Rediscovering the Price

“What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus;
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

Refrain

“Oh! precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow;
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

When did I forget this wonderful truth? What happened between September 1974 – when I first learned this song – and the year 2005? Somehow my knowledge of the saving blood of Jesus had become a vague memory. Was it because churches we attended had replaced their hymnals with modern choruses and anthems of praise? Or was it my familiarity with the facts of Christ’s death that made this gift of grace simply historical information. Whatever the reason, that “precious flow” lost its riveting appeal.

I can remember sermons exhorting us to “come to Jesus,” who died for our sins. Our pastors preached that only Jesus, the spotless lamb, could atone for the rebellion of Man against a loving and righteous Creator; that Jesus Christ, alone was pure, righteous and without sin, that He alone could become for sinners the perfect blood sacrifice for the atonement God required.

When I heard this preached, I pondered that loving work of grace, that undeserved forgiveness purchased on a splintery wooden cross for the sake of all mankind. Simply knowing this seemed enough for me. I was satisfied that I had chosen to accept Jesus’ gift of salvation.

However, Rich became aware of his lack of focus on the Lord’s passion in early 2000. He placed a crucifix in his office and told me he needed to be reminded of the costly debt God paid for our rebellion. But I missed the point, and mumbled an agreement about remembering the cross. I must have been sleeping.

Five years later on Easter Sunday 2005 my eyes opened again and I was dismayed. As we entered the Catholic Church we were to call home, there in full sight and centrally located was – to my eyes – a shocking wooden effigy of Jesus in agony on the killing field of my sin. It was repulsive and brutal, with its stark nails, drooping head, and spear-wound in the side. I hated looking at it. I would not look at it.

Yet I deeply yearned to know Christ better.

That yearning grew because as I knew in my heart the Holy Spirit was calling me to want to know Jesus Christ better. But to know Him you have to look at Him. To see Jesus the Messiah with the eyes of faith means to see Him on the cross.

God’s love for His creation is not a sweet chocolate-pudding type of love. It is love that is bold and sharp. It is not only joyful but also excruciatingly costly.

In my sleepy state of spiritual numbness, living for Christ meant I wanted Christ’s love to be comfortable. His life renewed in me should be like a happy warm summer afternoon. I wanted to follow Him without recognition of how much Christ set aside for my salvation. I wanted to minimize His very human pain and the blood dripping from His wounds. I wanted to muse on Calvary and consider the cross simply a treasured symbol of faith.

However, the more I encountered Jesus’ body dying and garlanded with our hideous sins, I glimpsed the mercy and love of the Father.

After weeks of avoiding the Crucifix, I looked. And my look became a gaze, and then a longing to know Jesus better. I learned that my will, my anger, and my plans were like dung. In the presence of such a gift, how could I dare be anything but contrite? The Father used the battered body of His dear Son to remind me of true love. The Holy Spirit gently took my heart in His loving hands and whispered, “Look and see how to love.”

Christ Makes All Things New

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature, the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. “ 2 Corinthians 5: 17 (NASB)

I admit I do not fully understand this statement from Holy Scripture. However, when the Lord revealed to me that He was indeed physically present at Mass, that understanding so unsettled me that all my preconceived notions about God dissolved. Intellectually, I knew acquaintance with the Creator of the Universe exposes us to powerful effects. What I did not expect to discover was His loving kindness in such glorious generosity.

Never had I encountered such love.

I am not sure if my outward appearance or demeanor changed. But I was so internally energized by what I knew to be true I could no longer live as I had in the past. Much like my first encounter with Jesus many years earlier when I accepted His redemptive work for me on the cross, and I acknowledged Him as lord of my life – all my previous understanding of God passed away.

I’d thought I knew Jesus. I’d thought I knew my place in Him. But I’d thought wrong. What I wanted became as dross – not all at once, but with each day I changed more and more until I discovered my interests had changed. Christ was supreme and what He wanted was now what I wanted, and I wanted nothing else besides Him.

For years I had pursued the art world as a means of self gratification. I used my artistic skill to promote the personal goals of my vision, my insights, and my personal longing for recognition. But Christ’s love changed me in such a way that I only wanted to draw or paint about Jesus.

Previously, I failed to execute art work about Jesus because I could not communicate myself visually about this subject. Now I could not staunch the flow of ideas that expressed themselves in images about Messiah’s sacrificial love. I went from drawing pretty trees and misty landscapes to the bloody sacrificial wounds on his hands, feet, and side.

I have posted two art works below. The first one, completed in 2003, is an example of images I explored for many years. The second, completed in June 2006, demonstrates the new images that were an outflow of His Grace.




Forest Fantasy





Sacred Heart




The Holy Spirit has given me images that come as fresh innovations, and helped me create something I’d not, to this point in my life, been able to express – that being His wonderful love for humanity.

He is Lord of All

C.S. Lewis writes in his book, Surprised by Joy, how, as a boy, he discovered joy one morning while walking in the countryside. That moment of beauty and insight so indelibly pressed itself into his heart and psyche that Lewis longed to recapture it ever-after. He later recognized the moment for what it truly was – an encounter with the eternal presence of God.

In a similar fashion, a moment (several moments, really) of joy pressed itself into my heart as the wondrous presence of Christ became exquisitely real to me at Mass.

It’s not that I hadn’t experienced from time to time the joy Lewis talks about. I’d known wonderful times of “refreshing” (a Pentecostal term for the work of the presence of the Holy Spirit) during Protestant church services, or at prayer. I’d experienced flashes of insight into the Holy Spirit’s presence when a passage of Scripture seemed to jump off the page and grab my attention. However, none of my earlier experiences with God can compare with the brief flashes of insight He gave me during the fall of 2005 and winter of 2006.

Until that time I had unknowingly dragged behind me a long and ponderous chain of doubts and half-truths as I attended Mass. Like Charles Dickens’ Marley of the Christmas Carole, I forged my chain with prejudicial ideas that rejected Catholic traditions and beliefs about the Mass as silliness, at best, and absolute superstition at its worse. My preconceived religious fervor determined for me what God could and could not do, and what He would and would not do. Like Marley, those chains held me prisoner in the twilight, unable to experience the day.

The Holy Spirit began to release me from those chains first with insight about the Eucharist. When He revealed His truth, I suddenly understood that Jesus is indeed physically present at the Mass. So complete was the impact on me that all my former chains of ignorance about the Mass dropped to the floor with a clanging thud.

In subsequent bursts of comprehension, the shackles of my Protestant points of view were shattered as I discovered anew our Father truly is and was and will be – all at the same time. Our mighty Lord really is the Lord of eternity; He is not bound by time or space. He is present at the Mass from the breaking of the Matzo and sharing of the Cup, to His crucifixion upon Golgotha, and His resurrection on the first Easter morning.

When those truths settled over me, I wept because it was too beautiful and too wonderful to know, and I realized how profound and magnificent is the gift of the Mass.

As I continued to attend Mass, talk with Rich, and listen to Catholic radio, the Holy Spirit confirmed over and over the insights He had shown me. And with each confirmation, I was amazed that what the Holy Spirit taught me is exactly what the Catholic Church teaches.

No longer believing the Mass superstitious or an absurdity, I am certain the Mass is a moment in time when the past and the present come together. Oh! How like our loving Lord – our Emmanuel – to be physically present to meet with me and with anyone else who seeks Him.

United by the Divide

Rich’s reception into Roman Catholic faith in 2005 led to a bewildering set of events that left us both at odds. Rich attempted with loving care to mitigate the unexpected consequences his conversion brought into our home. Meanwhile, a great emptiness had entered my life. How could I support my husband and still serve Jesus, while I felt so estranged from Rich and from the Lord?

Although I began to experience a renewed joy after the Lord offered me Spiritual Communion, the heartache of those past months weighed heavily on Rich. He suffered in silence with each obstacle I encountered. His were the hands that held me close when I wondered how I could fit in. In the privacy of our home, his were the words of anger and desperation in response to those who continued to hurt me. His were the promises to protect me from as much anguish as he could.

And his was the heart that broke and bled one morning at Mass.

October had turned into November and I continued to grow closer to Jesus. Each Mass took on new vitality because of the gracious inclusion Jesus offered me. I found myself carried away by His love and would often feel like standing in awe of Christ as I perceived Him through the Holy Spirit.

One Sunday I whispered to Rich that I would not go forward for a blessing. I wanted to stand at my pew instead, and praise and pray. (From the first time I attended Mass with Rich, I had struggled with the point in the Mass when I processed forward for a blessing. I often felt silly or angered to receive a blessing instead of Communion. For Catholics, it was a time of celebration (Eucharist); for me, it seemed demeaning or pointless – depending on my attitude at the time. I struggled with this issue until 2006, when Jesus helped me see the blessing in a different light).

Knowing my struggle with the blessing, Rich nodded and moved into the aisle. As he stepped into line, he looked back at me and suddenly felt as if he had lost something very precious. He said later, ”I felt with each foot-fall forward that I had turned my back on you, our marriage, and our life together. It was as if I was being ripped from our marriage bond.”

When he returned to our pew, he stood very close. After Mass, he looked squarely into my eyes and declared he would never do that again. When he explained what he had felt as he walked forward, I immediately understood. I remembered having a similar response the night he professed himself a Catholic at the Easter Vigil. I assured him from then on I would go forward and ask for a blessing, no matter how I felt about it.

My husband loves me. Any rudeness or unkindness directed by others toward me reverberates in him. When well-meaning Catholic acquaintances happily counseled him that I’d “come around soon” and become Catholic – all while I was standing there as if I was a naughty child needing to be corrected, Rich cringed. When in some social settings others ignored me altogether, Rich hurt even more.

Repeatedly, Rich vowed to leave the Catholic Church. His frustration with the rudeness he’d seen displayed toward me had grown intolerable. He decided we would attend a Protestant church, and he would meet his Catholic obligations as best he could. I knew he was serious. My emotional pain increased as I watched him straining to help me heal and bring me comfort.

By this time, though, I had become convinced it was God who had opened Rich’s understanding of Catholicism, and it was God who called him to the Roman Catholic Church – and I told him so. We talked many times about the pointlessness of leaving the Catholic Church. Leaving was not the answer. Surely, our Father does not make mistakes. And I reminded him that God had called me to be there at his side.

We were united. We would follow Jesus. And we would follow Him together.

A Note of Clarification

In past months, I have received many concerned comments, emails, and verbal observations related to the difficulties for me as Rich and I fleshed out our life since his conversion to Roman Catholicism. I thank you all for your kind encouragements and genuine concern. So far, this blog has chronicled the first few months of 2005. I experienced many intense moments of distress during that time as I faced discouragement and difficulties. However, in Christ, I have discovered there is strength, a sure haven and “the balm of Gilead” that heals all wounds. Thankfully the difficulties of those days are not presently occurring.

Interchurch Challenges

I am not sure when I discovered that I was surrounded by unequaled scriptural beauty in the Mass. Although I had experienced the spoken Word in Protestant churches, I never hungered to hear it. Nor had I hungered to meet Jesus with the intensity that seemed to impel me to seek Him each week at Mass and each day in daily Bible study and prayer.

Hearing the Word of God at Mass was like hearing the voice of an old friend in a foreign land. How good that voice sounded: non-judgmental, comforting, stating the same truths I had learned to trust all my life. “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world . . .” This text and others woven throughout the Mass made sense of what seemed a senseless predicament for me as a Protestant worshiping in a Roman Catholic Church. Scripture reverberated in my ears and allowed me moments of forgetfulness from the strain of being set apart.

In years past when I attended Protestant churches and socialized with Protestant friends, I did not think it odd to include in my sphere of friendships Catholic friends. Yet I recall only once meeting a Catholic couple at a Protestant church. They were investigating the possibility of attending our church service. I remember being a bit surprised, and after giving them a handshake and welcome, I asked them why they felt a need to leave their own church. They explained they were an interchurch couple (husband and wife from different Christian traditions – one often Roman Catholic) looking for a church that supported them both. Their desperate search for social acceptance was something I did not comprehend at the time. Nor did they express the division festering at the core of their marriage. It would take my own experience of remaining by my Catholic husband’s side at Mass each week to realize how deep and wide the gulf is that pervades our separated fellowship.

In the fall of 2005, as I began to accept my new relationship to the body of Christ, I naturally desired to find some way to serve. A growing appreciation of Christ’s plan for us motivated me to look for ways to be useful. Scouring the church bulletin, I looked for something a non-Catholic might be able to do.

Initially, I signed up with a prayer chain and faithfully prayed for the needs presented to me. This lasted until the leadership decided to revise the call list and hold a meeting to greet their members and get to know them. By that time, though, I had learned to avoid such encounters because I had unhappily found that once Catholics knew I was a Protestant, the welcoming smile become a mask of politeness. A wall of silence often followed with some bland comment on the weather, and then they discovered they needed to talk with someone across the room

So in spite of the wonderful welcome I received from our priest and the director of education, as well as the opportunity to work alongside Rich as he taught Faith Formation classes (Sunday school), I continued to experience being the outsider in a world of insiders.

But I was persistent. I tried a Bible study at our parish, but discovered that many of those attending the study were agonizing over their children who had left the Catholic Church to attend Protestant churches. I believed that my presence in the group would likely have been hurtful for them, so I did not return. I concluded my ability to serve Christ’s body here seemed useless. I responded by isolating myself further, interacting as little as possible.

Eventually, I discovered I could do something without group interaction. I made it my mission to bring food for our parish’s food bank, and gifts for various other charities the church supported. Most of all, I prayed for our pastors everyday.

That daily prayer became the foundation of a commitment that would grow ever larger, and marked the development of my life in Christ.

Reviewing the Past

I first realized the significance of the Sacrament of Communion when I attended confirmation classes as a teenager. I was 14. Our family had recently started attending a Congregational church when the class began. I remember long, boring monologues by our instructor, and the blue sky through the window above his head where my eyes continually wandered. When our class covered the subject of what our Protestant denomination believed about Communion, I vaguely remember the words trans-and consubstantiation. Most important, though, we learned Congregationalists didn’t believe in either.

Our teacher, a man with graying hair, doubted the validity of scripture, and viewed the miracles of the Bible with cynicism -- especially the story of the Nativity.

My parents, though, had taught me the opposite – that I should trust sacred scripture, and that Jesus – fully God and fully human – came to earth to die for my sins.

But sin was a subject I wished to ignore – and I was glad our confirmation teacher never spoke about it. The lure of worldly attitudes, such as pride and self-centered importance kept me from seeing my need of repentance and obedience to the Eternal King of Glory.

When the time came for my fellow students to be baptized and confirmed into the Congregational church, I decided not to follow the group. Much to my parents’ disappointment, no amount of pressure – not even a visit with the pastor – would change my mind. My parents had planted in my heart as a young child the idea that to commit to Christ in baptism must be with my whole being. That good sowing bore fruit. I knew I was not ready to make such a commitment. It took a very long detour of 13 years before my rebellious heart was ready to hear the urging of the Holy Spirit to come to Jesus.

I was 26-years-old, when I committed my heart to Christ. It was for Him alone I was immersed in the baptismal water on June 12, 1974 at a Disciples of Christ Church. I wanted to be baptized as an act of love and obedience toward my Savior and as a promise to the Lord that where He led, I would follow.

And to the best of my ability, I did.

Thirty years later, He led me to attend Mass with my husband, whom God had directed into the Catholic Church. That’s how I found myself excluded from the Table of the Lord each Sunday. (I still find it mystifying and humbling that Jesus offered me a way to meet Him each Mass through what I later discovered was called Spiritual Communion).

Through the spring and summer of 2005, I attended services with Rich, but always with great reservations, feeling myself an outsider, held at a distance from the living body of Christ. After weeks of social isolation and spiritual drought, Jesus came to find me and to nourish me with Himself. Once again, I felt like a participant in the worship of our Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Slowly, I began to grow as I received spiritual communion. I didn’t know it at the time, but spiritual giants such as St. Catherine of Siena, St. Alphonsus, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. John Viennay, had written of such communion, and of what would happen to those who drew closer to Christ through a complete desire to receive the Sacrament.

Little by little, understanding penetrated my heart and the Mass began to come alive for me. I listened to the words of Scripture, the hymns and congregational responses. In them, I heard a new voice speaking – not the voice of a priest, reader, or parishioner – but of my Lord. What had seemed like a programmed hour of rote responses scripted to move from point A to B with ordered regularity, now sounded like a loving conversation between members of a family.

Moreover, as I listened to the prayers, responses, and songs from week to week, it became apparent to me that everything I heard, and all that was said during the Mass was full of Scripture. The lavish use of God’s word made my spirit rejoice. I found myself responding in my spiritual language (what Pentecostal Protestants and Charismatic Catholics call “tongues”) or I simply exalted Christ quietly with joyful peace.

Yet along with joy were the pricks of pain as I remembered that Rich and I were parted at our spiritual core. I was mindful of this especially as we sang songs about the Bread of Life, or lyrics stating, “All are welcome” to the table. I stood empty-handed. I could not be offered a piece of bread or a drop of wine. If the Lord had not provided His spiritual communion for me, I would have completely lost courage.

The Lord’s wonderful gift enabled that courage to empower me to seek His plan for my life within the Roman Catholic Church. I came to accept that He had placed me as a Protestant, with all the warts associated with that label, to be right where I was – in the pew next to Rich.