Called Out of Darkness Page 0,65

doors of that church, returning to Him through the sacrament of Confession, with the kind understanding of a brilliant and thoroughly Catholic priest who spoke the mother tongue of my religion with beauty that I could hear and receive and comprehend.

I went back to the ancient Roman Catholic Church of Christ Our Lord who was crucified, died and buried, and rose on the Third Day. I went back to the Catholic Church of St. Paul and the Apostles, and the angels Gabriel, Michael, Raphael. I went back to the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, first among the saved. I went back to the church of St. Augustine and his mother, St. Monica; of St. Jerome and St. Patrick. I went back to the church of St. Francis of Assisi and the painter Giotto; back to the church of St. Teresa of Avila and the music of Palestrina; back to the church of St. Joan of Arc and the music of Andrea Gabrieli; back to the church of Michelangelo and Antonio Vivaldi, the church of Ignatius Loyola and St. Alphonsus, the church of sweet St. Therese, The Little Flower, with the bouquet of roses in her arms. And above all, I went back to the ancient Roman Catholic Church of the Apostolic Succession which held as solemn truth that Christ was Real and Present in the Blessed Sacrament on the altar. This was "the rock pitched into space" that Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen had once described.

This was the Eternal Church of the Lord.

And so it was a return to the Romanesque dome and the Gothic arch, to the stained-glass windows, to plainsong and Verdi's Requiem, to the priest with the white wafer in his hands, and to the beaming Christ Child in his crib of straw.

Yes, this was the way home through the doors of the Eternal Church, with its marble floors, and painted saints, its solemn icon of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, and its unmistakable incense, its ever faithful candles, its soft and fragrant flowers, its draped altars, its golden tabernacle doors.

Lord, I'm here.

That was the first and foremost miracle of 1998 for me the miracle of knowing and unknowing, the miracle of trust, the miracle of love, the miracle of what didn't matter, the miracle of faith, and the miracle of surrender and the miracle of return.

Halts by me that footfall

Is my gloom, after all,

Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?

"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, I am He Whom thou seekest!

Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me."

- Francis Thompson,

"The Hound of Heaven"
Chapter Ten
It wasn't untill the summer of 2002 that my commitment to Jesus Christ became complete.

From December 1998 on, however, my commitment to believing in Him, to worshipping Him, and to keeping to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church was strong.

I have already stated that my return to Christ, my return to Him through the doors of the Roman Catholic Church, was not something simple. It was not a collapsing into consolation or happiness.

And I want to stress this again.

It seems to me that many people think a Christian conversion is exactly that - a falling into simplicity; a falling from intellect into an emotional refuge; an attempt to feel good. There are even writers today who see Christian conversion as a form of empowerment, and books are written that promise born-again Christians not only complete peace of mind, but even monetary gain.

My return involved complete trust in God, an admission of faith in Him, a faith made evident by love. But it took an iron will to go back to Him. I anticipated grave difficulties. I feared grave obligations. And I was in no way able to turn against the secular humanist friends and teachers and culture which I had for so many years admired.

I, who all my adult life had been a member of nothing, had to become a member of this something, and it took all the will that I had.

When I recovered from the diabetic coma that almost killed me, when I gradually worked my way back to health, I experienced a dry period in which faith for the moment did not make sense. I did not cease to believe in God.

Rather, recovering as I was from the severe mental effects of ketoacidosis - in which the brain actually shrinks and gradually has to restore itself - I felt frightened by my new commitment, and it was only with great difficulty that I went back to Mass.

The first task that confronted me