TODAY I CHOOSE TO HEAR THE BELLS

I did not grow up Catholic, as a matter of fact I didn't grow up much of anything.  What faith upbringing I received was the few years after my Mother moved us back to Etowah when I was five.  My Granny, my Mother's Mother, took us small children to the local Church of Christ every Sunday morning and night and we attended Vacation Bible School too.

In my teens, I sought on my own to go to the local Baptist Church after my Mother contracted Cervical Cancer.  I was looking for answers and found solace in God there on my knees.  I stayed in that church until I graduated and moved away from home.

For several years I did not attend church at all as I didn't see the need.  My life was good---or so I thought.  Then at 21, I renewed my conversation with God and began searching again.  During this time I felt the call to preach (I will say here that just because one feels the "call" does not mean that the call is genuine.  Seek advice and pray) which later, mercifully for the people who heard me preach, I found to be a need for deeper relationship, not a call to preach.

When my wife was pregnant with our first child, I began to search for my roots.  My father was Catholic and my mother had told me that if the Catholic Church had not been in another city, she would have continued going there when we were children.  It is there that I began to search for what became my 15 year journey with the Catholic Church.

Over the next 15 years, I started as a novice and read everything I could about the Church, tradition and the Faith of the Church.  Not everything I learned was what I believed and I knew that many things were just "tradition".  I never changed my core faith I had learned as a child, however I did add to my love of the Church and God by using the traditions I learned.

The Mass is a solemn and wonderful experience.  While some may call it repetitious and not meaningful, I would tend to disagree.  There are moments of repetition but it is precisely those moments that keep in the forefront of my mind why I believe.

As a 'for instance', during the Mass, there is a moment called the Transubstantiation.  It is the moment during the Mass where the Priest prays over the gifts of bread and wine, and they become through Transubstantiation, the actual Body and Blood of Christ.  At that exact moment during the Mass, the bells are rung by the Altar Servers to Symbolize the Change.  Do I believe that the bread and wine become the ACTUAL BODY and BLOOD?  What I believe is that God can inhabit anyone or any thing and whether the actual Change takes place, it is the symbolism, the solemnity of the act that I remember. 

There is something magical and spiritual about accepting that you just took Jesus' Body and Blood into your own.  It demands reverence and respect, despite what one may personally believe.  It is the same in my mind as someone "asking Jesus into your Heart".  To the Non-Catholic, this is tantamount to partaking of the Eucharist.  You are accepting the person of Jesus into your heart.  In the non-Catholic, the act is taken as symbolic but never-the-less, it is believed that Jesus actually enters into your heart.  So who is right to say that partaking of the Eucharist, which Jesus instituted at the Last Supper by saying "This is my Body" and "This is my Blood", is not just as real?

In a world where many of us who claim to be Christian, and who act polar opposite, I think sometimes that it is good to be a little repetitious and follow Tradition.  It keeps in the forefront of our minds what we are supposed to be doing here on Earth.  I honestly think I was much more mindful of others and more spiritual when I practiced the traditional Catholic rituals.  It may have been borne of obligation but it became a genuine search for answers.

 It is why to this day, even though I have been out of the Catholic Church almost as long as I was in it, that I still wear a Crucifix rather than the traditional Protestant cross.  The Protestant belief is that Jesus was resurrected and is no longer on the Cross.  I believe every time I place that Crucifix around my neck and see the Corpus Christi, I am reminded of why He had to go to the Cross and why He is no longer there.

It is why I miss the daily Eucharist and the weekly Mass.  The church I go to now celebrates the "Lord's Supper" quarterly as the minister believes it becomes rote and meaningless if practiced too often.  I will never agree with that.  If the true searching of the heart and the contrition for our sins are followed, then how can remembering the final words Jesus Spoke before the Crucifixion, even if done Daily be repetitious and meaningless?

Still, when we do partake, I Choose to Hear the Bells.  I choose to hear them as a reminder of what I really am partaking of.  I am asking Jesus to forgive my sins and come back into my life where I have pushed Him aside. This Christmas, as I enter the Advent season, I pray that I hear the Bells daily.