(Written April 13th)
For the last year+ I’ve been going through RCIA (Rites of Christian Initiation for Adults) at the church that’s closest to my school. The leadership team there is wonderful. Every single leader and coordinator in that group really cares about everyone going through, and about upholding their end of the instructional process. They care about taking care of people’s hearts and minds. My sponsor (assigned to me as part of the RCIA program to get to know me and bear witness to my confirmation) is the most amazingly sweet, caring lady in the whole world, and has become such a friend and mentor to me. (Incidentally, today she gave me an entire bag of black jelly beans because those are my favorite.) Really, the whole team over there is incredible.
I want to be extra clear about that because what I am about to say has nothing to do with anything they’ve done or said–it’s definitely in spite of it. They’re even nice to me even when I am late to everything.
Also, please know that this post is about a lot of negative feelings. I have also felt a lot of good ones in the same period of time. I’m just not writing about those right now.
~º~
Today was Palm Sunday. It was the last Sunday that I will attend Mass and not be able to say that “I confess one baptism”. It’s the last Sunday that I’ll feel like I can’t quite call the people around me “brothers and sisters”. It’s the last Sunday that blessing myself with holy water will be in anticipation, not remembrance, of my baptism.
It’s the last Sunday that I won’t be able receive communion.
And I’m not ready.
Through this entire process, but especially the last few months, I have been having such a hard time with the preparation for baptism, much less confirmation. I used to be really excited about it, when it was just a concept, but it’s been so difficult lately because I have become increasingly and overwhelmingly aware of the fact that I am not deserving of any sacraments at all.
I know this sounds obvious. I also know that’s the point, that they are graces. But it sucks. When it was so far away a year and a half ago, and especially five years ago, ten years ago, I think I convinced myself somewhere deep down that I would be a super awesome Christian by the time I was baptized, and I would be like…okay don’t hate me for this, but I think that I somehow thought I would be an asset to the Church. It was subconscious, and I’ve only come to realize it very recently, but it had to be there or else I wouldn’t be feeling the trepidation that I’m feeling now.
Like, my getting baptized would be doing everyone a huge favor. (I KNOW, OKAY, I KNOW HOW THAT READS. I KNOW. I SEE IT TOO.)
I have, of course, come to realize that I am an nothing if not an enormous liability.
I want to be a Catholic, but all of this is actually coming to fruition at a time that doesn’t make sense to me at all. This past year has been (for reasons both related and unrelated to this conversion of mine) the most difficult year of my life spiritually. I won’t go into it, but suffice it to say the world has never made less sense to me, and I have never been more angry or hurt or confused. I know God is close to me, but for much of this year I’ve been turned in on myself too much to care. Every once in a while I’ll convince myself that I have actually been trying, but I’m not sure.
Further, I haven’t cared to hear what many have to say about it. I listen to a few key players in my life, but otherwise well-meaning advice has tended to make me angrier than none at all. I’ve had enough of seraphic smiles in response to my tears, and if I hear “God works in mysterious ways” one more time I’m afraid I’ll end up on trial somewhere, sometime soon, for assault.
I haven’t been a good sister, daughter, student, or friend lately.
I have inwardly mocked what was probably sincere piety as pointlessly sentimental. In others, not even in myself. This bitterness has occasionally bled into a senseless and malevolent disdain for pious expressions of any kind from anyone. A kind of childish spite for the way people’s mouths relax when they pray, or the desire to punch someone’s face in if they cross themselves while in conversation with me. Oh, sorry, you’re right, “pray without ceasing” actually means “ignore everyone and everything around you”. Good thing you’re so holy. I have spent more time yelling and whining at God than I have listening, and I’ve spent more time crying than I have doing any of those things. Sometimes I’ve tried to pray the way I think I should, and sometimes it’s okay but most of the time I end up feeling like I’m lying to the creator of the universe, so I apologize awkwardly or I just…stop.
I have never been more dissatisfied with myself. I have never been a more petty person.
~º~
When baptism was something that was happening “in the future”, I always kind of imagined that when it happened I would:
1) Already be awesome.
2) Have, like, an unlimited amount of time to go hide in a cave somewhere and fast and pray and strip myself down mentally, spritually, emotionally, physically, to be ready for God. (For my sake, not his. Obviously. )
Maybe I’d even wear some sackcloth.
Well, guess what? The fact of the matter is that I have two 15 page papers due early this week, plus a gajillion other little things and probably a couple thousand that I am forgetting. Finals happen in a week, and then it’s the end of college which is, you know, stressful. I don’t know if I will sleep at all for the next six days, much less spend hours meditating on the mystery of God’s love and grace for me.
This is happening, it turns out, right in the middle of “real life”.
And that’s the point, I guess.
I was expressing some of this to Matt lately, telling him that I wasn’t ready to receive the Eucharist. He said yeah, but I would be after being baptized. I promptly replied that I wasn’t ready for that either. He said something that I’ve always known in a way I’ve never heard it before–he said that Baptism works the way love does, where one person loves someone first, and then the “someone” just responds. Easy.
I hope it is that easy, because my need for grace has become infinitely more real to me the nearer I get to an external manifestation of it. As the Easter vigil draws closer, the more cavernous the chasm between who I am now and who I’d like to be when I get there appears to me, and the less time there is to attempt to bridge it.
But through all of this, through ALL OF IT, really every part of it, God has been undeniably with me (and I say that as someone who has tried to deny it…to God). And maybe it’s good that I’m starting this part of my Christian journey at a low point, because I have NEVER been more aware of my need for God than I am right now. There is nobody less deserving.
~º~
The terrifying reality is that I have nothing to offer God or his church. The most I can do is to show up and take God at his word, that he loves me and that he is strong enough and Love enough. And that’s what I’m going to do in six days.
Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof; but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed.
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