My whole life I have been haunted by slavery to choice. I feel, to the dismay of my good sense, that I must "get it right" or "God will punish me." So I have obsessively weighed and measured between religion and irreligion, between different religions, and then between different denominations of Christianity, and now I return again to my native Catholicism but with the siren call of Orthodoxy seeming, to my eyes, as more honest, more holy, more real, more genuine, and more true. But I am stupefied that, to choose to leave my native tradition, is to put me in the position of one who chooses and who does not know how he knows what he knows (if I feel that Orthodoxy is more true, does this justify conversion? Am I justified in choosing this for myself, as an island?). Moreover, I do not even know if I truly do know truly what I thinks that I knows, and indeed it seems that each and every day I am drawn either to enter the seminary for Catholicism or to convert and become Orthodox. What a dichotomy! And how frequently I deliberate and am drawn in this direction and that! For my entire life I have hated the Catholic Church, I have had a fire in my heart against it as a father whom I looked for to feed me bread, but he gave me rocks instead. I would both love and loathe to return to it: I have in all practical ways done so, but in my heart a fire of great hatred burns against the "gratuitous abuse of infinite power justified with arbitrary authority." I have seen in the Catholic Church the very authority which you here condemn as that deception of the Serpent: but is this the fault of the Church, or the Serpent? Are my eyes polarized still between master and slave?
This is a deeply personal reflection, I know it's a bit much as a response and I certainly don't except a solution. But, this article really strikes me where I am right now and I wanted to express that it's all-encompassing breadth is a fertile testament to your faith, and an inspiration to mine, even if mine is mired in the slavery of choice, and of feeling the need to choose.
Thanks so much for sharing this, brother. I am in a position from which it's hard to give advice. I became Orthodox when I was a young man; in spite of my time away from the Church (I was wrestling with my own set of problems) I feel that my spiritual life has grown around the Church as a vine grows on a tree... I also hated the Church for a time; but after a lot of self-examination and suffering I can see the extent to which that hatred was my own blindness -- with the excuse of rejecting things worthy of rejection, I also rejected things that were a fundamental challenge to my selfishness; I rejected the Cross in the particular form it took in my own life. But, thanks be to God, He brought me home. I stopped off in the Catholic Church along the way -- never a communicant, but an attender, often at SSPX or FSSP parishes. I almost went that way. But in the end, I could not escape the plain realization that the expression of Christian faith I found in Orthodoxy struck the chord of recognition in my heart, and when I was honest with myself, I knew that it was true.
All of this is to say -- I would never gainsay someone's decision to stay in the Church of their childhood faith, and yet, if Orthodoxy really beckons, if there is something in your heart that won't be still, I would never gainsay someone's decision at least to "come and see" -- with the understanding that "conversion" is a long journey, a process both of learning and unlearning. I am more than 30 years in and I still sometimes feel that I am just beginning to understand. In any event, my heart's counsel is -- don't be in too much of a hurry; if the Lord draws you this way, you will know. And you can always remain in the communion of the western church and draw inspiration from the holiness of eastern saints (vice versa is of course also very possible). I hesitate to say that choosing a church home is of secondary importance -- I really do believe, in the end, that the Orthodox Church is simply the Church, identical with the body of the faithful present at Pentecost, continuous in time and in space and in spirit. Yet in some way, it is the state of your heart and your struggle to know and love the ways of the Lord more deeply that is of more central importance.
At all events, I send you my prayers and heartfelt good wishes for the health and joy of your soul. Please pray for me.
My whole life I have been haunted by slavery to choice. I feel, to the dismay of my good sense, that I must "get it right" or "God will punish me." So I have obsessively weighed and measured between religion and irreligion, between different religions, and then between different denominations of Christianity, and now I return again to my native Catholicism but with the siren call of Orthodoxy seeming, to my eyes, as more honest, more holy, more real, more genuine, and more true. But I am stupefied that, to choose to leave my native tradition, is to put me in the position of one who chooses and who does not know how he knows what he knows (if I feel that Orthodoxy is more true, does this justify conversion? Am I justified in choosing this for myself, as an island?). Moreover, I do not even know if I truly do know truly what I thinks that I knows, and indeed it seems that each and every day I am drawn either to enter the seminary for Catholicism or to convert and become Orthodox. What a dichotomy! And how frequently I deliberate and am drawn in this direction and that! For my entire life I have hated the Catholic Church, I have had a fire in my heart against it as a father whom I looked for to feed me bread, but he gave me rocks instead. I would both love and loathe to return to it: I have in all practical ways done so, but in my heart a fire of great hatred burns against the "gratuitous abuse of infinite power justified with arbitrary authority." I have seen in the Catholic Church the very authority which you here condemn as that deception of the Serpent: but is this the fault of the Church, or the Serpent? Are my eyes polarized still between master and slave?
This is a deeply personal reflection, I know it's a bit much as a response and I certainly don't except a solution. But, this article really strikes me where I am right now and I wanted to express that it's all-encompassing breadth is a fertile testament to your faith, and an inspiration to mine, even if mine is mired in the slavery of choice, and of feeling the need to choose.
Thanks so much for sharing this, brother. I am in a position from which it's hard to give advice. I became Orthodox when I was a young man; in spite of my time away from the Church (I was wrestling with my own set of problems) I feel that my spiritual life has grown around the Church as a vine grows on a tree... I also hated the Church for a time; but after a lot of self-examination and suffering I can see the extent to which that hatred was my own blindness -- with the excuse of rejecting things worthy of rejection, I also rejected things that were a fundamental challenge to my selfishness; I rejected the Cross in the particular form it took in my own life. But, thanks be to God, He brought me home. I stopped off in the Catholic Church along the way -- never a communicant, but an attender, often at SSPX or FSSP parishes. I almost went that way. But in the end, I could not escape the plain realization that the expression of Christian faith I found in Orthodoxy struck the chord of recognition in my heart, and when I was honest with myself, I knew that it was true.
All of this is to say -- I would never gainsay someone's decision to stay in the Church of their childhood faith, and yet, if Orthodoxy really beckons, if there is something in your heart that won't be still, I would never gainsay someone's decision at least to "come and see" -- with the understanding that "conversion" is a long journey, a process both of learning and unlearning. I am more than 30 years in and I still sometimes feel that I am just beginning to understand. In any event, my heart's counsel is -- don't be in too much of a hurry; if the Lord draws you this way, you will know. And you can always remain in the communion of the western church and draw inspiration from the holiness of eastern saints (vice versa is of course also very possible). I hesitate to say that choosing a church home is of secondary importance -- I really do believe, in the end, that the Orthodox Church is simply the Church, identical with the body of the faithful present at Pentecost, continuous in time and in space and in spirit. Yet in some way, it is the state of your heart and your struggle to know and love the ways of the Lord more deeply that is of more central importance.
At all events, I send you my prayers and heartfelt good wishes for the health and joy of your soul. Please pray for me.
Thank you for your kind words of encouragement. I will certainly pray for you.
Thank you for this work! I look forward to reading it carefully. My battered copy of Fr. Alexander's diary is sitting right next to me.
I have never read it! I have admired much of his work, but read it back in seminary days.