with those you love—parents, siblings and children—who, with you, love the Lord is a joy that demonstrates the glory of God, refracting the light of his glory rather than detracting from his glory.

  Heaven is described as a great celebration, the marriage feast of the Lamb! Surely as love is perfected, it is not annihilated but comes to its fullest flowering in the presence of our God.

  After tubal pregnancy surgery on January 22, 1989, I lay in my hospital room filled with emptiness. I had such a sense of loneliness—from the loss of this life within and from intense physical pain from the C-section cut I had been given (without the typical consolation of a little one to hold). Scott had gone home to be with our three other children, who were not permitted to visit me in the hospital during my four-day recovery. And, to make matters worse, the doctor had stuck me in a maternity ward, where I could hear babies and their mothers throughout the days of my stay.

  As I poured out my heart to the Lord, picturing my baby separated from me but in his arms, he brought to mind Scriptures I had memorized long ago from Hebrews 11 and 12. (Please note how important it was that I had memorized these Scriptures so that God could bring them to my heart in a time of crisis when I had no access to his Word. Catholics can and must memorize Scripture—Protestants have no special gene that makes it easier for them to do it!)

  Hebrews 11 is that great faith chapter listing wonderful saints who risked so much, including their lives, for God. At the beginning of chapter 12, it says, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every sin and weight that so easily besets us and let us run with, perseverance the race set before us, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”

  I thought, in my Protestant understanding, that the communion of saints I affirmed in the Creed meant that the saints in heaven have communion among themselves and the saints on earth have communion among themselves but that the contact between heaven and earth is only between each one of us and the Lord. After all, the Old Testament clearly condemned necromancy—contacting the dead to find out the future.

  But Hebrews 12 seemed to say that we were surrounded (present tense) in our race down here by all the brothers and sisters who had gone before us. In other words—I was not alone in my hospital room. I knew Jesus was there, but so were many other brothers and sisters who had gone before me. It was as if we were in an Olympic stadium and the people in the stands were former medalists in the race in which I was now competing—they knew what it took to win, and they were surrounding me and cheering me on.

  In that cloud of witnesses present right there in my hospital room, there would have been saints who had lost children much older than my baby, whose spouses had died (not simply gone home to care for other children), whose experience with loneliness was worse than any I had experienced and whose physical condition had been worse than mine. Yet they were not there in judgment over me, clucking their tongues at my miserabl
e failure to overcome sadness and loneliness. Rather, they were there to minister to me for the Lord in their compassion and prayers for me as I lay there in so much pain and sorrow.

  If the prayers of a righteous man are very powerful, as James 5:16 says, how much more those who are perfected? If I could ask my mother on earth to pray for me and know that God would hear her petitions, why couldn’t I ask the Mother of Jesus to pray for me? This was not the same as necromancy—these souls were the living, not the dead. And I was not asking them to foretell the future; I was asking them to intercede on my behalf just as I asked my brothers and sisters in Christ here on earth to intercede for me. I was not approaching them instead of Jesus but rather going with them to Jesus, just as I did on earth.

  This prayer for intercession did not detract from the glory of God; it demonstrated his glory, because we were living faithfully as brothers and sisters in him. More Scriptures were falling into place, and I began to rejoice in the rich doctrine of the communion of saints—these people really were my older siblings in the Lord!

  Up to this point, crucifixes had always bothered me. Yet as I lay on hospital beds (I had three hospitalizations related to one miscarriage alone), I looked at the crucifix, and I prayed, “Jesus, the very fact that you were on that Cross makes sense out of my suffering, because I can offer it to you. And yet the suffering I have undergone isn’t anything compared with the suffering that you’ve undergone.” His suffering put my suffering in perspective. I was so grateful for that. These hospitalizations were God’s tool to draw me closer to him than ever before.

  The next time we were at Mass as a family, I had such a sense that our whole family was united. Scripture taught that those in heaven participate in the same liturgy as those on earth. So in the presence of the Lord our family was one.

  I spoke with my younger sister, who had had five miscarriages, about how she faced the possibility of the pain of miscarriage again and again. Kari described those precious children she and her husband had lost as treasure stored in heaven. I realized that, like her, Scott and I had treasures in heaven with these two precious souls. The Lord was allowing us to have special prayer warriors for our family.