To Be Changed
In becoming Catholic, however, one enters a wonderously and sometimes confusingly capacious universe of faith, prayer, piety, and forms of discipleship. As G. K. Chesterton observed, the Catholic Church is so much larger from the inside than the outside. One enters in order to be changed. One is changed by Mary and Marian devotion, for a very big and transforming instance. One is changed by leaving behind the tortured introspection about one’s spiritual state and entering into the crisp objectivity of sins unambiguously confessed and unambiguously forgiven in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. One is changed by the example and company of monastics who demonstrate the diverse ways of radical discipleship and how it is that some Christians are more advanced in holiness, and some become the saints we are all called to be. One is changed by popular devotions to Our Lady and the saints that in their unbounded exuberance touch upon more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the stammerings of our theological systems. One is changed by mystics and miracles and could –be superstitions given the benefit of the doubt. One is changed by priestly power to transform bread into body and wine into blood, by God’s submitting Himself to be delivered and adored. One is changed by the theological suspension of one’s theories of the Church and surrendering oneself to the Church that does not need one’s theories in order to be. One enters in order to be changed.
-Richard John Neuhaus from Catholic Matters
posted by Sean at 4/18/2006 06:57:00 PM
3 Comments:
Just in case you wish to know the context of the Chesterton quote, it can be found in his The Catholic Church and Conversion CW3:94:
At the last moment of all, the convert often feels as if he were looking through a leper's window. He is looking through a little crack or crooked hole that seems to grow smaller as he stares at it; but it is an opening that looks towards the Altar. Only, when he has entered the Church, he finds that the Church is much larger inside than it is outside. He has left behind him the lop-sidedness of lepers' windows and even in a sense the narrowness of Gothic doors; and he is under vast domes as open as the Renaissance and as universal as the Republic of the world. He can say in a sense unknown to all modern men certain ancient and serene words: Romanus civis sum; I am not a slave.
Amen.
Thank you for that.
I still need to read Chesterton. Is that one book? " The Catholic Church and Conversion"?
Yes it's one book, but I am not sure if it is available at present except as a used book.
HOWEVER! you can order Volume 3 of the Collected Works, and you will get it AS WELL AS these:
Where All Roads Lead
The Catholic Church and Conversion
Why I am a Catholic
The Thing
The Well and the Shallows
The Way of the Cross
See here for more information, and other books. You may also want either CW1 or CW2 or both...
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