Why AM I Catholic? – UPDATED

Patheos had the idea of asking its bloggers, from all channels, why they believe what they believe; why they are “Evangelical Christian” or “Mormon” or “Protestant” or so forth, in 200 words or less. The page is likely to be completed next week (so check back, because it will be fascinating) and I’m very happy that so many of us in the Catholic portal are posting on the question during Holy Week. You’ll find links to some of them at the end of this piece. You can answer yourself, in the combox.

The topic, “why I am Catholic” made me pause, though. I had to seriously ask myself:

So, why am I a Catholic?

Because in a life that has cast me hard onto the pavement, or raised me higher than I ever ought to be allowed, it has been the constant source of the Ever-Present, revealed to us every day in ever-ancient, ever-new ways.

God is everywhere and within, but not always easy to find. During those times when (because we are too wrecked to see him) a search for the God of Inmost Dwelling comes up empty, we get assists through the works of physical beauty created by our fellow wrecked human beings. We get the words and prayers come down through the ages, by those who have gone before us — the great cloud of witnesses who prayed the psalms we pray, lived the heroic lives that still pick us up when we are spiritually impoverished. We have Peter — faulty, imperfect Peter, still proclaiming Christ and telling us where he may be found.

The Eucharist. Jesus said “I am with you even to the ends of the world,” and that promise of Presence is kept every day as, through time zone after time zone, he is raised from the altar and comes to us, Word made Flesh; his broken body made one with ours; the balm of our broken hearts. As the Masses end in New York, they begin in Chicago, and after Chicago, in North Dakota, and in Alaska, and Oceania, Asia, Eastern Europe, all the way back, and then forth. The Presence of Christ. To the end of the world. Amen.