An excerpt from a recent conversation:
Friend: What are you doing spiritually these days?
Me: I’ve returned to the Catholic Church. I met a great group of people there and finally feel at home.
Friend: Really? I thought you were more open-minded than that.
Me: (Stunned) Well, I’m loving it.
This conversation happened recently with a non-Catholic Christian friend I’ve known for a while.
Afterward, I realized I was angry and took the comment as an insult. Wondering what I could have said to be more at peace, I shared the incident with that “great group of people” from my church. I wanted to have peace, not the peace of the world, but the inner peace Jesus Christ offers.
I received their words with the grace of the Holy Spirit and they opened my heart to so much more than I could have imagined. That’s how my Catholic faith works. It peels off layers of blindness, revealing the liberating truth.
A few suggested that the response, “I’m loving it,” without defending my choice, demonstrated my faith, following Jesus’ command to forgo retaliation for personal offenses.
Matthew 5:38 If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek.
My response was also a demonstration of love in action.
1 Corinthians 13:4-5 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Others suggested I could have asked what they meant by saying they thought I was more open-minded than to choose Catholicism. This could have started an evangelization dialogue as long as my intention was genuine curiosity and without judgment.
I find this event so mysteriously beautiful because I love my faith and trust Jesus even more. Catholicism is such a self-aware and thoughtful faith. It helps me look at everything through His just eyes and feel everything through His compassionate heart.
I now realize that conversation was for my healing, as it gives me a mission and purpose to live my faith even more courageously and authentically each day.
The Holy Spirit, working through my faithful and amazing Catholic sisters, also helped me realize the following:
- As a Catholic, I don’t get to pick and choose what I think is acceptable or comfortable. I do what is right in the eyes of the church as best I can. I have already lived a life doing whatever I wanted spiritually and materially, and it only brought me short-lived pleasures. Living according to the Catholic tradition brings me a more profound and lasting satisfaction.
- Catholicism humbles me, unlike any other spiritual path I’ve been on (and I’ve been on a lot!) The examination of conscience I am consistently asked to do as part of my faith helped me acknowledge the anger quickly, ask for God’s forgiveness and seek to make amends if needed. Humility reminds me that despite all my good works and intentions, I am still a sinner, making mistakes that hurt me and others. This understanding replaces any condemnation I have in my heart with compassion for our shared human blight as sinners who can’t get out of our own way!
- The Catholic saints are exceptional models of the love and forgivneness at the heart of the faith. My friends suggested that I pray for this person and I have. What came to me is the prayer found written on the wall of St. Teresa of Calcutta’s (Mother Teresa) home:
Do It Anyway
People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.
Be honest and sincere anyway.
What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.
Create Anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, will often be forgotten.
Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.
Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.
________________________________________
Now I realize that the anger and insult I felt at first were from my old, ego based self that is slowly dying as I deepen my faith. As I learn to be okay with being misunderstood, I am one step closer to walking in Christ, the compelling and powerful way I was meant to live.
The Radical Catholic 
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