Ad Multos Annos

Five years ago I heard the words I, and most of the world, had been greatly anticipating for a little over 2 weeks.

Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum;
habemus Papam:

Yay, we have a Pope, but who??? My anticipation and nervousness grew to levels I could not imagine. There was so much promise! As long as the right pope was chosen. I didn't know who I wanted, but I knew who I didn't want.

The announcement continued as I prayed. The cardinal announced:

Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum,

Dominum Josephum

My prayers changed to fervent pleading! No, no, no! Please let it be a different Joseph.

Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Ratzinger

I screamed "No!" so loudly the neighbors must have wondered what had happened. I sank into the chair in disbelief. This was the man who would destroy everything!

qui sibi nomen imposuit Benedictum XVI

There was nothing left for me to do but cry so that was what I did. I cried for days and I feared until I came to the point, several months later, that if I was stuck with this guy I should at least read something that he wrote.

The first book I read was "Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church". I remember I was sitting in the waiting room of the local garage getting an oil change and an inspection sticker when I came across words that have become burned into my mind.

One is Church and one is member therof, not through sociological
adherance, but precisely through incorporation in the Body of the Lord through
baptism and the Eucharist.

(...)

The Church is not our Church, which we could dispose of as we
please. She is, rather, his Church. All that is only our Church is not Church in
the deep sense; it belongs to her human - hence secondary, transitory -
aspect.

(...)

If the Church, in fact, is our Church, if we alone are the
Church, if her structures are not willed by Christ, then it is no longer
possible to concieve of the existance of a hierarchy as a service to the
baptized established by the Lord himself. It is a rejection of the authority
willed by God...the Church of Christ is not a party, not an association, not a

club. Her deep and permanent structure is not democratic but sacramental,

consequently hierarchical. For the hierarchy based on apostolic succession is
the indispensible condition to arrive at the strength, the reality of the
sacrament.

Suddenly, it was as though questions I had asked for decades were suddenly being answered, but not from the source I wanted. How dare he answer my questions and make sense! I read more and more and I loved it all. Finally, I decided that since I couldn't argue against the writings I had to go after the man. I read his memoirs "Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977" hoping to find something I could take issue with. Instead, I was deeply touched by this depiction of a man with great faith who had extraordinary experiences.

I kept reading and rereading these books when I had the opportunity to visit Rome and Vatican City for the 2006 consistory for the creation of new cardinals. Four of my 7 days in Rome would be spent in the presence of the Holy Father. Oddly enough, I could not bring myself to see the joy and honor in that. I read the books on the plane still searching for something I could take issue with. I had convinced myself that if I liked the message the problem had to be with the implementation or even with the man himself. I imagined an ogre-like man with a cold hard look about him. Someone whose meanness would exude from his very pores.

Upon arriving at our lodgings which were in the extra-territorial zone of Vatican City and directly across St. Peter's Square from the Apostolic Palace I was told that two tickets to the Papal Audience had been reserved for us. My actual thoughts were, "Ugh, I guess we have to go, but do I really want to see the Pope another time!" I decided to make the best of it and we went to the audience.

Pope Benedict came out in the popemobile and rode slowly around the square. I took pictures mainly for posterity and for this blog (although I don't think I ever posted my feelings here). He approached where I was standing along the barricade when someone threw something into the path of the popemobile. Suddenly, I found that he was stopped directly in front of me. People were reaching out to him, and I was one of the few with a camera aimed directly at him and he stopped and looked directly at me as I took a picture. Then he continued greeting the crowds. He took the hand of the woman to my right and reached for mine as well, but I was completly frozen. In the split second, he saw my dazed expression and chuckled softly to himself. It was as though he was wondering what it was about him that made me freeze like that. Before I realized what had happened, the obstruction was cleared and the popemobile was moving again.

It was at that moment that I knew what the expression "hardened heart" and "heart of stone" meant as I felt my heart crack and bleed and the tears streamed down my face. What I saw wasn't the ogre, but a gentle, humble, kind, grandfatherly sort of man who seemed to be in awe of all the attention which was focused on him. I saw him 4 more times that week and each time I was amazed by his gentleness and humility. He never placed any attention on himself, but always directed the attention to Christ. In fact, he looked totally embarassed by the attention given to him.

Throughout that week, I desired his presence as I never expected. I found great comfort in looking out in the evening at the glowing windows of the Papal apartment and I loved sitting on the balcony and watching the lights go out as the Holy Father retired for the night. I remembered those weeks after Pope John Paul's death and the emptiness in the shuttered apartment. Seeing those windows I could say, "Everything is fine, Papa is home and we are in good hands".

Unbelievably for me, I wished I could have told him about my experience. Partially so he wouldn't think I had been some crazy lady, but also so I could tell him of my conversion. I prayed that he would grow comfortable in his new role and accept that the attention given to him shouldn't be a source of embarassment, but is the result of the dignity of his office. He is the successor of St. Peter and the Vicar of Christ. That is no small order! He deserves the trappings and honors and attention which is office brings not because of who he is as a man, but because of his office, who he represents, and our union with Christ to whom all these honors are ultimately directed.

I haven't stopped reading his writings and I haven't been disappointed. Instead, each book I read and reread brings to closer to Christ and deepens my understanding of Christ and His Church.

God, thank you for our Holy Father, Benedict. Thank you for opening my heart which had been hardened by the words of those around me and my own prideful refusal to accept your wisdom.

My dear Holy Father, I love you! May God protect you as you lead His Church. Thank you for showing me Christ and His Church in it's fullness as I had never understood it before. Thank you for showing me the errors of my understanding and for opening my heart to true Catholic teaching. May you have many more years in service of Christ!

Photos by: Domini Sumus

A Kingdom for a Kingdom

Would you trade an eternal kingdom for a almost non-existant chance to gain an earthly kingdom? I wouldn't but Autumn Kelly did.

Autumn Kelly is a Canadian woman who married Peter Phillips, the son of Princess Anne and is 11th in line for the British throne. Great Britan still holds to the archaic rule that anyone who becomes Catholic or marries a Catholic loses their claim to the throne. Kelly is a Catholic who renounced her faith and joined the Anglican church so Peter wouldn't lose his place in line. No matter what the media claims, she didn't have to renounce her faith. Other British royals have given up their unrealistic claims without problems. They aren't beheading anymore.

If either of them think Peter Phillips has any chance of becoming king, they are kidding themselves. Unfortunately, there is a real kingdom is in their reach, but the allure of gold and jewels and a royal life has seduced Autumn. I hope she has a happier life as a member of the royal family than the others who have gone before her.

Photo credit: AP Photo/Sang Tan, Pool

Convert Baptized by Pope Writes Book

Here are some excerpts which were published in Corriere della Sera from Magdi Christiano Allam's new book “Grazie Gesù. La mia conversione dall'islam al cattolicesimo” [Thank You Jesus. My Conversion from Islam to Christianity] . In the book, Allam, who converted from Islam to Catholicism recounts his road to conversion. In these excerpts he describes his baptism:

It was the best day of my life. Receiving the gift of the Christian faith on the day of Christ’s Resurrection from the hand of the Holy Father is a matchless privilege and inestimable blessing. For me, at the age of almost 56, it was a unique, unforgettable historic event that signalled a radical, definitive change with respect to the past. During the night of 22 March 2008, on the occasion of the Easter Vigil, at the solemn liturgy celebrated in the magnificence of the Basilica of St Peter’s, the cradle of Catholicism, I was reborn in Christ. At the end of a long, protracted struggle, lived out as a Muslim by reason of the legacy inherited from my parents and with a personal history of lacerating doubts and torments, there ignited within me, by divine will and responsible choice, the light of the true Christian faith. My spiritual metamorphosis unfolded from nine o’clock over three hours that seemed as if they would never end. I passed those hours in uncontrollable excitement, outwardly betrayed by my tingling nerves, over the radical nature of the life experience that was taking place inside me and, I admit, in part because of the cold that gripped me and stayed with me from the beginning of the imposing ceremony in the atrium of the Basilica, accompanied by rain and icy temperatures.

Inside the Basilica, the lights had been extinguished. I was outside with six other adult catachumens waiting to receive the sacraments of Christian initiation, seated on the part of the parvis most exposed to the wind. It was in that damp cold, which usually makes me a little agitated and means I have to concentrate more to listen, reflect, assess and elaborate concepts, that I began to relive the film of my inner life. Half a century was reviewed frame by frame and sliced up with the now uncompromising, now compassionate scalpel of religion, calm enough for one last unconscious confirmation of a decision already taken consciously yet at the same time with sufficient urgency to recompose the overall framework of my existence into a harmonious whole, joyfully to register the image of the long-awaited, soon to be accomplished, Event, as I reinterpreted my past while redefining and revolutionising my future. (...) From the atrium, Benedict XVI led the procession towards the altar after the deacon, chanting the Lumen Christi for the third time, had brought the splendour of light back to the Basilica.

Then began the crucial stage of my conversion to Christianity, to which evidently I was called by the grace of God that had accompanied me from my youngest days, bringing into my path a series of “coincidences” that were anything but fortuitous, concealing as they did the will of the Lord that discreetly comes to meet us without making its presence palpable. As I slowly walked down the nave at the rear of the procession, my mind at once went back to the key event that started me on the route of interior spirituality at the age of four, and would more than half a century later culminate in my conversion to Christ. It was September 1956. I still have clear in my mind the day on which my long travails began. I had burst into tears as my mother Safeya, aided and persuaded by the Caccias, the family of wealthy Italian textile magnates resident for generations in my native Cairo, handed me over to Sister Lavinia. She hid me under her habit so I would not see my mother entrusting me to the education and affection of the Combonian sisters and their devotion to St Joseph. Later on, from the last year of primary school to the last year of my scientific secondary school, I studied at the Salesian Don Bosco Institute.

For fourteen years, I lived in boarding schools run by Catholic religious orders (...) I was able to gain first-hand experience of the lives of women and men who had chosen to devote their lives to God in the Church by serving their neighbours, regardless of religion or nationality, and who bore witness to their Christian faith in works for the common good and the interest of the community. There I began to read the Bible and the Gospels with interest and involvement, particularly enthralled by the human and divine figure of Jesus. I was able to attend the church of St Joseph opposite the Combonian sisters’ school and the church of Don Bosco at the Salesian Institute. Every so often, I went to holy mass and once I actually approached the altar and received communion. From the religious point of view, it was an act without significance since I hadn’t been christened but it clearly signalled my attraction for Christianity and my desire to feel myself part of the Catholic community. (...) My conversion did not come about in a flash after some traumatic, joyful or sad event, nor was it merely a rational adherence prompted by reading sacred texts, or a purely intellectual confrontation with supporters or opponents of the Catholic faith.

Instead conversion was the ripe fruit of a long journey through a life of study and direct familiarity with the sources of wisdom but above all, with experiences of otherness that involved me entirely, slowly laying down in my soul and mind ever thicker layers of spiritual and rational adherence to the love and faith of Jesus. (...) Finally came the crucial moment of Baptism. I was being reborn in Christ and was about to take my first steps as an authentic Christian. I stood up and walked to the baptismal font, accompanied by my godfather. For the first time, I stood before Benedict XVI. I knew that at that precise moment, the destiny assigned to me by divine grace fifty-six years earlier, from my birth, was being fulfilled. I bowed with the respect and humility of a believer in the religious primacy of the Pope as Christ’s vicar on earth. I approached the font, stooped and Benedict XVI poured the blessed water over my head. “I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost”. (...)

The moments immediately preceding my baptism and the baptism itself I experienced as an authentic liberation. For fifty-six years, I perceived myself as a Muslim and others around me identified me as a Muslim. At the age of fifty-six, I was born again as a Christian, cancelling out the Islamic identity that I have consciously and deliberately rejected. Inside me and outside, everything will change. Nothing will remain as it was before. For those who, like me, consider religious faith and the sphere of absolute, universal, transcendent values to be the foundation of life, thought and action, adherence to Christianity takes the form of a radical change in the whole of personality and existence. Naturally, it will take some time for this adherence to faith in Jesus to grow increasingly full and heartfelt. I feel like a child taking his first hesitant steps in his new Christian life. But I have a great desire to walk and run as a Christian! Thank you, Jesus.

Learning Your Way to Faith

I had an inspiring converstation with one of my classmates yesterday. She is nearing the end of her studies and has saved her theology courses for last because they were the ones she had the least interest in. They were also the courses she was most intimidated by, because she had never studied religion and does not belong to any religious group. She was baptized as a baby, but never recieved any other Sacraments and never attended any church. She isn't athiest or agnostic, she doesn't know enough to be either. I would classify her as lost.

She started taking her theology courses this semester and signed up for Aquinas. Some might think that Aquinas might be a little deep for someone with no religious training, but she told me last night that she was thinking of becoming Catholic because of the words of St. Thomas Aquinas. She said that she has spent her life trying to find happiness and fulfillment and Thomas has shown her where true happiness lies: God.

She said that she attended Mass last weekend for the first time in her life and was fascinated. She is in love with the Mass and can't wait to learn all about it.

Imagine, in a little less than a semester she has gone from a non-believer to a Catholic inquirer. I am encouraging her to take a course in Sacraments in the Early Church. I am sure it would only deepen her growing faith.

Please keep this young woman in your prayers as she responds to God's call.

Swimming the Tiber

One of my favorite theology professors is Fr. David Stokes. He is a former Episcopalian priest who converted to Catholicism and was ordained a Catholic priest in 2001. He is married and has four children.

Here is a link to an interview between Fr. Giacomo Capoverdi, from Priests for Life, and Fr. Stokes where he talks about his conversion.

And another where he talks about the reformation.

By the way, this is my 500th post.