The Beginning

I recently learned that St. Augustine penned his Confessions ten years after his conversion. This stray fact struck me as significant because last Easter marked the decennial anniversary of my own reception into the Catholic Church. While I am not so presumptuous as to equate my story with that of the preeminent Doctor of the Church, I do recognize his impulse to chronicle the profound experience of personal conversion.

I first encountered Christ in an incense-scented side chapel at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Denver. My high school humanities teacher had offered extra credit to anyone willing to venture beyond our suburban haven into the city to view the cathedral’s flying buttresses, Gothic arches, and rose window. A chronic overachiever in scholastic matters, I jumped at the chance to pad my already comfortable position at the head of class with yet more points. I convinced my friend Sky, who had little interest in grades but enthusiastically embraced any opportunity to spend a few hours away from her overbearing mother, to accompany me.

As we entered the cathedral’s stately brass doors I immediately forgot about the neat checklist of architectural features I had been sent to identify. The plain Lutheran church of my youth, whose architect had adhered to the “four bare walls and a sermon” school of Protestant aesthetics, had left me completely unprepared for the awe-inspiring grandeur of the cathedral. The late afternoon sun illuminated the seventy-five stained glass windows that splashed vibrant color across the white limestone walls and marble altar. Statues of saints and angels populated every niche and pedestal and they held their reverent poses in perfect silence. My soul stirred at the sight—an unfamiliar feeling for a lukewarm Lutheran who intended to lapse completely once off to college and free from my mother’s stringent requirement that I attend weekly services.

We gradually moved deeper into the church and found ourselves standing in a side chapel. I breathed deep and became aware of the sweet, ancient smell of incense, foreign to my Protestant experience. As I inhaled the perfumed air and allowed myself to be subsumed by the silence I recognized, for the first time, the faint yet clearly discernible presence of Christ. At the age of sixteen I was a veteran of a lifetime of Sunday school classes, sermons, vacation Bible school, and confirmation retreats. Yet despite my extensive exposure I had entirely missed any personal or meaningful encounter with Christ. I mentally positioned Jesus in the same category as my long-deceased great grandparents—ostensibly relevant in the overarching scheme of my life but relegated to the far periphery of my daily reality. I certainly did not anticipate bumping into him in the course of completing my homework assignment. The utterly unexpected recognition of Christ amidst the fragrant stillness of the chapel both thrilled my immortal soul and embarrassed my teenage self. I knew Sky desired to shed her Catholic upbringing as fervently as I sought to escape my Lutheran heritage and I feared that an admission that I had inadvertently encountered Christ within the confines of a Catholic cathedral would invite ridicule, or at least ribbing. I suddenly remembered the worksheet in my hand and suggested that we set about locating the building’s transept and crossing.

Once finished with our assignment we settled into the pew furthest from the altar to await my father, who harbored doubts about the safety of two young women on a city bus after dark and insisted on driving us home. I noticed the kneelers attached to the pews in front of us and the thought occurred to me that the Catholic Church must care deeply about the comfort of its adherents to provide such luxurious padded foot rests. Their true purpose suggested itself as an after-work crowd of manual laborers and well-dressed businesspeople filtered in and began to occupy the seats. I realized that a service must be about to start. The idea that people might attend church on a day other than Sunday stunned me. It had never crossed my mind that Christians would gather to worship on a weekday.

Soon the priest processed in and began the Mass in heavily accented English that was further obscured by a faulty public address system. I simply could not understand a word he spoke. It did not matter. No language could adequately convey the truth that unfolded before me. By the time he raised the consecrated host aloft I was awash in a surge of joy. I would not study the doctrine of transubstantiation until college but that evening, before I could name what I observed, my soul reacted intuitively to the reality of the presence of Christ. All the while I tried my utmost to appear uninterested and nonchalant, unwilling to allow Sky to witness a breakdown of my cool and perpetually cynical teenage persona, but interiorly I had experienced a life-altering change.

My dad arrived just as the Mass concluded, uncharacteristically and providentially late, and the three of us walked together to the car. As I slipped into the front seat, momentarily out of Sky’s hearing, I said quietly, to myself as much as to my father, “I think I might like to be a Catholic.” Seven years would pass before my confirmation but that on that day and in that place Christ sowed the seed of my conversion.